i saw the sign

many of you may not know this, but i did not see my amazingly cute, spacious and quirky chicago apartment until the day i moved in. roommates and i decided to move in together months before i left for new orleans for the summer, but given how hard four-bedroom places are to find, we still had nothing when i left. i was left at the mercy of roommates' good taste and similarly empty bank accounts to find us the perfect pad. thankfully none of us had any exuberant demands, so i knew everything would work out in the end.

i was kept abreast of roommates' numerous strike-outs via picture messaging and poorly-lit point-and-shoot photos; as a result, nothing really looked that promising. to make matters worse, marty's lease ended during my stay in new orleans, and the process of finding a huge four bedroom steal was a matter of getting in the car, driving around uptown and pulling over here and there. a lease was signed and we were all moved in in a matter of days. meanwhile, i was still homeless in illinois.

one day in mid-july (our lease was meant to begin in august) i returned to my desk at work to a slew of texts and phone calls from all three roommates. i figured this meant good news. i got another call, which i answered, and heard frantic, out-of-breath cries of "we found it! it's amazing! we love it! IT HAS A ROOFTOP DECK!" and that was i all i needed to hear. 2 weeks later, after what felt like thousands of emails and muffled speaker-phone conference calls, i arrived and saw this:

our adorable little mailbox, with none other than a fleur de lis on it (ignore all the other random crap stuck to the wall and mailbox, please), the venerable symbol of the comeback city of the century, new orleans. this had to be an omen.