Lucky Stars

I am a lucky, lucky girl.

I found an apartment!

With the bar exam over, the next task was to find an apartment. I didn't go apartment hunting on Friday or over the weekend because I was still so exhausted from the bar exam, and thought I was going to have a really hard time finding anything available when I finally did start looking. The NYT had significantly fewer ads than 3 weeks before, and the places that I had managed to call told me they had 1 or 2 apartments available in the type I needed. Then there's all the horror stories of apartments flying off the market within hours of being listed, and this is still the peak season for rentals... all signs pointed to a difficult search.

But like the bar exam, this is something where you really don't know what it's like until you're in the midst of it all. While the supply of available apartments was by no means plentiful, there were some great apartments that I saw, that were available. So many things happened this week while apartment hunting that were just so lucky. For example, the first place we went to, there was a gorgeous apartment I really liked with an amazing view of Manhattan, Times Square and the George Washington Bridge that didn't make it to the list of available apartments until we were ready to leave after having gone to the restroom. If we had left before that, we would have never known about it. (The apartment we picked doesn't have the same amazing Hudson River views, but outside of the views, I love everything else about it more, and it's significantly less money.)

I'm also glad that I found a place in the neighborhood I wanted. I wanted to live in the West 40s, mostly because my job is in the West 40s, and I love the area. There's a lot of relatively new highrises (only about 2 or 3 years old), lots of great restaurants. When I was planning, I had found buildings online in all other areas of Manhattan, thinking that I was going to need to broaden the search and be as flexible as possible. Who would have thought that things would work out so well, and that I wouldn't need all these back-up plans? I feel so lucky.

Saw places on Monday and Tuesday (saw this one on Monday), filled out the application on Tuesday...

And today... I signed my lease!


I'm really excited about the new apartment. Although signing the lease brought me right back to memories of the bar exam, because of all of the references to NY's "Real Property Law" and all of the stuff about assignments, subleases, abandonment, default... right back in the landlord-tenant section of my outline.

Before going up to sign the lease, went with my family and my grandmother and had some good dim sum:


And afterwards, treated ourselves to some Coldstone (apparently, cake batter is back, and I love it but it was too hot today for it) because it was over 95 degrees outside. Raspberry sorbet with raspberry mix-ins... yummmmmmmmmmm.


On a day with unbearable heat... that really hit the spot.

Tomorrow, I'm getting fingerprinted for NJ character stuff and then I think I'm going to do some shopping. The bar is done, an apartment has been found, it's all such a relief. Granted, we still have to figure out details about moving and arrange all of that and pack, but at least once we're packed up, we have someplace to live.

And on top of Coldstone, tonight I had more triple chocolate ice cream.

I'm really enjoying this post-bar time. And I really feel incredibly lucky.