Is this progress??

Hold these pics in your head for a sec

On Friday morning, some trucks turned up in the green belt behind our apartment. This is an undeveloped strip of land between us and the quarry that had a lot of old oaks in it, and used to have longhorn cows. Recently we'd seen deer and coyotes in there, and lots of birds and squirrels, and it was the main reason our apartment was so lovely!

Exhibit A - our "backyard"

By the time we got home from work on Friday that had bulldozed more than half of the whole greenbelt into a huge pile of broken trees! It looked like a moonscape. They were back at it bright and early Saturday morning too. Thankfully they let up on the day of rest, but started again at 5AM (!!) on Monday morning. It is so disappointing to see the destruction, let alone hearing it at that time if the day.

Exhibit B...moonscape

And the digger! ggrrr

This might be loud and hard to see but you get the idea!

Anyhow, weird timing but the day it all started was the same day we received a letter from our complex reminding us that our lease is almost expired and asking what we wanted to do. First avenue we tried was an internal transfer to a larger apartment within the complex, but removed from the construction, however the head manager decided to get a bee in her bonnet and it was all too hard for her! (that's the condensed version of that one!)

To cut a long and stressful story short, we have friends who have a lovely apartment in a complex not far from ours, so we decided to take a look there and see if maybe we could take over their lease, which expires the same time as ours. The only read downside to that plan was that us and our stuff would be in limbo for a week while the place was cleaned and transferred. When we turned up at the complex to find out about that one, explaining that we are very picky about location (third floor, facing the right direction and looking over trees not carparks), we discovered that another apartment in that a same building we liked, 3rd floor, overlooking trees, was going to be available a month earlier! Bingo. The bonus is that it is on the end of the building so it has additional windows and only one shared wall (and hopefully a good amount of shade to combat the summer sun). The downside is that we haven't seen inside that particular one, but a similar one 3 doors away. However the complex have agreed to let us see it the minute it is vacated and if we don't like it we'll switch to taking over the other lease. Perfect all round! The new house is in a bigger complex, with 2 pools and a better gym, and is walking distance to the cinema, bookstores and other shops, as well as our favorite pub the flying saucer! Good for visitors :D

The new floorplan

Now we get to look forward to the excitement of a new place! Spring is a good time for a move. I feel a bit sorry for all our friends who will help us move but I'll be sure to repay them in edibles.

So in a strange way it is progress.