where to compromise?

First of all, I'm not sure my spatial awareness is actually as bad as my parking would leave people to believe; though I did pull off an amazing concrete-enclosed very tight back-in on Saturday. But I do have trouble seeing how much space a queen sized bed takes up.  What is this? My hand-eye coordination is good, my reflexes are good, I know where and how hard to hit a hockey or soccer ball to get to a moving person. Isn't that spatial awareness? Any thoughts?

Secondly, finding an apartment to rent in Toronto in October isn't skipping-down-the-block easy. It's not damningly difficult like how London can be, when living in a box is tolerable if it's a stone's throw from a decent local pub and walking distance to the tube. But finding ourselves a place in Toronto has had it's challenges, mostly because of our own reluctance to take our friend's advice in getting a realtor (I don't think I've ever used the word realtor before and it's reminding me of the hilarity of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events - if you haven't seen this movie you should see it before doing anything else, but only if you appreciate morbid children's comedy a la Roald Dahl). 

Since we've managed to find great flats within our means in London through gumtree (London's craigslist, even though they also have craigslist), we thought that craigslist was the easiest solution to finding a place to satisfy these criteria:

• city central (between Dupont and King, Spadina and Dufferin)
• not an apartment building or condo but in an Old Toronto neighbourhood
• 1 bd or 1+den or 2bd (trying to be specific to help our search)
• outside space 
• a decently sized kitchen
• storage space for bicycles
• a parking spot  
• enough storage for equipment (sports and sound) and the additional outer layers needed in this city - down jackets, mittens, balaclavas, etc. 

We know what we're looking for, and we're not going to waste time looking at places that we're not truly interested in. However, we did manage to see a few dives early on that gave me lucid dreams of  growing old in our parents' basements, and waking up at 7 every morning either to a dog barking or the pitter patter of tiny feet depending on who's basement we were in. To be fair, we saw a few reasonable places as well but nothing that felt entirely livable. 

Luckily a friend of mine boldly gave my number to a realtor who showed us a few apartments of the more desirable variety today. Hooray! Some progress is being made. Now the decision is mostly bigger, better place that's a bit further North near Dupont, or smaller place that's smack dab in the centre of where we want to be College and Clinton. Hmmmmmm.

Realtor's advice - sleep on it. Also, who knew that people in real estate can be entirely normal and not scummy or fake. Lemony Snicket you really misled me. 

Sleep on it we shall, but hopefully we'll have an apartment by tomorrow for November 1st. A week into looking is feeling pretty good. Let the job search commence!