cheers

four years ago, right after reagan was born, thomas had a big internship in atlanta for 7 weeks. i scoured the internet for months leading up to this big adventure so that we could fine a suitable apartment for our family, including a screaming, poopy newborn and a crotchety, old dog. not many people are very excited about leasing an aparment for such a short amount of time to this somewhat lethal combination for a reasonable amount of money in downtown atlanta. after much effort and disappointment finally i happened upon a website called sublets dot com. this "apartment" was advertised as a two bedroom lake front basement apartment with a short commute to downtown. considering that we had zero other options, we signed a lease with our new "roomates", as they referred to themselves. that should have been our first indication of incredible and unparalled weirdness.

the lake view:

the high style family room/hippy commune with real wood burning stove.

our groovy bedroom full of beatles memorabillia. being a huge beatles fan, i thought this would be a plus. it was not. it's plain creepy sleeping in a room with 26 collectible plates and the faces of john, paul george and ringo staring at you from every poster, dish and surface. it was like living in an episode of "that 70s show".

the second bedroom(term used loosely) was actually a closet full of star wars and battlestar gallatica memorabillia with no ceiling and a giant water pipe running through it.

bobby, our roomate. part-time bag piper player. full-time hippy weirdo.

our very own in house band and "stage". "stage" referred to any part of the room where the instruments were. when we signed the lease they agreed to move all band equipment out of the way. we should have clarified. out of the way to our roomates was 1 foot closer to the wall than they already were.

the bar/kitchen where i mixed up reagan's bottles. it was like living in cheers.

it was an unbelievable experience. i got pretty good at throwing darts while making dinner. oftentimes thomas and i would have romantic evenings under the glow of the neon heineken lights. i got pretty good at making dinner in the first microwave ever made and i was nothing short of addicted to drinking shirley temples by the time we left. we probably owe them a bottle of grenadine.

what we learned:

1.we saved a whole gob of money by living there so it was worth it.

2. it kept us humble.

3. there is no such thing as a short commute in atlanta.

4. thomas and i both have a good sense of humor because this whole experience was hilarious to us.
5. any place we lived after this was an improvement. we could have lived in an old converted school bus or a teepee and been fine.