Killed da Wabbit

And just when we were planning to regroup and head into the next batch of listings, relaxing our housing requirements along another axis and casting a wider net, we got a call from a leasing company. I got the call at work, where there aren't individual desk phones and phones are sort of shared every few desks or so. I'm still trying to figure out the system. Someone a few desks over said I had a call, so stood there and spoke to a really friendly guy named Jamie.

It was about the house in Ngaio. It was the one for which we'd tag-team applied two days earlier. Joanne got the leasing application mailed to her as a word document. I printed it at work, found no available fax machines in the building and set out on foot down Victoria St. towards Bond to locate a print shop that could fax. I faxed it over for $2 NZD and went back to work. I'd jumped on this particular task as quickly as I could and turned the faxed application around within the hour that Joanne had received it from the agents.

When I got the call at work, it was Jamie and he wanted us to "come down and go over" the application. There was no mention of actually being able to rent the place, but this sounded new to me so I told Jamie I'd call Joanne and get right back to him for an afternoon appointment. I couldn't raise Joanne on her cell after three desperate tries, so I called him back and offered to come down to their offices immediately and be sole signatory on it. It was 10:30am at that point. We scheduled it for 11am and I started frantically packing up my stuff so I could go run after a cab to Ngaio.

Just as I was about to walk out the door, Joanne called me back (on yet another co-worker's phone which rang a few desks in the other direction) and she and the girls were right outside my building waiting for a bus to the Zoo. We scuttled the day's Zoo plan and met downstairs and jumped in a cab. A short cab ride to Kaiwharawhara St. (pronounced KUH-FADDA-FADDA) later we were signing our rental agreement for our front running house in Ngaio!

It's a small, three bedroom house at the top of a big hill (so it gets lots of wind and sits in a misty cloud for most of the winter) but it's on the correct side of the hill for afternoon sun and we can see the girls' school out the front windows. It's perfect.

It's a five minute walk down lush overgrown well-staired corridors between hillocks to get to school, and another few minutes to the train station. I can walk the girls to school and then keep going and get on the train for town. It's perfect.

It lacks a fridge and washing machine, so we'll have to investigate getting used models from somewhere. It's a little musty-smelling in the downstairs and no doubt gets a little dank during the rainy seasons. It's got a yard, but it's split among several terraced levels.

It may not be perfect, but it's perfect.

And it's ours.