Well, I think that went well...

[moominmuppet]

Patient-instructing was cancelled tonight, so I unexpectedly got to go home early and meet with Potential Housemate at 7pm instead of 9pm. I gave her the full "guide-book tour" of how our household functions, and the plusses and minuses, as well as general info about the neighborhood advantages and disadvantages, and a sort of general "what I'm like to live with". If nothing about that scared her off (and if it does, better now than later), then I think we could live together pretty comfortably, and create a good situation for both of us. She's coming out of an unsettled setup, and also has a dog. So since she doesn't have huge amounts to move, and we don't need to worry about leases and such, if she decides down the line that she wants to move again, it should be no harm, no foul for either of us (as I said to her, for me it's basically about having a couple months warning to adjust plans and such). And finding a place when you have a dog is always trickier, on her side, and finding people who are willing to cope with my pet craziness (and ideally benefit from it themselves in some way) are also somewhat hard to find. She's also a Preterm employee (automatic bonus points in my mind), and seems personality-wise like someone I could at least be comfortable around, and whose company I'd enjoy, although I can't say at this point whether the friendship would develop beyond that. Anyway, she's going to bring her dog up for a visit in the next few days, and I think we'll make a more definite decision once we've made sure the animals can all get along (the dog is coming from an environment with multiple other animals, though, so that's a point in favor). She seems to meet the criteria I'm looking for, though -- someone who seems relatively unbothered by my quirks (as I was saying to Becca earlier, I'm inflexible but tolerant as a housemate -- unlikely to substantially modify how I live, but pretty accepting of a wide variety of living habits as long as they don't endanger the animals or make my life exceptionally difficult), someone whose company I think I can enjoy on a day to day basis, someone I think I can trust on the basic levels you need to trust housemates. The house will be a little crazy for a while if she decides to move in, since she'd like to move soon. For a while it'd be me, Matt, her, and part-time Liv sharing the place. I think it's workable as long as she's able to be cool and flexible about things for that period, and the impression I got from her is that that's very likely. So we'll see where it goes over the rest of the week, and what her thoughts about it seem to be, but I'm feeling pretty optimistic at the moment.