Staying Put for Another Year

I received an email this week asking if we would like to renew our lease with the university and stay here in university accommodation until the end of the summer (or lease currently ends in June) or for another year, and I think we're going to stay.  We both like our place a lot.  It far exceeded my expectations.  It's relatively large, clean, fairly safe and in an excellent location (if you don't mind the people hanging around the shelter across the street).  

Living in a construction zone since we moved here in September has been difficult and frustrating.  Street work left boards on the road every night for cars to drive over loudly, skips were unloaded at 6:30am 7 days a week, cement saws buzz throughout the work day and loud singing or swearing construction workers tend to hang around our front door, sometimes sneaking in to use our hallway to access the second construction area in the back courtyard.  We even moved our bed into the living room at the back of the flat to be able to sleep at night.  Part of the problem is that the windows are very long and single glazed, so they let noise and the cold air in.

The furnishings leave much to be desired.  The couch and living room chairs are old and ugly.  The curtains are faded and were probably pretty ugly to begin with, not to mention they're uneven and too long for the windows (hard to believe with the windows being 7 feet high) so they drag across my desk whenever I open or close them.  We're severely lacking electrical outlets in the living room: our phone is currently under our bed because the phone jack is at one side of the room and the nearest power outlet is on the other.

In the next couple days our plan is to head to Ikea and get a couple things to personalize our home a bit.  We could really use some lamps.  Derek replaced the bulb in the living room so the light is decent in there, but the bedroom doesn't have enough light to read in once the sun's gone down around 4 or 4:30.  I love Ikea and am looking forward to the trip.  Being here feels like home, and soon hopefully we'll have it looking like home, too.