Sittin’ on the couch of my new apartment having Earl Grey tea (milk and sugar!) with honeyed toast. Just got back from a local grocery store that would put Austin’s Central Market to shame. It’s smaller, and the width of the isles fits tighter than a pair of David Bowie’s underpants, but in spite of being piled on top of one another while looking for a favorite cheese or pasta (they sell SOBA!), they have an incredibly diverse mix of Mexican, Middle Eastern halal, Russian, Asian, and Jewish kosher foods. And it’s CHEAP. Huge, delicious loaf of rye bread for $1.99. A selection of oranges and tangerines for $2. Yogurt for $.99. A few things are actually more expensive (not much of an Italian market in this neighborhood, apparently), but I’m beginning to see this is the culture of New York: you find different places, all that carry an item or two or three that you like/need, and you plan your trips accordingly. New York is truly, a local consumer’s paradise.

Moving into my new apartment has been going almost stupendously well (knocks on wood). Yesterday I spent helping a friend move all her grandmother’s things into storage in exchange for good conversation and a full size mattress, plus box spring, plus frame. There’s no headboard, but that isn’t a necessity at this point in time. The point is: I have a BED. Not an air mattress. A BED. And for FREE. Well, except for transportation and food costs from my friend and roomie, MK, but those were minimal compared to what it would have cost to buy a new bed!

Landlord also came by the other day to take a look at the radiator, fiddled with them a bit and apparently fixed them. Though it’s been too warm lately for the radiators to really come on again, but he told me to keep an eye on mine and if I have any problems in the future, he’ll have a professional come out and look at them. AWESOME landlord, I say.

In the meantime, I’ve been painting my room a pale beautiful turquoise color, so my room has gone from a somewhat abused off-white, grey-blue, and blue-brown walls of loneliness, to the lovely feeling of floating in the middle of a cloud, especially with the pretty new white drafting table I just added to it (you can still see the original color over the radiator where I need to spackle over the holes left by several bookshelves still:

Oh, and I caved and bought a bike because there are times, I’ve realized, that the distance I need to go is too long for walking and too short to justify the $2.25 cost of taking the subway/bus. Plus, having emailed my old bike shop and asking them how much it typically costs to mail a bike, I realized that if I could just find a bike in NYC for about the cost of what it would have taken to box and ship my old bike (about $150), and then sell my old bike next time I’m visiting my parents, then it would be a fair trade. So I got this:

A bit plain, but it’s SOLID, and it was exactly $139, including the rack. Though I need my bike pump that I left behind.

Plus, it’s a road bike. I’ve owned nothing but mountain bikes in the past and have always been afraid of owning road bikes because the thin tires scare me. I used to do a lot of cutting through grass, mud, and gravel, and jumping sidewalks, and that just isn’t something you want to DO on a road bike. And while my new road bike doesn’t spin on a dime like my mountain bike did, and I have to watch going over bumps and potholes in the road, the trade-off is that it pedals SO. MUCH. EASIER. Biking a mountain bike up a major hill is like lifting weights, man. It’s no wonder my thighs and calves are in such good shape.  But a road bike flows smoothly up a hill with just the barest minimum of effort. I’ve worked up a good sweat biking up the hill from south side Windsor Terrace to north side (that’s a damn good hill!), but I didn’t feel like I was going to keel over and die like I have with similar type hills in Austin on my mountain bike.

So yeay! Bike!

Now, I’m off to do laundry and get some work done on “Butler, PA”. Haven’t been getting much work in these last two weeks, but it feels like I’m beginning to settle in. <3

Hmm. Any advice? I’m used to gas or electric heating, not steam/water.

[

mood

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sleepy

]

Originally published at rivkah.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m on the floor of my new apartment. No bed yet. Makeshift desk made from the remains of a dresser until I can find a suitable drafting table. And yet, it’s home. All my clothes are finally hung. My art supplies are in order. And tomorrow I head out for paint and curtain rods.

It’s always a bit strange being in a new apartment. If you shook my room, it’d rattle. But eventually, the blank spaces will fill and it won’t feel so insubstantial anymore.

Tomorrow, at least my air mattress and my new camera are supposed to arrive. At last: PICTURES.

Sleepy. I’m looking forward to finally being able to get to work tomorrow.

Originally published at Rivkah.com. You can comment here or there.

November 6th. Three days in New York, so far. Sunday, I move into my new apartment.

What a harrowing journey this last month was. And yet, what a blessed one. Never have I felt more the breath of G*d lingering over my shoulder. Yes, it was a lot of work getting here. Yes, is there still work yet to be done. But every bend and corner, every hill and valley, no matter how steep, has never been too sharp or too steep to get around again.

I’m in Windsor Terrace right now. A little cafe called The Oak and the Iris. Coffee is a dollar thirty-five, sixty cents cheaper than anywhere in Austin. The barista speaks broken English, and half the conversations around me I’d need a translator to interpret.  It’s a brisk, sunny 65 F out, and the coffee is delicious.

Six months ago, I made a decision that I would move to New York. I needed comics and I needed friends. This move from the college town I grew up in to one of the most populous, diverse cities on earth has helped me to realize that I need never be truly stuck. If I find myself in the mire, I can swim free again. I needn’t fear stagnation or despair.

So how appropriate to have my first set of keys in my pocket with the key chain given to me that says simply:  New York.

Welcome to the next stage. Welcome to the place I can never say I didn’t have the opportunities. Welcome to my new home.

This is going to be a fascinating journey, and I hope a few of you who’ve seen my posts wane over the course of the last few years will stick around to watch, be it on livejournal, twitter, facebook, flickr, or the face of my new site and blog (mucho tweaking to follow). But no matter what happens, this chica is going to finish another book and get published again. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Love and Kisses,
Rivkah.

Yellow Cake from Nick Cross on Vimeo.