The hitlist.

Last night, I compiled all of the real estate links that Sarah and I had emailed to each other over the course of the past week into a massive Googledoc. In a drowsy 2 am phone conversation (Sarah had a rough time driving back to Chappaqua after the Mets game), we pored over the list and narrowed it from 45 apartments to 28. The goal was to cut it in half - but we got pretty close. And we were sleepy.

Because I am so good at doing anything but my actual job while I am at work, I spent all morning putting these 28 listings into a Google spreadsheet. This anal-retentive gem of a spreadsheet is not only broken into four columns (location, price, contact information, and interwebz link), it is also color-coded by neighborhood - green for Clinton Hill, grey for Williamsburg, yellow for Greenpoint, orange for Park Slope, and blue for Manhattan.*

So tonight we're meeting up for dinner at an internet cafe near Union Square (apparently those still exist in New York) to go down the hitlist, make phone calls, and schedule appointments. Hopefully we can schedule the bulk of our visits for this Friday and get most of our hardcore hunting done in one death-defying day of pain - because how cool would it be if we found a place this weekend? Maybe I'm being optimistic ... but if we totally destroy our bodies in one eight-hour apartment-hunting marathon, it could happen.

*My initial goal of color-coding the spreadsheet in a way that corresponded with the colors of the subway lines that ran through each respective neighborhood had to be partially compromised when I realized that the G runs through both Clinton Hill and Greenpoint (this added to the conflict I was already having about whether to ditch the MTA-inspired color scheme and make Greenpoint green because it has green in the name). The fact that there are a million subway lines that hit Park Slope (not to mention the fact that the two places we're looking in Manhattan are on completely different lines) added to the difficulty of this task. But, being the expert problem-solver that I am, I think I pulled it out in the end. And I think my spreadsheet is awesome.