"The apartment was found in disarray."

The Good:

Unexpectedly, my friend and colleague DJ surprised Ms. K and I with a wedding gift -- two wedding gifts! Orchestrating donations at work, she not only presented us with a lovely card signed by 18 of my colleagues, but two gift certificates -- one to the restaurant Blue Hill in Manhattan and the other to Char No. 4 in Brooklyn. Hey, maybe there's something to this whole getting married thing.

Furthermore, on the same day that we received the gifts, I unexpectedly won a free service probably valued at about $50. Huzzah. Time to take that luck to Vegas!

The Bad:

Apart from losing a couple of paychecks to IKEA, things have been generally good. The new apartment is great! No regrets! However my previous landlord is less that happy with me and is threatening to sue me in small claims court. This can probably be sorted out without going to court and we've been playing phone tag over the last week, but right now the red voice mail indicator is flashing on my work phone and I really don't want to pick it up and listen to the message because I know there's a 99% chance that it is him. Needless to say I've been procrastinating on this all morning and, well, need to just nut up and call him back and sort it all out. He says, "The apartment was found in disarray," and I need to explain to him that that was pretty much how we received it from the previous tenant.

The Not So Ugly:

A couple of days ago, after going over a week without cooking gas, I finally made my first meal in the apartment, which was a modest supper of chicken, sauteed crimini mushrooms, and green beans. Apologies for the iPhone quality photo. My camera is packed somewhere . . . . But hey, note the granite counter top at the top of the picture!