FOUR DAYS PEOPLE

After three years in the same apartment, Matt and I will be moving to a bigger place. On Friday. As in, five days from now. But we're moving Friday morning, so it's more like four days from now. Pardon me while I have a momentary spaz attack.

*Spazzes*

Thanks, I feel better. Actually, I'm much less freaked than I anticipated. Saturday we went to the new place to make sure everything was correct on our lease, and to view our apartment. At Matt & my current complex, one of my biggest complaints is that no one in the office staff ever seems to know what's going on. At this place, they not only had our paperwork ready and were super-helpful, they actually remembered who we were and had taken care of everything we'd asked them to. Just to serve as a reference point, last year we had to call our current apartment complex at least three times to remind them to draw up our lease renewal. And when we finally went to sign it, a bunch of stuff was wrong and they had to do it again.

After checking on a few things and talking to the assistant manager, she handed us a set of keys and told us to go check out our new place. The first thing we did - I'm not making this us - is check out the air conditioning. The main reason that we didn't consider getting a bigger unit in our current complex is because it has, to quote a City of Austin employee with the city's energy conservation project, "One of the worst, least efficient A/C infrastructures of any apartment complex in Austin." I kid you not. If I told you what our A/C bills were for our apartment, you would think I was joking. Last month our electric bill was sixty dollars higher than my brother's, and he lives in a 2-2. And in the really hot summer weeks, we really can't get our apartment cooler than 76 degrees until it gets dark. So suffice it to say, energy efficiency was a HUGE factor in our decision to move and I was worried that our new apartment would have the same problems.

We were in the new place for no more than 15 minutes and, in that time, the A/C cooled the whole apartment down from 82 degrees to 75 degrees. Matt practically had to stop me from kissing our updated, digital thermostat. The apartment also had new, energy-efficient windows, new carpet and paint, and new wood flooring in the kitchen and bathroom.

Do I sound a little excited? That's because I am. Our current place has been good to us, but it's time to move. Four days people. Four days.