I am a creature of comforts

I really hate looking for a new place to live. You'd think I'd be used to it, after a string of undergraduate flops and piss-poor roommates followed by moving back and forth to London--twice. A year and a half ago I found a space I liked and could finally see myself sticking around, growing in, mossing over in an adequate set of rooms in the Whittier neighborhood of South Minneapolis. The rent is cheap, the punks moved out long ago, and the location is unbeatable. Best buds have been within a block or two, so have dates and grocery stores and bars and bus lines.

But I have to move--my landlords are doing a condo conversion, which basically is a lipstick-on-a-pig process of putting in some new cupboards and sanding down the floors and taking a $600 a month one bedroom and turning it into a $129,000 debt-acruer.

I'll be given the option to buy it but I have a hunch the condo-craze is coming to an end here in Minneapolis.

So instead I'm hitting the streets. This depresses me to no end. My psyche is a delicate jelly that needs proper padding, and I can't seem to get much else done in my life. Yesterday was a rough one--construction work which had gone on all weekend (yes, even Sunday morning. Buzzsaw. Ten am.) woke me up again on cue, and I took to the soggy streets to look at gloomy apartments overlooking dumpsters, with views of construction sites reminding me how downtrodden my neighborhood can be on a gloomy too-warm January day.

I'm like a hermit crab. Sad, but I am. I'm staring out from my shell and I know I've outgrown it. Across the pebbly expanse is another shell. I know I have to make a run for it. From here, it looks like my ass will fit in it. But who can be sure? And then there is the mad dash I'm going to have to make across the pebbly expanse to my new home. Dreading it.

trot spots in the skyways; joshua gardner on wikipedia; i've always wanted to live here; minnesota conservative bloggers are like eight year olds; earl of scooby on myspace