We have an apartment!

It's a beautiful three-bedroom place on the first floor of an older building in Hyde Park--hardwood floors, a sunroom, and more space than I can imagine what to do with. The pure potential of an entirely empty space and trying to visualize how all your stuff, which seems to have become an organic part of your current place, as if it had grown out of the walls, is going to fit.

The front bedroom has a lovely windowed nook that forms a corner of the building. When we visited the sun was streaming in and I immediately wanted to curl up in it with a book.

And unbelievably for this neighborhood, the building has a vast backyard, which I'm sure the dog is drooling at the prospect of.

It's about a 15-minute walk from the place to the center of the University of Chicago campus, and if I plan it right I can walk by four bookstores on my way in. There's a little mall around the corner with a supermarket, drugstore, (oddly) an Office Depot and even a faux-French cafe in the courtyard.

I'm starting to sound like a real estate agent.