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May 24-26
May 27 May 28 May 29 May 30 May 31 June 1 June 2 June 3-5 June 6 June 7-10 |
Wednesday, June 3
What a terrible night! Something in this room doesn’t agree with me. My allergies are going crazy. I coughed most of the night. The fan on the air conditioner didn’t work right, either, so road noises were excessive. We ate breakfast in the hotel, then used their internet connection for a while - looking up rentals in the area and locating them on the local map. Then I reserved a room at the Best Western for the rest of our stay. We packed up and checked out about 10:30. It turns out that Hampton Inn has a money back guarantee, so, after dumping on the manager, he handed us a $0.00 receipt... We drove around and looked at several areas of town. We stopped at the Chamber of Commerce for some more reading material. We drove around a heck of a lot without leaving the city limits of Longmont! Lunch (yum) was at the Loaf and Ladle. It’s still as good as ever. We spent the afternoon looking around, too. We quit about 4 as we’re both exhausted. So, what were we looking at all day? Well, we had a list of house and condo rentals from Craigslist and a list of apartment complexes, but we had no idea what the different parts of town looked like. So, we plotted where these all were (on a map) and charted a course that would fairly efficiently take us past most of them, looking at the neighborhoods surrounding each. We wound up crossing off a good number of them as either too run down, too many small children in the area, or other things that just made us say “No, not here”. We also stopped and interviewed each of the apartment complexes as we came to them, visiting sample apartments. These also were either marked “possible” or “no way”. And we were getting the lay of the land. Where were the grocery stores? Where were the gyms? Where did the roads go? Just familiarizing ourselves with the town. We checked into Best Western. The fan on the air conditioner works great! It’s a quiet room. I think we’ll stay here for the rest of the trip. I tried to figure out how to cool off the mini fridge, but wound up calling the front desk. She was buffaloed, also. Carl woke up (he had taken a nap) and showed me - there’s a small knob on the back of the unit that is only accessible if you pull out the fridge... On top. We left here about 6 heading for Sweet Tomatoes. Yum! Back to room to crash again. Thursday, June 4 We got up about 7 and ate breakfast downstairs. Nothing to write home about... No fruit. No yogurt. Poor selection of cereals. Enough, however. So we got organized and headed out again. Before leaving the hotel, I called three realtors about seeing some condos. We’d driven by them yesterday and would really like to see the inside. There were two adjoining complexes that were a lot alike - one was painted light yellow and the other a light grey-blue. Between Craigslist and realtor signs, the two complexes had three for rent and at least four for sale. While waiting for the realtors to call back, we visited three or four more apartment complexes, touring each. Then we grabbed a quick bite at Arby’s before meeting one of the realtors, Sonja, at a condo her mother owns and has moved out of - her knees can’t take the stairs. Very nice. We sat and talked with Sonja for a while about real estate in general and what we want specifically, both in the immediate future and eventually. She was very easy to talk with and listened intently. We then went back to the hotel room for a little more research and to organize our attack plan for the next day and a half. We also checked out a place just two buildings down the road from the Best Western that is an extended stay place. Their prices look good for an extended stay. It includes a refrigerator (full size) and a two burner stove. We’ll probably stay there when we come back with the first load of furniture, if we haven’t signed a lease before leaving Kingsport. We then drove to Boulder to look at a piano store to check out the Kawai electronic pianos (time to relax a little). Carl’s always wanted to get his hands on one. Very nice!! And a decent price. We’ll be back... We also stopped at a grocery store on the way back to the hotel for cereal, cookies, root beer, etc. We’ll head back to Sweet Tomatoes after about an hour here. During that rest, I pulled together all my little notes on apartments, houses, condos, and areas of town into one semicoherent location. I hope it all makes sense to us when we get home... To Sweet Tomatoes again for dinner, then back to hotel to relax for a while. Spent the evening watching Lord of the Rings on tv again... Friday, June 5 We got up about 7 again. It looks like we’re going to have another overcast, rainy day... We actually saw some blue sky yesterday for a while. We took our own cereal down for breakfast, but used their milk and rolls. Our first stop today was at the post office to get a P.O. Box. That should make forwarding mail a little easier for the next few years. Then we stopped by SOS Staffing, a local employment office. It was closed for a meeting. So, we went on to Bike and Hike to drool. I picked up some new biking gloves there. Then back to SOS, which had finally reopened. We talked with the clerk there for a while. We’re beyond their usual staffing expertise... But Carl picked up a tip for a potential employer. Then we bummed around the Twin Peaks Mall for a while. It’s lost one of its three anchor stores and about a quarter of the stores are vacant. However, I picked up a couple of Harry Connick Jr cds. We had lunch at the Loaf and Ladle again. Corn chowder for me and clam chowder for Carl with lemon meringue pie for dessert! After lunch, we went back to hotel to relax for a while. Carl took a nap. I got organized a little more. Then we packed the laundry into the car and headed south to Westminster. Our first stop was The Environs, a rental community in Westminster that we had looked at on our last trip. Their townhouses still look really appealing and they’re running a special at the moment which lowers the rent by $300 per month. Since we’re definitely interested, she said she could probably hold that rate for us for now.... Perhaps??? Then we stopped at a liquor store for some beer and margaritas, then to Jenny and Jim’s to do laundry and have dinner (burgers, potato salad, and corn on the cob). Nice. We all took a short walk around their neighborhood before dinner. Nice neighborhood. Lots of green space just yards away. Much as we enjoyed the company, we both stayed up too late... We drove back to the hotel to crash for the night. |