Move: To Madison, WI (Day 10)

Settled into the sublet today. After 10 days of AirBnB, it’s nice to have one’s own kitchen and bathroom. It’s not-so-nice to sleep on the floor. We’ll see how my back feels, and determine from there whether an air mattress is necessary.

If you’ve never moved into your own apartment or house before, be prepared to buy at least the following things:

Shower curtain + rings

Soap

Toilet paper

Bathmat

Floor lamps + light bulbs

The sublet doesn’t have ceiling-mounted lights, making floor lamps a necessity.

Since this sublet has coin-operated laundry, I need to stop by a bank or credit union, and exchange bills for quarters. May also buy a sturdier laundry basket.

If you’ve lived your entire life near I-10, note that places north may not have central air conditioning. Especially where the winters are more brutal than the summers. In the case of the sublet, there is a wall-mounted unit in the living room, but not in the bedroom. Fortunately, summer nights in Madison seem to have lows in the 60s. Compare that to lows as high as 78 or 79 degrees in Houston. How humid Madison feels compared to Houston remains thus far not-yet-experienced.

On Friday, I went on a tour of Sector 67. Sector 67 is one the local maker-spaces in Madison. If you’re in town, you should definitely check them out. The size of their facility, and the amount and variety of their machinery, would compete very well in the Houston area.

This is just the lobby. 

Click to see a larger version of the photo.

On Saturday, I attended a show by the Monkey Business Institute, at the east Madison location of the Glass Nickel Pizza company. MBI is an improv-comedy troupe, which may or may not be your cup of tea. MBI offers three levels of shows. I saw the Adult show, versus All-Ages or one of Imprompt2, the Merge, and so forth (they rotate which will be the third offering).

I laughed, sometimes hard, which is all you need to know about how funny they are.

Parking was free at both Sector 67 and Glass Nickel Pizza.

On Sunday, Aldi and Target reminded would-be shoppers that it was Easter, and that people looking for food or general merchandise had better go to Pick ‘n Save and Wal-Mart, respectively. Good thing those last two were open; I might have had to find a church at which to confess the sin of trying to buy food and a shower curtain on Easter.

As for other community events, there are at least two places in Madison offering Krav Maga lessons:

Urban Krav Maga Madison
FightPrime Training Center

There are also two local community theaters:

Madison Theatre Guild
Verona Area Community Theatre

Now, for real estate analysis and empirical research:

Before buying a house, it may be a good idea to drive to the neighborhood where the house is located, and answer the following questions:

1) Do you feel safe parking your car here, and walking away?

2) Do you feel safe walking around the neighborhood?

3) What do you hear or see that you like or don’t like?

Remember that you’re not buying just a house, but also a neighborhood.

I’ve walked around two neighborhoods so far, and found that each has their pros and cons. The first is closer to work than the second. The first also has a townhouse that the realtor showed me, and the townhouse looked very nice.

However, the first neighborhood felt sterile. If you’ve read Jane Jacobs, then you will know what I mean when I write that this neighborhood may suffer the suburban version of the “great blight of dullness.” This, despite the neighborhood having a diversity in residential building types: single-family houses, townhouses, and apartments. However, the buildings have not aged enough to show whether they will age well or not. This is despite the fact that the townhouse that the realtor showed me was built in the 1980s. It appears to be the newest building in the immediate vicinity.

The second neighborhood is more established, with more people outside. The housing is either single-family or duplexes, and there is an elementary school within the neighborhood. It’s not all residential. The only problem that I experienced right in the neighborhood was traffic noise. A nearby US Highway is indeed very close. You could see and hear cars and trucks whizzing by. Once I heard a motorcycle engine rev, I knew this neighborhood wasn’t going to work out. Were it not for the noise, this second neighborhood would be worth the commute.

Overall, neither neighborhood is significantly better than the one in which the sublet is located. As I type, the window is open, and all I can hear is the drone of a distant air conditioner, if that is what it is. As far as noise goes, it’s steady and subtle. Only one airplane has passed over this neighborhood, since I opened the windows this afternoon.