Oh my god! I nearly forgot today is Talk Like A Pirate Day! So the storm didn't do much of anything up in Northern New Jersey. Just some wind, a sprinkling of rain, lots of leaves and twigs on the ground. A few downed branches, a tree here and there.

There's lots of good football tomorrow, which, if I'm not careful, could have me seeing nothing but the couch, kitchen and bathroom from ... about noon to about midnight:
� Bowling Green at Ohio State and Tennessee at Florida at noon
� Michigan State at Notre Dame at 2:30
� Colorado at Florida State and Georgia at Louisiana State at 3:30
� Arizona State at Iowa at 6 p.m.
� Miami at Boston College at 8 p.m.

My weekends are pretty filled between now and nearly Thanksgiving, with the exception of a few here and there:
� Tomorrow, Matt might come up from D.C. (if the roads are clear of ponds) for the aforementioned football
� Sept. 27 features my cousin's kid's first birthday party, to be followed by a trip to Philadelphia for the final home game at the Vet on the 28th
� Oct. 3 I board a flight to Seattle for West Coast Matt's bachelor party
� Oct. 10 I'm off to drive to Johnstown in anticipation of the Notre Dame-Pitt game at Heinz Field on the 11th
� Oct. 17 I also skip out on work to fly to Chicago to attend the USC-Notre Dame game in South Bend on the 18th
� Oct. 25th is open, and I think I'll stick around
� Nov. 1st might be open, might be used for moving, might be used for setting up the new apartment. It all depends, and that might be known by Monday night
� Nov. 8th holds a cousin's wedding
� Nov. 11th sees me flying off again to Seattle for Matt's wedding on the 15th
� Nov. 22 is open, with nothing even remotely possible, as far as I can see
� Nov. 27 is Thanksgiving.

Yikes.

The aforementioned apartment situation: There will be detailed numbers crunching and discussion on Sunday, with a final decision likely to be made by the time on Monday when we'd have to let the complex know. Since it's on my mind now, here are pros (basically good things about the new place) and cons (essentially good things about the old place, or where the old place tops the potential new one) to moving again. It's just a start:

PROS
� 24-hour security
� washer/dryer in apartment
� 24-hour maintenance
� better closet space
� 24-hour fitness center with free yoga classes
� pool
� better access to the bus to the City (it's on the corner, 100 feet from the front gate)
� central air conditioning
� parking garage with one free space (little to no shoveling/plowing concerns in winter, of which there would be two)
� no more repeated calls to the landlord for small things ... or big things
� wall-to-wall Berber carpeting (which means no WAY we hear 1 a.m. conversations in the bedroom below, or thundering herds walking upstairs)
� flexible deposit plan
� 16-month lease (which would, 1., get us off this moving-every-year cycle, and, 2., shift our end-of-lease date from pre-holiday college football season to nothing-happens-in-February-anyway month)

CONS
� must pay for all utilities (which means adding water and heat)
� less space
� possibly no balcony (but we've used ours sparingly so far)
� less space (from three bedrooms to two)
� higher rent
� costs of hiring movers
� possibly two weeks' overlap in rent

While it looks like the pros far outnumber the cons, the weight of each point must be considered. The fitness center, for one, is pretty big, considering that if I were to join a gym, I'd pay maybe $50/month and then have to motivate myself to go, which would be more of a pain than the money. Under "cons," the money is a big matter. We'll be paying more in rent (though with the two-months-free deal on the 16-month lease averaged out over the 16 months, it's not as big a boost as it seems) as well as more utilities for less space.

If the numbers work out, I think we might be going for it. I love the idea of a nice, clean, new complex with security and laundry and a gym and a pool, not to mention the long-term lease. Other than the three years after college when I lived at home, I've moved every year for the past 10 years. It'd be nice to break that. And in each of these last two apartments, I've often thought, "X more months to go" with each rent check, counting down to the next November. Now, with February 2005 more of an arbitrary date, I won't be thinking of it so easily -- probably because I won't be as anxious for it to arrive.

I think my biggest fear right now is that I've become too accustomed to our space. Not "my space," as in my space from Casey, but all the space we have at the moment. We've got a large living room where it barely feels like the dinner table is there, a couch and a loveseat, a coffee table and a big bookcase. All of those pieces won't fit into some of the living room/dining areas we saw yesterday. Depending on the apartment we take (balcony/no balcony; one-bedroom with loft/two bedroom), what we have now in three bedrooms will have to fit into those spaces. My desk will be trashed; it's time. But two full-sized beds, an armoire, two bureaus, two large bookcases (including the one currently in the living room) and a low IKEA cabinet will have to make their way into them. I'm not worried about the kitchen stuff; if Casey's sure it'll fit, I'm confident it will.

It may just come down to comfort and quality of life: Can we make this move and not stretch our budget too thin that it prevents us from enjoying ourselves?

Easily, if we use the second bed to turn tricks.