The day we became Noo Yawkahs!...

Dear Journal,

We are officially NYC residents! We have keys to our apartment! We cannot wait to move in and start decorating.

Today, we took a trip to Ikea in Brooklyn to get ideas for our new place. We ate Kids Meals at Ikea for lunch because we have a tight budget. Of course we had to ask the lady for extra mac and cheese. She carefully gave us 3 more noodles and said, "It's a Kid's Meal." :( We then got a phone call from Jennifer while we were shopping to meet her at our new apartment to pick up the signed lease, our keys, and meet our landlady!!! Very unexpected but exciting! While trying to find our way out of Ikea we saw Frozen Yogurt for $1 and $1 Cinnamon Buns... how could we possibly refuse??? Later regretting that purchase having gotten large stomach aches from too much sugar! Trying to make our way from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side, we got lost - of course and ended up being 1 hour late to our meeting.... oops! As we ran to our apartment, the street was filled with vendors that were selling their crafty things like jewelry and knitted sweaters. So fun and its right across from our street! We ran through the fair dodging shoppers. We made it to the apartment and we fell even more in love!

We proceeded to walk through the fair and shop, but we can't afford to buy such things so we resisted our urge to buy anything. Instead, we entered Shake Shack on Columbus Avenue because that's where Jennifer Goodwin and Jim from The Office eat lunch in Something Borrowed. We realized we were still full from our Ikea snacks, but ordered 2 Arnold Palmers and Cheesy Fries anyway. And good thing!! Those cheesy fries are going to be trouble.

We returned to Brooklyn and are meeting A's friend Ruben in East Village tonight to check out the night scene. We'll let you know how it is!

Talk to you later,

A & D

The day we had lunch with Lebron James...

Dear Journal,

So we are sitting in Sarabeth's on 5th Ave eating brunch, which we fully intend to make a habit of since it is such a lovely place...and while we are enjoying our meals we notice a rather tall African American man a few tables away. He seems to be stirring up some excitement in the restaurant and a few waiters were taking pictures of him so A comments that he must be famous. We then decide that he must be a famous basketball player since his head is touching the ceiling and he was wearing a sweat suit and sunglasses inside. And who else but a famous basketball player would do that in NYC. Anyway, so after coming to that conclusion, we can't go much further because surprisingly we are not the sports experts that you would expect us to be! We look over at him to try and figure out who he is although no amount of staring was going to help and he looks right at us! He then swaggers over and says "Hey ladies, do you happen to know which direction Madison Square Gardens is?" Being the knowledgeable New Yorkers the we are...we gave him false directions while acting like we knew exactly where to go! He then said "By the way, nice kicks. Nike is definitely the way to go." Obviously, we were still in our apartment chasing attire. He walked away and we asked the waiter who he was?! He laughs at us and says, "That's Lebron James!" We knew he was really really famous then because even we knew his name, in additions to about 5 other professional athletes...Joe Montana, Tony Romo, Lamar, Reggie Bush, Kris Humphries (thank you J Simpson and Kardashians)

Actually, none of that really happened except that he was in the same restaurant and we did see him. But its pretty much the same as eating lunch together and becoming best friends right?

See you on the court L.J. we will be on the sidelines in no time. Bienvenidos a Miami!

Until then,

A & D

The week we were homeless in NYC...

October 14, 2011

Dear Journal,

We are here to share our stories with you of our miserable move. Since we arrived in NYC 6 days ago, we have had some pretty amazing stories already. We know this is going to be quite the adventure.

Highlights of this Week:
- the weather
- Saturday night BEFORE we started apartment hunting

Tragedies of the Week:
- apartment hunting 9am - 12am (seriously)
- juggling 50 brokers
- filtering Craigslist posts to know if we are being scammed
- our running outfits
- Roosevelt Island
- Pret closed, Chipotle for breakfast
- Lee/Connie/Al/BenBarr etc...
- Figuring out the Subway
- Grand Central Station
- From no apartments to 2 apartments in <24 hours
- Certified Checks - ATMs
- Jewish holidays
- Columbus Day
- Being called squatters

First of all, we started off our adventure, with nowhere to live and not a clue of how to begin searching for apartments. We found out soon enough that Landlords do not particularly like renters to be unemployed and to have 0 income and be from out of state. So, we are 0 for 3 and have hardly begun. Now we are going to start from the beginning.......

Day 1: stayed in a hotel in Midtown + Dinner at Carmine's = Great! And 5 more nights in the hotel...

Day 2: The Lee story begins... We meet Lee on our first day of apartment hunting! We figure we'll see 3-4 apartments, but Lee informs us that we will only be seeing 1 apartment today and blames it on the holiday weekend. Our clueless selves follow him around the city to Roosevelt Island - a place we have no idea about and have never heard of. We told Lee about our plans of living in NYC and wanting to live in a fun, young, hip place and of course, he takes us to Roosevelt Island - home of new families and suburban moms and diplomats. Not too exciting if you ask us! Fast forward to major freakout..... We leave Lee and come back to our hotel and PANIC. We spend the next 8 hours googling "How to find an apartment in NYC" calling, emailing, texting and otherwise harassing every broker in NY. It is Sunday evening of a holiday weekend, mind you, nobody is working or answering our calls. On the plus side, it was a beautiful day outside. And 4 more nights in the hotel.....

Day 3: A savior is found: in the form of a tiny Asian lady, Jennifer. As you will soon see, our new best friend. We wake up at 8 am and get started to look at more apartments. Our phones ring off the hook with unknown numbers and our phones keep buzzing with new emails. We are slightly overwhelmed, but decide to create an Excel spreadsheet to organize our brokers. We put on our never before worn running shoes and we're off! We see about 15 apartments that day. Worst one: In Harlem, next to Projects with little boy on street whipping out his Who-Haw and urinating outside. NEXT! Best one: we applied for it... Lower East Side, across from bar disguised as grocery store AWESOME. Great view, great room, lots of space (for NYC that is...) ceiling fans, and shelves, and HOT residents, but a bit above our budget. Regardless, we are positive and ready to move forward.

We find ourselves in the Trump Tower with Jennifer and filling out endless paperwork and sharing all of our personal information. She asks us for a deposit (which has to be in cash) and we realize we have no cash. Jennifer walks us to the closest Wells Fargo and make maximum withdrawals. We return to the conference room, and count our cash, and we are $2 short. Great... Paul (Jennifer's boss) tells us to keep our singles. Thanks, Paul! Now, we can afford our McDonald's for dinner. We eat our McD's and spend the remainder of our evening making more broker friends. And 3 more nights in the hotel....

Day 4: We thought we had made some progress and the worst was behind us...not at all. We wake up to frantic calls from Jennifer, requesting our bank statements to send to the landlord. With our first application not looking so good, we use our better judgment and keep searching even though we felt like we just ran a marathon. We meet BenBarr, whose name we are still not completely sure about, and find a great apartment in an even better location than the other one! It was on 9th street in the East Village, right next to Tompkins Square Park. Besides the building being a little smelly, the bedroom a little small, and the floor a little sloped...it was perfect!!! As we walk around the adorable street amid trees, antique stores, hat shops and organic restaurants, we love it but we want to keep our options open.

We head to midtown to meet Connie who ends up being Paula. She is old, grumpy, has a cold and complains about Connie the whole time. We follow her all around midtown on the subway and on the bus to no avail. We end up not seeing anything because her keys don't work. Cool. We fire Connie. Frustrated and starving, we enter a Mexican food restaurant for a reminder of home. High Point: waiter gives us free fried ice cream! We decide to head to BenBarr's office, even though we really don't like him, and fill out an application for the apartment we liked in the East Village. Of course on our way another broker John calls and says he has a great apartment for us to look at on 9th street! Yay!! We literally run to the subway and run all the way back to 9th street. As we are walking down the street we get a bad feeling that we are about to see the same apartment without realizing it....we were right. Oops. Definitely a low point and we end up going to BenBarr's office anyway to fill out more paperwork and hand over another huge chunk of our savings. We meet Yoel, Mickey, and Katarina who work in a basement/office, like to speak in a strange eastern European language very loudly and honestly are pretty sketchy. We give them our money anyway. And 2 more nights in the hotel....

Day 5: This day we wake up and have to run half asleep in the rain back to the realty office to fill out more paperwork. As we run down 5th Avenue in our sneakers and yoga pants, dodging commuters and working professionals in suits, Alyssa slips on the sidewalk grates and cuts her knee open and starts crying. She is a trooper though and gets right back up remembering the cause and that we will be homeless very soon. We basically do the whole application process over again and continue our apartment search. Also, we still haven't been approved and heard anything from our first apartment. Wednesday ensues with similar events. Meeting more brokers, seeing more apartments, and more running. We are approved for the EV apartment although our new broker tries to convince us otherwise. We get a lesson in not trusting anyone and we have a major freak out about possibly being scammed by BenBarr and friends because they are asking for money but not letting us move in until Monday because of a Jewish holiday? Enter dads and lawyers but in the end we decide to sign the lease the next day and hand over copies of checks. And our last night in the hotel...

Day 6: Move to Brooklyn to stay with a friend and we head back to the office once again with a list of changes and determined to get our way. We get the lease and have to overnight it to California for our parent's signatures. We then have to pretend to apartment hunt with Jennifer, in order to receive a full reimbursement for all the money we gave her for the 1st apartments. We meet her in the UWS, walk down W. 80th Street and are in love. The street is perfect, Roosevelt Park is across the street, and we know we have found it. We check out an apartment that is fully furnished with much more space and has a chandelier!

Minor issue: we signed a lease for another apartment.... whatever, we'll deal with that later. We decide to move forward with Jennifer for the UWS. We go back to our East Village apartment and are laying on the floor, making a pro and con list of our two apartments, when someone buzzes the apartment. We tell them to go away, that this is our apartment, and it's off the market. And they call us squatters. Low point. Walk to Baskin Robbins, and get ice creams to cheer us up. Works for a few minutes.... then we realize we are homeless. We head back to Brooklyn to try to make a decision. Jennifer calls us with the good news that we were approved for the UWS apartment. Now, it's time to make a decision. Sleep on it. 4 more nights in Brooklyn.....

Day 7: Wake up and realize we have nothing to do all day. Weird. Lay in bed until 10:30. Exhausted. After all of that, we are in the best possible position. All of our hard work paid off! We have the choice of 2 great apartments. We agree that we want the UWS apartment, but we have to be smart about it. There is still a chance the landlord could back out, so we have to hold on to the East Village one as long as we can. We have a meeting with Jennifer scheduled this afternoon to sign leases and hand over checks. Wells Fargo will see us again, cutting checks for even larger sums of money. Now we have 2 apartments??

"Dear Daddy - Please can I have a weekday home and a weekend home??" And 3 more nights in Brooklyn....

More to come!

Love A & D