Frequent Flyer McGuires: It's Official...and Other Things

S got his official salary offer in the mail last week. It was better than we expected, so it was nice to be pleasantly surprised. He also received confirmation that our packout is scheduled for July 12th. Seeing that we can't check into our Oakwood apartment until July 14th, we will be staying at a hotel for a couple nights after we have bid adieu to all our worldly goods. No worries, though. Since we have decided to rent our apartment, those days will allow us time to do a little touch-up painting and cleaning (while the apartment is sans furniture) before the new tenants move in. This will be our first "landlord" experience, so we're a bit nervous about it, but we're being optimistic. Given the economy and housing market we're just not ready to sell. We might be singing a different tune in a few years, however.

On a related note, we've been trying to do a little purging in preparation for packout, but we really don't have that much to throw out. Even though we've been in the same city for the past decade (give or take) we have moved into new apartments just about every year or two during that time. Because of that, we have become pretty skilled at doing the whole "getting rid of things you don't need" thing. Also, tiny apartments with little to no storage don't exactly lend themselves to a hoarding-type situation. I did sell a few items on eBay recently, though, and managed to net a few hundred bucks out of them. A little extra spending money is always lovely, wouldn't you say?

But with all the planning and purging and organizing going on these days, we have still found some time for fun. This past weekend was quite busy in fact. S ran the Brooklyn half-marathon Saturday morning and we attended our neighbor's 2nd birthday party later that afternoon. Sunday was spent traipsing around the First Annual Great Googa Mooga Festival, which was a food, beer and music event in Prospect Park. S and I took E to meet up with some good friends and their two kids. We sampled delicious beer and ate yummy pulled pork sandwiches from Dinosaur BBQ and roasted chicken with macaroni and cheese from The Red Rooster in Harlem. For dessert we devoured a spectacular item called "crack pie" from Momofuku Milk Bar. Needless to say we were stuffed to the gills, so we headed over the the stage area to listen to the bands play. E had fun doing his own toddler version of dancing while S and I laughed and took pictures. The weather was beautiful, sunny and warm. It will be days like those we remember fondly after we move.