I didn’t really want to move out of my downtown Minneapolis apartment, but I had little choice. The management was getting worse by the day, I had no where to park my car that wasn’t threatened by towing (though I didn’t have to take the car, either, but life is better with a car), and most of my neighbors were creeps. I liked that I could walk to Target, however. I liked that I could meet Kristi for Happy Hour at the 8th Street Grille then stumble home. I liked the bus ride to work. I liked all of the SPACE of that large one bedroom apartment. I was happy there… but the surrounding environment worried me.

Of course, now I live in a teeny-tiny studio apartment on the southeastern edge of Uptown. Aside from the size and my insane cat (who might not have enough room to grow) it’s been great. I love my screened-in porch that Ellipses and I can enjoy together. I love my bathroom; it’s so much nicer than the bathroom in the downtown apartment. I love my new neighborhood: it’s quiet and residential and I don’t have to worry about getting run over by rush-hour drivers. I have my own parking spot, where I won’t get towed for parking illegally and I won’t have to worry about moving for snow emergencies. My house-mates are all girls and even though I haven’t met most of them, I’m 99% sure that they aren’t creeps. So, overall: living on Bryant Avenue is nicer than living on an exit for 394.

There is another bonus: Nature in the City. I am visited by neighborhood kitties, loads of squirrels and a variety of little, squeeky birds. I was thrilled on Tuesday night, when a family of three raccoons wandered into my backyard and hung out in my tree. And last night I was awestruck as I figured out what my neighborhood Cardinals were wildly discussing: an owl had stopped to rest. (I think it was a Boreal Owl.) I don’t think I’ve seen a live, not-in-a-zoo owl before.

I barely had any sort of nature when I lived downtown (in the year and three months that I lived there, I had a couple visits from Roundface and a couple mice and Reggie the Toad).