I’m sure Fox News was the first to report about a black bear checking for unlocked cars

I mean I just gave you two towns I thought would fit your bill… but anyways, western mass will likely be cheaper for a similar experience, but has worse access to water or cities (no one makes a day trip to Albany), fewer jobs and lower pay. Go to East Haddam, or Mansfield, or East Hampton, or Durham/Middlefield toward Wesleyan… there’s a bunch of places I can see appealing to you, but you’re not just going to waltz into a selection of 400 apartments on the market in those places.

Norwalk and Danbury don’t really seem to fit the vibe here, and apartments for $2k a month in Fairfield are going to be much more Motel 6 than Bellagio.

Groton’s biggest draws are the sub base and mystic, which are on opposite sides of town. The closer you get to the sub base, the cheaper and less nice things will be (but also, more likely to find apartments). The closer to mystic you get, the more expensive they will be. There’s places like Noank that are in between geographically and price wise, but again, finding apartments may be difficult. Mystic is not the most self-sufficient downtown for errands as a local (especially by foot), and if your rent budget is under $2k I’m not sure how much time you’ll spend downtown anyways. All the other things you mentioned are within a short drive. 10 miles in CT is not like 10 miles in the Boston area. I think the areas that check more of your boxes will be virtually impossible to find a rental. East Hampton (in my experience) is this bizarre little enclave of extremely friendly but tight-knit artistic locals, but I cannot possibly imagine they have more than a couple dozen rentals for the whole town. Places that are super renter friendly is sort of at odds with sparsely populated towns with wide open areas. Either the towns allow a decent amount of multi-family housing and there’s more business (congestion) to support that, or they don’t. Sort of hard to have your cake and eat it too.

Not sure you’ll find many rentals in Mystic, and not sure nice ones will be much below $2k for a 1 bedroom (though will likely be bigger). You’re probably better off toward Groton, which I’m pretty sure has more rentals and definitely be softer on your budget.

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer here, but I have worked in the restoration business. Nothing Servpro has said is wrong (aside from their timeline, which is a hair excessive, but not ridiculously so. They can't start work without an approved claim due to the way they run their business).

Under a homeowner's insurance policy you're entitled to "like kind and quality", meaning, if your floor goes under your cabinets, you're entitled to flooring that goes under your cabinets. If you have no transition strip between your kitchen floor and living room floor, you're entitled to have the living room floor replaced too. Basically, the work to repair your insurance claim can't devalue your house.

Doing a quick-and-easy flooring job is certainly possible, but if the subfloor starts rotting or delaminating and the cabinets shift, the story on the 6 o'clock news is just as likely to be "scumbag flooring contractor cons expectant couple with shoddy kitchen patch job." There's a right and wrong way to repair this damage - you can pan Servpro for being a little slow, but anyone who can fix this in less than 2 weeks will either be more expensive than insurance is willing to pay, or is going to do a lousy job that hurts the value of the house. There's no third option. This is a month of work plus the claim approval time to do it the right way.

Shoe fister

Isn’t the only NB toll on 95 at New Rochelle? 87 has a toll in Yonkers.

Driving into Manhattan shouldn’t be terrible on a Sunday. Queens and Brooklyn have been unbearable basically from 5AM to 8PM daily.

“I’m not even asking for a package… just give me a box, I’ll make the package myself!”

I can only read this in Jerry Seinfeld’s voice. “What is the deal with package stores?!?! They don’t even sell the empty boxes!!!”

If it’s dripping wet and covered in mold it’s bad

That’ll be $200 please

Dine outside at Gelston House if/while you still can. And if they’re open Monday. Their back porch should have some nice views this time of year.

I’m watching. I would think some places do, either because they are used to showing EPL/F1, or they’re a tiny hole in the wall where it’s just the owner and one bartender so changing schedule for one day is no biggie. Places are having trouble finding help for regular hours, not sure how easy it is to find bartenders who want to start opening the bar at 8 AM on a Sunday when they probably worked till 2 the night before.

That’s Lyman’s clubhouse. They don’t want people hanging out to watch the game.