Not even Babelfish can translate it

DS is in Warsaw, Poland.  I had a title that I tried to translate in Babelfish to Polish, but it would seem that it's not worth Babelfish's time to translate Polish...  He's there for another one of his science conferences.   Before you going thinking how lucky he is to travel places like that for free, you should know that other languages scare him and he's likely to spend the entire trip either listening to talks (which are all in English) or hiding out in his hotel room.  He was supposed to take my camera, but he forgot it.  Which is probably even more of an excuse to not leave his room...

Apparently they don't have internet there.  Or at least it's not mainstream enough for a hotel that hosts large conferences to have it.  He had to call the old fashioned way when he got there today.  I can't wait to see what that cost us.

So we've been in our new place for a week now.  We're on our second furniture arrangement already.  I originally thought I wanted my workspace in the living room so I could watch tv, but I quickly realized that meant there was no where else to go when I didn't want to be in the same room with DS and his video games.  Now the workstation is in the "dining room", which still lets me see the tv if I want, but it's just far enough away that he shouldn't be too distracting if the sound is low if I want to concentrate.

My initial reaction to this place was that it sucked.  The new layout has made it feel like we have more space, which is also greatly helped by the fact that I finally got the kitchen counters cleaned off yesterday.  For the most part, the boxes are all unpacked now.  So I'm thinking it's not quite so bad as I thought.  

Reasons I thought this place sucked:

1. No central air

2. What little a/c we have is a "window unit" installed in the wall on one end of the apartment.

3. That end is NOT the bedroom, so it's like 100 degrees in there.

4. I can't sleep when I'm that hot.

5. I'm told the little heater things along the floor (there's one for each room, and they each have their own thermostat) get hot enough to set things on fire if they come in contact with it....

6. The heater has the very helpful settings of low, medium and high.

7. There aren't overhead lights.

8. The light-switches control every single freakin outlet.

9. For some reason, it controls the bottom plug instead of the top one.

10. Between the closets, heater, balcony door and regular entry door, the bedroom has just enough room for the bed against the wall.  Only the bed...

11. The entryway smells very strongly of mold.

12. There are bugs and spiders all over the place (though thankfully much more rare in my actual apartment than in the building).

13. My garage isn't in my building, so I have five keys just for myself, not counting the garage opener.

14. The closets are awkward.

15. There isn't any place in the bathroom to store towels.

16. The balcony railing stops about 4-6 inches from the actual building.  I'm afraid my cats are going to jump/fall off.  It wouldn't be the first time...

16. Did I mention there's only one place I can put the bed without burning the place down?

Reasons it's not as sucky as I thought:

1. We've more or less figured out the optimal fan placement so we can live without a/c (I'm told that thing is hideously expensive).

2. After investing in some of those 1-to-3 plug things, everything can function without fear of someone flipping a light-switch and crashing my computer.

3. I managed to get things organized in my closets by making separate spaces consisting of boxes on their sides.  Almost like shelving, but not as sturdy.

4. Daily candle burnings and open windows are slowly removing the stank in the apartment.  (still no hope for the entryway)

5. I don't have to get up early just to drive DS to the bus stop anymore!

6. I live near real bike paths again.

7. I don't have to climb a hill from hell just to go somewhere, anywhere, on my bike.

Newly found suckiness:

1. The "dryer" that I now have to pay to use can't even get things dry with two full cycles... we might have to become laundromat people.  Luckily there's one just a block from here.

Now that I am a devoted Google reader reader (heh..), I've been getting a lot of updates from Apartment Therapy.  I'm happy to say that they were right about their cat litter mix, and it is absolutely, completely amazing.  My litter box has never been so easy to clean, or smelled so nice.  Best of all, it's biodegradable and non-toxic, something I definitely couldn't say about my old litter.  Also, my new litter box is the shit!  You just roll it one way, roll it back, and you're clean, no scooping required!  I love it so much I even took the time to post a review on PetSmart.com, where I found it.  I never do that.

hmm.. there was more too, but I feel like I've been typing forever and it's about time I went to bed.  Extra effort has to be made to get me in bed at a decent hour when DS isn't around to tell me it's bed time at 9:30.