New digs.

Ever the procrastinator, I didn't manage to go about looking for a place to live in Ottawa until very recently. For someone who loves and craves control this lack of planning is unnerving.

Anyways, the search was on. Of course, I had no idea how to go about starting to look for rentals. I've always happily resided at Hotel Mom & Dad where I have been sheltered, clothed, fed, and provided with access to cable television and high speed Internet access. It also didn't help that my roommate lived pretty much the same life.

Right. My roommate. Many of you will be surprised at how progressive and liberal my parents are being letting me live with a guy. Yep, that's right. My roommate is a friend from Schulich actually who is also going to be studying law in Ottawa. Now, we're not tight or anything. And although I've known him since first year many of our conversations occured while passing through the different wings of the building and went something like this:

Eli: "Adeline, how about those Leafs?"
Me: "Shut up Eli! I don't want to talk about it."

LOL. Well it's fine. The Leafs depress me anyway and I've found a free web stream of ESPN so I think I'll be watching a lot of college basketball this year. We're both huge sports fans and who knows, there may be a road trip or two in our future seeing as how he has his own car and he doesn't mind driving long distances. We've also worked out our required television days. And while One Tree Hill is on during his required slot of 9pm on Wednesday nights (Lost), it's ok because I've resigned myself to the fact that One Tree Hill will forever be a show that I need to download in order to watch.

But seriously, could I have gotten a better roommate?!

So I came up with a list of available places found via the Ottawa U off-campus housing boards, Craigslist and the local newspaper. I put Eli in charge of calling and making appointments to view the different properties. And then it was panic time because after calling on the Friday before our intended trip to Ottawa that Sunday, we were only able to get one appointment. Regardless, we both realized that we needed to go up there to take a look around. Another friend, Warren, who lives in Ottawa suggested that we just walk around the area where we want to live and look for rental signs. Apparently, there were a lot of them. He didn't let me down. There were indeed a lot of signs, although a lot of them were owned by property management companies that, you guessed it, are closed on the weekends. However, we managed to see two additional places, at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Place #1: Not too bad. Although at that time, we had no point of comparison. It seemed nice enough although one room was significantly smaller than the other but there were ways around that and we discussed making the living room area one of our rooms and making the smaller room into the living room. Definitely was something that we were considering. The bathtub was a basin though (one of those tubs that you see falling through the floor in older movies) and the contraption that was designed to hold up the shower head frightened me but other than that, the place wasn't all that day.

Place #2: A dump. Seriously, I would rather have died than have lived there. Having to do readings is a fact that is depressing enough but living in that hole? That probably would have sent me crying all the way back to Toronto.

Place #3: Out of our initial price range but there was no harm in seeing it anyway. It turned out to be the place that we're going to be calling home for the next year. It's spacious with a gorgeous living room area complete with large bay window. The rooms are big and it came with our own laundry area so there would be no need to lug our clothes a few blocks during winter time to get them washed. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures and Troy, our landlord took down the pictures that he had in the online posting before I got a chance to save them. No fear though, I will be posting pictures as soon as I get settled.

So it looks like this Ottawa thing is really going to happen. I now have a place and a spacious one at that. Wow. I guess this really will be the year of personal growth...coupled with some starvation seeing as how neither of us knows how to cook. o_O;

So if anyone has some furniture that they don't need, be sure to let me know before I head on over to the student furnishing depot (aka Ikea).