A home to dry my snowy boots in.

I have a new house.

Ms. R and I have been waiting for years to be roommates. We were neighbors for awhile and spent so much time in one another's apartments it seemed silly that we didn't live together. She left to travel and then spend a year in New Zealand and I took off to L.A. Neither of us planned on being back in Juneau anytime soon. Yet as fate would have it, both ended up drawn back to the black hole that is Juneau, Alaska and decided to finally live together.

Our apartment search began a few weeks ago when she got back into town. We drove around, looking at locations, talking about the types of things we wanted in a home. Our list was as follows:
-Not too many neighbors (not a big apartment complex/building)
-Windows (it gets so damn dark in the winter...it's just a neccessity)
-No apartment where the owner lives next door
-Semi-accessible location with parking close-by (we like to entertain fairly regularly)
-A cool landlord

We looked at around 10 places but one stood out so starkly from the rest. Not only did we find a place that fit all of our criteria.... we got so much more.

It's a duplex up above town that has an amazing view of downtown, the docks, the bridge, and the channel. It has a deck and plenty of windows with lots of sun all year round. The landlord is an extremely nice older gentleman who built the house himself and lives a few miles away. We have a garage the size of a boat builder's shop with 10 ft. ceilings and can fit 3 cars front to back with a woodstove and washer/dryer. We have a neighbor (who we haven't met yet) that's a younger (30's we're guessing) guy who seems to have similar hours to us, and the walls are really well insulated between the two sides. The landlord dropped the rent $100 for us and dropped the deposit down as well. Every time I step inside I get a little flutter in my chest. It's perfect for us. I'm in love....... with a house.

The scary thing for both Ms. R and I was the 1-year lease. Neither of us have signed anything like that before and we were both a little apprehensive. It's hard to be a twenty-something and commit to a whole year of anything, much less a house, but I feel like it's the right thing to do.


School starts again tomorrow and although I'm looking forward to it, I'm also a little scared. I will see DD first thing after I get off work and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I got him a christmas present. It's a really nice shirt that i ordered for him. I know he'll like it, and I can't really give it to anyone else, or take it back, so I'm at a loss. Maybe I'll just hold onto it for awhile.