Cat on the Bench

Woo hoo!

We’ve found it and we move in tomorrow.

It’s got two bedrooms (I like to study at 5 in the morning, and N doesn’t finish until 4), a little balcony bit for herbs and reflective cuppas, room for a kitchen table, a bath, peach walls and pink curtains (hmmm . . .), an electric cooker (grrr . . . ), not on the ambulance route but close to transport, and near friends, a supermarket, a gym, an adequate drinking hole (the Comfortable Chair) and delicious cheap takeaway (Thaila Thai).

And what’s more, the real estate agent has accepted us.

(Quick rant: are the major real estate chains in the inner city just stupid or simply malicious in the way they treat university students. We have incomes, solid rental histories, we’re not likely to elope to Jamaica until we’ve finished our degrees, and its not like we would have time to trash the place in between uni and working to pay their obscene rents. And it is not entirely unforeseeable that after six years at uni, we will one day be able to afford to buy and sell property and, duh, have to use their services again, this time with a lot more money involved. But they refuse to return our telephone calls or actually reject our applications and they tell you off for inquiring about an advertised house that they have already let.  I don’t think I will be alone in the future in instructing some out of town hick to buy and sell my house simply because I don’t ever want to deal with these subhumans ever again.)

But the flat will do quite nicely.

We’ve been living at a relative’s house for the last week and everything is still boxed up so tomorrow should be cruisy. We have actually organised things properly this time, unlike last week when we had to taxi a dear dear friend to Essendon in the middle of the night to drive our rented truck to Preston (neither N nor I can drive) and then N slept the night in the truck until the place opened at 7.

Anyway, to keep this post theme-related . . .

The foodie things I will miss from living in Carlton North:

• the old man at the Rathdowne St deli who takes ten minutes to make the best coffee you’ve ever tasted and let’s me hold all the breads to determine the heaviest
• the weird foodstuffs that M would bring home from the back aisles of the Asian supermarket on Princes St – the sweet dried sausages, fishballs, tetrapaks of pink coconut-flavoured nastiness (actually, I don’t think I’ll miss these much)
• baguettes from Filou’s dunked in milky coffee made from the extra creamy milk bought from the  ever-smiling milkbar peoples
• cheese from the Lygon St Enoteca, plus all the lovely nibbly testers on a Saturday morning
• going out for Yumbo’s icecream (chocolate for K, lemon for N, toffee for M and something with nuts for me) after dinner, only being able to eat half the container, putting it into the freezer and forgetting about it, then rediscovering it after dinner the following night.

One more sleep!

excuses, excuses

In response to all comments, online and inlife, the blog and I are both alive, just starved of nutritional content - a vicious circle based on me living off unblogworthy oats and coffee, lack of internet connection and physical absence, all of which can be cumulatively explained by a housemove which has taken over a month and life generally being insane.

Yes, after six years, me, N and the cat are finally getting a place of our own. Blogwise, this will hopefully lead to tales of gastronomic adventures for two, cf. the how-to-feed-six-students-with-a-potato-and-an-onion stories of old. For the time being however, it means we are in transit, minus a telephone, minus the insatiable appetite (and cookware) of M, minus a kettle and coffee plunger and thus reason to live, and minus the time to do anything except rush between work, uni and real estate agent after real estate agent. The cumulative effect of the above being mucho restorative G&Ts and dining from tins (only those with ringpulls - M took the can opener) and minimal blogging. We have two applications pending and a kickout date of this Friday so hopefully the madness should soon cease.

I also recently attended to the inaugural Australian 'Law Students for a Just Community' conference and, speaking to Jacqui Grace, the co-convenor of the Fair Trade organisation Hooked, has got my thinking about my consumption patterns.  I'm letting her words marinate for the while but there may need to be a new dimension to old bloggo in the future . . .

A bientot.