Finding the ideal apartment and the ideal workplace

[robotech_master]

So, I imagine everybody is wondering how my first day at work went. And I'll tell you. But first, I'm going to drop back in time to Wednesday, when I went in to check out and immediately fell in love with my potential new apartment.

It was a really chilly day, and I spent much of the morning hoping it would get just a few degrees warmer before I set out. But eventually I bundled up in my heavy coat and bicycled up to the mall. I stopped at a bike store to see if they had any solution for keeping my pants leg out of my bike's front derailleur—I misplaced the shaped clock spring segment my Dad had made me for that purpose, and it always slid off the pants leg onto my ankle anyway. They didn't, really; they suggested I could add a sprocket guard, but they didn't have any in stock and the only one on their web site that would fit my bike was a bit expensive.

After that, I stopped at Yat's, a terriffic Thai-influenced Cajun restaurant nearby, and had some of their drunken chicken for lunch. (Fantastic stuff.) Then I caught the bus into town. (Interestingly, while waiting for the city bus I learned that there is a secondary Greenwood bus line that's open to everyone. But it seems to serve exactly those parts of Greenwood where my brother Alex doesn't live! It's like it makes a wide circle around us, and it would be almost as far to go to catch it as it would be to catch the main bus into Indianapolis!)

I arrived at the building with the property management company an hour early, I thought, at 1 p.m. Only it turned out when I got there I was right on time; my appointment was an hour earlier than I remembered! The landlady was quite nice. When I described what I was looking for, she said, "Oh, I have just the thing. You're not going to want to let this get away. If  you don't want it, I'll take it myself!"

And then she drove me a few blocks over to the Windsor apartments and showed me…just the thing. Apart from being one bedroom instead of two, it couldn't have been any more exactly what I was looking for. I took lots of photos. Among its positive points:

It's only a mile and a half away from where I'm working.

It's on the first floor, with only half a flight of steps up from the ground.

It's right next to the rear entrance—first door up the steps when I come in, and no neighbors on the living-room side. Which also means more windows. And it's a corner apartment in an H-shaped building, which means even more windows, with great views outside.

It has a gorgeous wood parquet floor, and tile in the bathroom. Not a single carpet anywhere in the apartment to get grungier year by year.

It has a cute little vintage electric stove, a brand new refrigerator, and a vintage curio shelf the landlady referred to as a "pie rack." I guess it's what restaurants would put their pies of the day in for customers to see and select from.

The bathroom has antique tub/shower and sink fixtures (though with a modern head on the shower), a medicine cabinet, and a public-restroom-style toilet that doesn't have a tank to need cleaning inside of.

It has keyed entry for keeping non-residents out unless invited, and a vintage working intercom handset for buzzing people in. There's even a little "milk shelf" that used to be used for accepting deliveries without opening the door, though it's been sealed shut.

It has a big closet in the living room, a linen closet in the hallway, and another closet in the bedroom.

They pay for water, heat, and trash service. I have to pick up electricity, Internet, cable TV if I want it. Which really isn't bad. One of the biggest parts of my power bill in the winter in my old place was the electric heat. I'm going to get heat for free! I'm told that radiators may make noise, and that it may get too hot because I don't have any say over when the heat turns on or off. But I can open a window if I have to. (After all, it's not like I'm paying for the heat!)

It's right on at least two bus routes, one of which runs right straight down to right next to where I work. So if I don't feel like biking, I can still be there in just a few minutes.

There's a laundry room in the basement.

Rent is $605/mo, which is within my price range, and I can have my cats.

So anyway, I filled out my application, paid the $25 application fee, and promised the landlady I would get a copy of a letter stating when I started work and my salary sent to her. She said she would see if they would allow me to get it without needing a co-signer, just a deposit equal to one month of rent, depending on how my credit rating came back. (Not holding my breath.) Not sure whether I'd want to go for that; an extra $605 would be a good chunk of the money I have right now. We'll see.

After that, I bicycled several miles to the west to look at an apartment called Mansion Row out on Cold Spring Road. I was already pretty sure I didn't want to rent it, but I figured I owed it to myself to look at at least one other apartment. It was on the second floor of an old house, and was nearly as nice as the one I'd found. But it was too expensive and, as the bike ride illustrated, too far away from work for me to want to ride in every day. I went ahead and caught the next bus home.

Fingers crossed everything goes all right with that apartment. It's everything I could possibly want!

Anyway, yesterday, I got up early, dressed for work, and left at about 7. I didn't have to be at work 'til 9:30, but the 7:30 bus is the last bus of the morning that stops a couple of miles closer to where I live than usual, and as cold as it was that morning I wanted to minimize my biking. I'm fortunate in that the building where I work downtown is just a block away from the closest bus stops coming and going, so I was able to find it in plenty of time.

I arrived about an hour and fifteen minutes early, so I walked around a little. Took a look at the square, hit a few Ingress portals, and so on. Looked for a Panera to try to get some coffee and a bagel or something, but when I followed Yelp to where one should be, there was just a pita sandwich shop there. I guess it closed. But I noticed around the corner a little doughnut shop called "Square Doughnuts," so I went and checked it out. And lo and behold, it was exactly what it said on the sign: they had square doughnuts. So I had a couple, and a cup of coffee.

Then proceeded to spill the coffee all over the floor when I got up to get a napkin, forgetting that I'd laid my phone on the table and it was still wired to the backup battery in my pocket. Whoops! Luckily none of the coffee actually landed on me. It was still embarrassing, though. Luckily they got me another cup.

The doughnuts were good. I'd never had a peanut butter and jelly doughnut before, but I think I probably will again sometime soon.

When 9:30 came around, I went down to the Century Building—a gorgeous old red brick building southeast of Indy's historic circle—and went up to the 7th floor to sign in. Then they took me down to the 5th floor and assigned me a cubicle. I met my co-workers, was sent some documents and articles to read, and was assigned a computer to use for writing and research. They also got me a security badge, though it didn't work yet. It's supposed to work today. Hopefully it will, because I need it to get to the place where I'm supposed to lock up my bike.

They also showed me the amenities, which included an incredibly well-stocked breakroom with a whole wall of free snack food and a cooler with free drinks. There were automatic coffee machines (with tubes full of coffee beans sticking out the top) that could make anything from a regular coffee to hot cocoa. And there was lots of free food, as people brought in leftover breakfast sandwiches from the pita place, or even boxes of pizza.

The department I'm working for used to be a startup company called iGoDigital, until it was bought by Exact Target. Their product is "guided selling" tools. If you've ever used one of those wizards on a web site that asks you questions to narrow down the choices of product to ones that are a best fit for you, then you've used a guided selling tool. I'm going to be writing the documentation for the program that businesses use to create such tools for their web sites.

I had an hour-long meeting with the people working on the program, and they demonstrated it to me, and I wrote a page or so worth of rough draft based on the meeting before heading home. They emailed me a link to a recording of the computer screen portion of the meeting where they demonstrated it; I'll be reviewing that today and continuing to write.

They told me I could work from home if I wanted, and it's tempting, but I know myself too well. For now, I need the structure of the office environment to get things done; it will also be handier to have the people around to ask questions in person. Plus, it's just such a neat place to work I want to be there as often as I can.

Anyway, it's just about time for me to head out. I've decided I want to start my work days at 8:30, at least for now, since that cuts down the distance I have to bike for the bus each way. Maybe once I get moved into my apartment, or decide to work from home or somewhere closer like the library, that will change.