Apartment hunting & sister's house remodeling

This weekend started off busy but ended pretty quietly!

I took Friday off from work to look at apartments with my girlfriend. (Some of the places we wanted to look at first aren't open on the weekend.) We didn't find anything we really liked but we did manage to rule 4 out of the 5 complexes we looked at.

Two were too expensive and two were disgustingly filthy. The one left was only so-so. Both of the expensive ones were nice, of course, with hardwood floors and other neat features but the whole point of renting for another year or two is to try to not spend a ton of money, pay down debts and save up to purchase a house in the not too distant future.

After we got back from looking at that first batch of apartments (and meeting some interesting people who were showing the apartments) we started to make a list of other places to look at over the next few weekends. Hopefully we'll find someplace that doesn't stink plus have mold growing in the bathroom or doesn't have a rusty mini grill in the front lawn with one leg broken off and clover growing out of it but isn't expensive to the point where it doesn't make sense to rent.

Saturday I spent the entire day helping my father and brother rip out a wall of a back porch room at my sister's house and then re-frame it. We are eventually putting in a sliding glass door to a porch that still has to be constructed. Unfortunately Sunday was going to be the day the giant, heavy sliding glass door and windows went in but it poured rain pretty much all day. I spent a little while helping my father reorganize materials and stuff in my sister's basement while waiting to see if it would clear up enough to do anything. The rain didn't show any signs of letting up so I went home and didn't do much of anything for the rest of the (rainy) day aside from hanging out with my girlfriend watching previously recorded TV on the DVR and re-listing stuff that didn't sell on my last batch of eBay auctions.

I was pretty wiped out from working on my sister's house on Saturday plus helping to move some heavy stuff around on Sunday (including a washer, piles of lumber, carpet, flooring, etc.) so it was good to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing. My legs are still sore, though... I'm so out of shape.

I asked my dad about having a (vegetable) garden at their house next year and it seemed like he thought it was a good idea. We talked briefly about how we thought it would be a neat thing to get the family together around the garden and I reminisced about picking and eating snow peas and green beans from the garden my family used to have when I was little. Hopefully that works out...