11/22/04 Rich and I Sign Lease, Walk Brooklyn; Beer at Surreal Cafe; Apartment Room Selection via Deck of Cards; Telling Peter in London:

Rich and I headed to Brighton Beach, or perhaps Sheepshead Bay... we're not really sure... to officially hand our signed lease to our future landlords.

We admired the electric signs posted at DeKalb avenue, a strange 6-track subway station that allows for one local, one express, and one super-express that doesn't even stop at the station, in each direction. Signs are posted that light up which kind of train is approaching. It can tell within about a minute of the train's approach. We got excited when the B-Brighton Express light lit up, as that was the train we needed.

B-Brighton Express, Q-Brighton Local, D-West End, and N/R-4th Avenue are the four different train lines that can arrive on the same track in this station.

We took the B to Sheepshead Bay, the second to last stop. We walked about half a block, and arrived at our landlord's office. It took only 20 minutes, which we thought was surprisingly fast.

The elevated line runs over a little bit of empty land as it heads for a bridge over the Belt Parkway and on to Coney Island.

The office.

After we handed in the signed lease, we went back to Sheepshead Bay and waited for a Manhattan-bound train. We were Park-Slope bound.

Rich offered to buy me a beer in celebration of our new and second lease together.

I'm still taking random shots of the side-streets in the neighborhood, still in awe of the beauty.

At one point, I happen to notice an American flag disappearing into a building via the nearest window. A clever way to do it, I guess.

Surreal Cafe, just one block from the new apartment, has a selection of micro-brewed beers. We tried these two.

This evening was very stressful as "Monday Night at Erin's" goes. First of all, Monday Night at Erin's is actually at Aaron and Mike's now that Erin lives on 192nd street. Second of all, the excitement was not from Road Rules vs. Real World, but from the real world topic of who would get which bedroom in the new apartment. There are three bedrooms, and the new tenants are Rich, my brother Peter, and I. Who would get the corner bedroom, with light spilling in from two sides? Who would get the master bedroom with it's own exit, balcony, small full bathroom, and walk-in closet? Who would get the infamous "third bedroom" which was smaller than the other two and only had a window on one wall? The three of us had negotiated for a few days on the matter, without coming up with even the basis for a logical decision making process that everyone could agree upon. Should it be based on the amount of furniture one already possess? Then Rich would most likely avoid the "third bedroom." Should it be based on the amount of projected usage an individual were to get out of the apartment? Then Rich would most likely end up in the "third bedroom." Should it be based on age, seniority, the amount of work that went into finding the place? Or perhaps money? Many people suggested that we assign different rents to the different rooms... a logical move that does not reward or punish based on pre-existing conditions... except that there was one problem... although we all would take the "third bedroom" in exchange for a reduced rent, none of the three of us were willing to pay more than 1/3 of the total rent. Nobody was willing to pay "extra" for the master or corner bedrooms. So the money idea didn't work out either.

Now, some might say that the stakes were very high. This decision may greatly affect our lives for the next two years. On the other hand, others might say that the stakes are very low. Our offices were to be downstairs near the living and dining room areas, and so none of us anticipated spending much awake time in our rooms, not to mention that the smallest bedroom was a luxurious 8.5 feet by 12.5 feet compared to many Brooklyn apartment bedrooms that many of my friends live in, and that the largest room was 10.5 feet by 13.5 feet. There was certainly a difference, especially when considering the balcony or the corner or the bathroom, but it was not earth-shattering. And I had seen a few scary "third bedrooms" in the other apartments I looked at, all of which made this "third bedroom" seem downright luxurious. But... nobody really wanted it.

So, what was the fair and judicious method we came up with for deciding this problem?

A deck of playing cards. We each picked a card to see who would pick first in the actual bedroom-decision-pick. Richard won that round, and got to pick one from thirteen face-down cards, including one ace, one king, and one of everything else down to two. He picked a six. Peter's turn came next, but because he was in England, George picked cards as his proxy. George picked an eight. Finally my turn came, and I picked a queen. And so, I had the first pick of a bedroom, followed by Peter, and finally Rich, who was pretty much doomed to "third bedroom" existence for the next two years. [He will survive most of it by having his gaffing career take off so quickly, that he will spend less than 4 weeks of the first 6 months of the lease living in his room! Perhaps his cards have come together quite nicely after all.]

Now, Peter didn't know the outcome yet. He was in England. It was almost 2 am there when I began to upload the video of the selection process to him so that he could watch it live-to-tape. He demanded that I not give him any clues over the instant-messager as to the outcome until after he saw the video footage that I took with my digital still camera.

That footage exists as two files... one for the pre-selection, which is found by clicking here.

The other file contains the actual selection, which is found by clicking here.

As I uploaded the video clip, everyone huddled around, and I took some shots back over my head.

It was kind of exciting like being in a game show. I seldom with anything by luck or chance, so I was somewhat excited, but I did feel kind of bad for Richard who pulled the lowest card. I would have offered him my first-round pick if I really thought that in the end Richard would be unable to enjoy his time in the new apartment because of the "third bedroom," but I had the feeling that the room would fit him just fine. I also had the feeling that Natalie might move in within the next year, and that we would have a lot more trouble fitting into the third bedroom than the master, which I eventually selected, leaving the corner bedroom for Peter to pick.

Here, Rachel shows me the car headlight that she and Mike seem to have found somewhere. On a road. In the city.

We watched our TV and chatted for a while.

And then we sang Happy Birthday to Erin.

Mike and I made a candle run to the market a few hours before, and couldn't find any 2's or 4's. So we got some outlandish numbers instead.

I found this on Mike's computer! It was hysterical. Here I am with Aaron, Mike and Erin, and I think one of Mike's friends put this together for him after he failed a freshman graduating pre-requisite class for the second time late in his senior year, and required him to take the class a third time during the summer session immediately following this graduation. Ha! I'm not sure why he was allowed to wear the cap and gown! But he passed the freshman social-studies course over the summer, being forced to actually apply his brilliance to it the third time around, and validated worn cap and gown.