The Next Big Move

I got some good news recently. I've been accepted to a fellowship program for pediatric anesthesiology. In Denver! Chris and I are very excited to move back to Colorado a little over a year from now. I love living in New York City, but I'm not interested in living here indefinitely.



But this will not be our "next" big move. In other news, we found out today that our lease will not be renewed by our landlord at the end of May when it expires. BOO!



So I guess we are heading back to this:



We'd hoped to stay in our current apartment until I finish residency next year. But this wasn't a complete shock. About 3 months ago, we found out that they have to remodel our apartment. The short story: there used to be a really awesome deli downstairs, which was one of the first places we went when we moved in.



The owner was named K and she was super sweet. She used to smoke in the backyard and we would see her out there when we took Lilly. She loved Lilly - she told me once "she like me, I not speak good English and neither does she!" And she received packages for us, which made her one of my favorite people in Manhattan. Anyway, she closed her deli in November after they raised the rent and she decided she couldn't stay open anymore. She had a closing night, and tons of people from the neighborhood were there. Everyone was sad to see her go after 17 years in the same spot. When I was there, I found out that she actually lives uptown in the EXACT same building that I lived in for 3 months when I was in medical school! WEIRD!

Okay, so this is not such a short story. Anyway, she closed the deli and a "For lease" sign went up in the window. When they started looking into renting the space out, apparently they discovered that the entire building would be inspected and that they would need to change the fourth floor (our floor) - something about only being allowed to have one apartment on the floor, currently there are two. I don't really understand it all because the apartments do not look the least bit haphazard, it seems to be a reasonable setup. We both have access to fire escapes. Well, they didn't ask me.

So they told us they would keep us up to date. Originally they mentioned renting it to a bank (bo-ring!) and Chris heard them recently showing the place to people who were talking about opening a bar or restaurant and using the backyard as outdoor seating (a bit better). We didn't hear anything else until we called them today to get the scoop. Since our lease expires at the end of May, we figured they should have an answer for us. And they did. :(

At least moving is nothing new to us, and it is always a good opportunity to get rid of stuff we don't use. Hopefully we'll be able to get into a place with more space. Our calculation today was that we have about 380 square feet in our current apartment. Our landlord has lots of apartments in this area, and they've offered to show us any that are available right now. That would be nice - no new application, no waiting to get our security deposit back while we still have to send a security deposit to the new place, we know they're pet friendly. And we definitely plan to stay in this area.

I'll keep you updated!