New digs

Our first few years in town, we lived in quite a few places - first a year in a dumpy apartment in an out-of-the-way house on the edge of campus, nine months pet/housesitting for a teacher on sabbatical, and a swanky apartment in one of the newest buildings on campus (complete with direct access to the school's network rather than the 14.4k modem we'd been using, and if you know our surfing habits, that's the equivalent of trying to shove an inflated beach ball into a Coke bottle). The reasoning for all this was because we weren't married yet and they didn't want us corrupting the morals of their students by living in sin in their very midst. Never mind that we were engaged within months of Mrs. Dave (then just Mr. Dave's fiancée) starting here...the unmitigated HORROR of not actually being married was too much to bear (for them, not for Mrs. Dave).

Once we officially tied the knot, however, we were rewarded with what can only be described as quite possibly the cushiest dorm position on campus - a ridiculously low student-to-teacher ratio. There are other dorms here that have dozens of kids with only two teachers, so we got lucky. Temporarily, anyway.

This fall we were informed that they were going to be doing some construction on the dorm, required by law, to put a second egress other than the rickety fire escape we currently have. In the process, they figured they'd do a long-overdue renovation on the place anyway, and get rid of one of the apartments to convert it into more student space. So our dorm will effectively be doubling in population and losing a teacher's apartment. Since we live on the second floor and will be staying, they're moving us downstairs...but since they're renovating the whole building, they're moving us out of the building entirely during the period of said renovation, and into a house.

A house.

We get OUR OWN HOUSE.

We went to visit it yesterday, and now I know why they call it "new digs" - because while the parking area was plowed out, the front walkway had not been dug out, and we were confronted with four-foot snow drifts to slog through. Really no way around it, and we almost fell over a couple of times because of the uneven ground between the parking area and the side door, but we eventually made it inside (and proceeded to track snow and crap all over the place. Hey, it's not our place yet).

Now, it's hardly a mansion, mind you, but it's more room than we've ever had before. Mud room, kitchen, dining room, living room, bonus room and half-bath on the first floor, and two bedrooms and a full bath on the second floor. It's a little dingy, needs a paint job, and has some truly horrifying paint color and shelving selections, but the kitchen is roomy, and no, those are rice kernels in the lazy susan, not an overgrown colony of ants which have now gone to meet their maker. We move in in June...just in time for barbecue season, and there's even a side deck to house the grill. C'mon down and party, people.