I finally got Mike back from the clutches of a crazy work schedule and we’ve spent most of the weekend so far attached at the hip.  Unfortunately, instead of romantic dinners and long walks in the park, we’ve filled the time searching for a new place to live.

When we got back from anniversary-palooza that the owners of our building weren’t going to renew our lease so that they could put it back on the market.  On one hand, this totally sucks, because I really really really really really hate the thought of moving, and this time we won’t have the high-class movers who do all the work for you courtesy of Microsoft.  Lame.  On the bright side though, while we like our place, there are some things about our current place that are really annoying, like the fact that we have only have one closet in the entire freaking place.  You have no idea how inconvenient this is when you have guests coming over and you don’t want your vacuum cleaner hanging out in the middle of the living room.

So far, we’ve seen 4 places, and we actually liked 1 of them!  It’s a duplex where the owner lives in the top unit and we would have the bottom.  She travels a lot- like 8-9 months a year- so most of the time it would just be us.  The rent is really cheap- like almost $400 less a month then what we pay now, which would be awesome, and it has two full bedrooms, lots of storage, a walk-in closet, an amazing yard with a barbeque and deck, and plenty of room for a dining table.  The only downsides are that there is no garage- but our other favorite doesn’t have one either and Mike says he can deal with it- and it has an electric range.  I’m really bummed about the electric range, but the rest of the kitchen is roomy and has tons of counterspace.  And did I mention that it’s an amazing deal?

There was one other place that we liked, but it had a fairly dingy bathroom that didn’t jive with Mike’s mildew-phobia.  It did, however, have one feature that made me audibly sigh when I saw it:

Yeah, that’s a freaking Viking stove.  Dear god, all I want in life is a really amazing stove.  Ok, maybe that’s not ALL i want in life, but it would be freaking swell.  Oh well, one day…

Thankfully, we don’t have to make the decision all by ourselves, since our friend Ben is still in town this weekend.  Ben’s been giving his input, which is especially valuable because Mike and I are the least decisive people on the planet, and also found time for a yumtastic lunch at Paseo and a quick trip to the Science Fiction Museum to check out the Jim Henson exhibit (Which was awesome by the way.  I was expecting something lame like the Robot exhibit that preceded it, but this one had really great sketches and video and made me feel super nostalgic for my childhood, which was chock full of Muppet-related entertainment.  I highly recommend it.)

In the gift shop, I found this amazing Hello Kitty bag.  Too bad I’m too cheap to spend $60 on it- how badass is this?

The speakers even play music when you plug an mp3 player into it.  I would so rock this around town.

Unlike me, Ben is NOT a pussy, and bought this sweatshirt.  This is only one reason why I love Ben:

(Yeah, he’s wearing the infamous Amazon wolf shirt too.  If you haven’t heard about it, follow the link and read the reviews.)