This green behemoth is the last place I lived in Lawrence, Kansas. The window(s) just above the porch roof? Mine. I had a fantastic 2 br/1bath apartment, with the smallest kitchen known to man. My cookie sheets wouldn't even fit into the oven, it was so tiny. If I had owned a microwave at the time, it would have had to sit in my spare room because there was absolutely no place for it in that kitchen. Literally, I'd say it was probably about 7-10 square feet. And that's probably being generous.

But that wasn't the only quirky thing about this apartment, oh no! As you might have guessed from the exterior, it was an old house, and as we all know, things tend to sag as they get older... My apartment ran the length of the entire house, and if you stood at either end of it and put down a spherical object of any kind, it would roll to a point roughly in the middle of the apartment.

And then there was the fact that all of the utilities were included, but communal. What that means is that although I had purchased a spiffy window air conditioner a few years prior to moving in, I was not allowed to use it. That would have shifted the electric bill rather a ways up, but everyone split the bills, so no go. The house did have a/c, but it was woefully inadequate. My "scrape-the-freezer-ice" trick was put into play again, but I also cleverly parked my self in the main hallway of the house on the hottest nights. There was a vent at either end of the hallway (there was but one in my rather large room, which happened to sit over the open entryway of the house, so was bordered on three sides by hot hot air), so I hung blankets to keep the cold air in, and slept between them on the floor.

Ah, the good ole days! I lived on a brick street, the photo of which I can't show you because Blogger apparently hates me just at the moment. But I had always wanted to live on a brick street, from the very first time that I visited Lawrence (thank you thank you thank you to my good friend Kevin Waddell for moving there and inviting me up--and introducing me to the guys that sold me my very first mountain bike too, btw!), and this house gave me that dream. And let me tell you...it's no picnic, especially in the little pickup that I was driving at the time. Or on that mountain bike. But it sure was pretty.
Ah! Now it works. See? I told you it was pretty.