A Very Valiente Household Discovery

Moving to New York is an adventure. We knew it would be. We anticipated an adjustment as we figured out the subway and the people, as well as the idea of having EVERYTHING delivered (which we very rarely do). There are a few things that aren't necessarily NY-specific, but most definitely aren't found commonly in the south.

Our building is like the ones you see in the movies- you come into a very small doorway and buzz the apartment of the person you're visiting. For some reason, I felt very shy about using the speaker. We ordered lunch and I asked The Yankee to answer it.


Confession: not once have I ever lived without central air- unless I was a baby and that doesn't count. It kind of hurt my heart to think that I'd have to BUY and air conditioner and install it myself. My inner princess doesn't care to buy items to compensate for a deficiency in a building that I don't own- hey, I SAID it was my inner princess!

So each room but the bathroom has one of these. There is no thermostat. If it's anything like our shower, our home will go from Igloo to Inferno status within about 3 seconds of turning this on. And while we're talking about air temperature, why isn't there a heater in the bathroom? You know what I predict? I'll be shaving in December, get out of the warm hot scalding shower and immediatley get goose bumps, thus negating the shaving efforts. Poor Yankee...


MEASUREMENT FAIL.
I have been pestering the Yankee about curtains since we got married, but we never really needed them, since we had blinds (the Yankee has an inner princess too, apparently). So when we selected out apartment, we decided to buy curtains before we moved so we I could enjoy a naked house as soon as we moved in. See my last post for a list of reasons this was a bad idea.

So naturally we forgot to bring a measuring tape while we were apartment shopping. Since I grew up military, I decided to improvise and use body parts to measure. So the windows were the distance from my fingertips to my breastbone. The window in the picture was two of those lengths, plus a small divider in the middle the was about the size of my hand. Well... you can see the value of a measuring tape in this story, can't you?

So there are a few other things that have been surprising, and I'll be sure to record them as they come along. Subway highlights include having to change lines completely as the police investigated a suspicious package and broken water mane that doused several lines at lunchtime on Monday. The lines weren't repaired until way after lunchtime. Thankfully I work from home- the Yankee was not so lucky, unfortunately.