Today was the final day of packing the townhouse at Greenleaf Meadows in Greece where Josh, Amber, Andy and I have lived for more than a year. It was a two bedroom, one bath townhouse – not the end unit but next to the end. Josh and I had moved in in late 1998, I believe. At the time it was just two of us and there was plenty of space. It was a great apartment in its day. The two bedrooms and the bath were on the second floor. On the first floor was a tiny kitchen just as you entered from the front door and there was a very spacious living room where everything in the apartment happened. Out back was a small patio. There was a full basement as well with two rooms. One we used for storage and the other we set up as the “computer room” with several computers set up all of the time. The apartment was seriously wired for the time. No one had anything like it back then.
Andy and I were working together and I had lost my driver’s license (too many speeding tickets) and he was driving me to work a lot (Eric was driving me around the rest of the time) so after his roommates, snmnmnm, gave up their apartment on Cypress Street in Rochester he decided that he would move up with us to save on costs. It worked out well because we were able to share a room easily as we had plenty of space and we worked opposite overnight shifts at the same place.
A while after we had been living in the apartment Amber, who worked with Josh at the car dealership, moved in. So we had four of us in the two bedroom place. Had there been two baths it wouldn’t have been so cramped. Having grown up in a house with my own bathroom since I was little this was a bit much for me. It was here that I learned the importance of having more bathrooms that it seems like you would need.
Yesterday and today we were busily packing everything in the apartment. The apartment was empty tonight with the moving truck sitting in the parking lot with all of my worldly possessions on it. Tomorrow begins the adventure but tonight is the “empty apartment party”. Josh and Amber had decided to take a one bedroom apartment directly next door to the townhouse and had been moving in all week as there was some overlap in their leases. So they were already moved out and living over there in the new place. Andy had no particular plans of where he was going but he wasn’t going to keep the townhouse by himself and he hardly owned anything other than his clothes. He didn’t even have a car at this point since he had been driving me around in my white 1992 Buick Regal GS (with the moon roof option and red plush interior) for the past year. We had decided to save money and just share the car.
In the empty apartment with nothing but folding chairs we threw our farewell to Rochester party – or at least my farewell to Rochester party. We had a pretty good turn out although now I can’t remember who all was there. Andy, Josh, Amber, Eric, Amanda, Dana, myself and definitely several more people were there although everything is very fuzzy as I write this almost eight years later. I remember very clearly that Amanda and Dana were there (Amanda had come with Dana) because it was the night that Eric and Amanda first met (they were married some years ago now.)
The party went late into the night and almost everyone slept over crashing on the bare floors. It was a brisk night but not so cold that people weren’t out on the back patio smoking much of the night. I remember people going in and out the back door a lot back when people actually still smoked cigarettes.
One thing that I do remember was Andy and I sneaking over to Josh’s new bedroom window with a can of “spray on window ice” that makes windows look like winter and we made a smiley face on his bedroom window that remained for as long as he lived in that apartment.