Choose Your Own Adventure: The Chicago Apartment Edition

I remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books where turning to page 43 would lead you down a very different path than page 61. There would be many times where I would pick one, but would read the page I didn't pick anyways. Just to see if I made the right choice, and how the outcome would have differed if I made a different choice.

Unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. The page you choose is the only page you get to read. Granted, not every page leads to an important and immediate impact to your life. This point in my life is not one of those cases. After all, why the hell would I start with this Choose Your Own Adventure crap if I was deciding between the pros and cons of eating a peanut butter sandwich versus a turkey sub for lunch.

When the page you decide to turn is where you plan on living next, we're talking about a whole different book. We (me and Jen) started the process of looking for apartments later than we would have liked, but after things were cleared up in my life to start breathing again, we started Operation Find An Apartment (OFAA for short - ok, we never called it an operation, you got me).

Last week, we looked at a nice place in a neighborhood called Ukranian Village that was home or soon to be home to many of Jen's friends and co-workers. Unfortunately, our interest went from 10 to -50 when we heard that cats were not allowed. Back to the apartment hunt.

Last Friday, I was able to lock up two apartment viewings for this week. Both of those opportunities faded like a fart in the wind when one of our appointments went from being moved from Sunday to Tuesday, only to be outright canceled when the guy who was going to show us the apartment called to tell us that the tenant decided to renew their lease. And the other apartment ended up being a piece of crap. Son of a...

Luckily, I was able to secure a viewing of a place for the same time slot as the canceled appointment. Finally, a decent place that allowed cats. A smaller place than many of the places we've looked at, but a place that interested us enough to start the application process.

All the while, one more apartment viewing scheduled for the week for a place in Logan Square. I filled the paper work on the other place out in the meantime, just making sure we had a go-to place in case this last viewing ended up being a dud. The problem was, it really wasn't a dud.

When seeing this Logan Square unit, it was as if I was able to picture our current items (computer desk, furniture, television) in this particular place. I gathered that while Jen liked the charm of the first place, the extra space that we get from this place (it's essentially a 3-bedroom apartment that's advertised as a two-bed) at a more affordable price was enough to make us collectively decide that we want this place.

The Choose Your Own Adventure part of the story comes into play a couple hours after we got the application for the Logan Square place. After waiting to hear from the Tuesday apartment on whether or not we would be able to move in June 1st (apparently, the tenant said she wasn't going to move out till July 1st in between the apartment showing and Wednesday), I got a call from the landlord of that place while waiting in my car as Jen ran into Walgreens. "Good news Brian, you are able to move in June 1."

Since I wanted an extra day to assess our options, especially since we're leaning towards Apartment 2, I hesitated to give a definite answer on when a good time would be to sign for Apartment 1. I mean, I think we've made our decision that we like the second place better, but we're still waiting on whether we are approved to sign for that place. Also, we're unclear on whether there is any competition for this place. In the event there was, I immediately put our application check in the mail, hoping that it will get there right away. I also sent our applications via email to Apartment 2's landlord, whose housing group consists of an Italian family business that dates back to the late 19th century.

While we don't want to risk losing a place for a place we might not even get, I think we are going to take that risk. We're turning to page 61, and soon we will find out the results of our choice. We may never have the chance to see page 43's story, but when it comes to making choices, you must always go with the choice that you can live with, the one that makes you the happiest. We can live with the choices that go awry but that we made with the best data available and with our short-term and long-term happiness in mind.

Let's hope that page 61 is a great page for the two of us.