Tom & Alissa

Well, all our stuff was in our apartment by Friday night, and by Saturday afternoon, we’d unpacked most of it. Eightish boxes of books still await a bookcase. Tom’s longsuffering father drove in and picked up all the stuff we can’t store but don’t want to get rid of (like, a couple of guitars, and our bikes, and some mementos) and drove them back out to New Jersey. Suddenly we realized how big the apartment really is, at least by our standards. And we were glad.

We had dinner on Friday night at Epoca Ristorante (delicious), and dinner on Saturday at 67 Burger (inexpensive and delicious). We don’t have a full-sized refrigerator yet, so the eating is a bit dicey, but soon! Soon we can buy perishables again.

I spent a little time on Saturday reading about our new neighborhood, which, as it turns out, is rather historically significant; it was a fort during the Revolutionary War (the monument is in the park), a very high-end place for the rich to live, an Irish shantytown, a dangerous place to live and now one of the finest and most ethnically diverse places to live in town. The church near us was significant in the abolitionist movement; the creation of Fort Greene Park was called for by none other than Walt Whitman (and designed in part by Frederick Olmstead, designer of Central Park and Prospect Park). And apparently the neighborhood is a designated historical district. Fascinating.

I miss Prospect Park, but I went for a run in Fort Greene Park this morning, which is much smaller but very cheery, with lots of dogs and their owners congregating in the middle. In fact, people seem downright friendly here, and we met several people in our building just by riding the elevators. I think we’re going to like it here.