Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

I'm still settling in to my new apartment.

Short version: LOVING IT!

Slightly longer version: Though I really, really hate the bathroom (toilet/shower in a tiny room, sink/mirror/counter outside of it), all the many pluses more than make up for it. The apartment complex's neighbor is an elementary school, which seems to mean the complex is a great place for families to live. Every neighbor in the building has multiple children, but that seems to mean everyone goes to bed early. I can't believe the size of families people are packing into apartments! My patio faces another building, so there are two apartments/patios facing mine. One of the apartments has four kids, the other seems to have five. Age ranges from baby to maybe five/six years old. During the day/afternoon/evening, they do play outside and are sometimes loud, but it's still quieter than the last couple places I lived.

I was worried I wouldn't have enough space for everything, but the more I organize stuff, the more I find I have enough room. I still think I own WAY WAY WAY too much stuff though. I had ~24 medium sized cardboard boxes, four very large plastic tubs, five luggage-sized duffle bags, and a number of large black garbage bags full of bedding/blankets/etc. And furniture, of course. How does one gather all this stuff? I have 25 butter knives!

I'd like to know who in the world thought off-white carpeting was a good idea for apartments. Every apartment I lived in with carpeting has this same beige-ish color carpet. I live in fear of dropping something on it. I know my cat will throw up on it at some point. I know hardwood floors aren't as warm, but at least I don't have to worry about messing them up, and they're a lot easier to keep clean.

TV: I've been binge watching Major Crimes. I love the characters in it so much! I'm almost through season three, and season five is currently airing now. I'm going to be so sad when I catch up. Mary McDonnell is just so delightful to watch. ...huh, apparently I need to watch The Closer next, as Major Crimes is a spin-off of it.

While I love Major Crimes, I'm watching a couple episodes most every day, so now and again I need an episode of something else just for a little break. Aftermath sounded like a great fit for me:

The series is centered on the Copeland family, a couple with three almost-grown children, who struggle to survive as natural disasters, followed by the rise of supernatural beings, brings civilization to an end...

I was worried the "supernatural beings" were going to be zombies (I'm so done with zombies), but nope. Only one episode has aired so far, but it's super creepy and I love it.

This isn't the first show from Canada's Space channel that I have loved. I also really enjoyed Bitten (which I see has a new season out -- I have to catch up on).

Other: While staying up all night/not sleeping even a moment is a bad, bad, bad thing to do, I look back so fondly on that night a week ago when I couldn't sleep and my MMO had a patch coming out, so I just stayed up all night waiting and then playing. There's something so foreign and exotic about being awake at 2 AM or 3 AM, knowing everyone else is asleep around you, while you're having fun. I paid for the loss of sleep for many days after, but it really was worth it.

Move all done! I'm really happy with my new (new-new) apartment. $100 and change more a month than my previous new one, but I have a lot more space (junior bedroom instead of studio), AC, an assigned parking spot (instead of first come, first serve with fewer parking spots than there are apartments), and spiders. Okay, maybe that last one isn't really a feature. I found the biggest one in the bathtub this morning though, and another outside of it. Luckily I don't mind spiders much. But I'm sure the spiders come from the fact that we have nature here. Grass, trees, shade, growing things. Previous-new apartment was nothing but pavement and concrete -- the property (four large apartment buildings) had a grand total of three palm trees growing. This place is right on the border of a river (a creek for those who know the area) and has stuff growing everywhere.

But why am I awake at 2:30 AM? The game I play has a big patch coming out today (due to drop at 3 AM my time) and I did intend to get up for it if I naturally woke up at that time, but my legs were hurting so much all night, I couldn't sleep at all. Dozens of trips up and down the stairs and hours of moving boxes was just too much for me, I guess. For some reason, laying down makes them really, really hurt, but sitting or standing isn't as bad. Seems wacky, but since the game has a big patch coming, I figured I might as well give up on sleeping tonight. zzz I do feel tired, but not sleepy, if that makes sense.

This move went better than the move three weeks ago. That move, moving the same amount of stuff basically the same distance, cost me $440 + $40 tip. It was killing me to pay that much again, but for some reason this move came to $230 + $40. Much much better!

My apartment is currently such a mess. To hopefully avoid bringing silverfish with me from the old apartment, I wanted to unpack and get rid of the boxes as fast as I could. So I unpacked everything and just put it anywhere -- stacks of stuff in random spots.

Unfortunately one box had so many silverfish in it, I threw it all out. It was a box of my drawings and photo albums, so... that was painful to lose. But silverfish lay their eggs in and on things, and there's just no way of cleaning them up. Maybe at some point in my life I'll be sad I lost them, but through my life thus far I haven't wanted physical photos and never looked at them, so... Hopefully I won't feel bad about it later. I would have liked to have kept my drawings (I could actually draw when I was younger!), but paper is the worst thing when it comes to silverfish.

Ugh. I hate silverfish so much. Horrible little bugs.

So I decided to look for a new apartment. Because the current complex is breaking my lease (not having my leased unit ready), I can get out of it.

My goal in coming here was to save money, but with all the fees ($80 pet rent, $30 Internet/month, $30 trash valet/month), I'm not really saving all that much. Looking around, I could get a one bedroom (current one lease is a studio) in a better area, much much better complex, with a parking spot (current apartment has no assigned parking, more apartments than spots in the lot, and no street parking) for not that much more. Plus the place I'm looking at has a $25 pet rent -- so much better than $80. The complex I'm going to visit tomorrow has AC in some units, so that might not happen, we'll see how that changes the price.

I feel insane to think about moving again, but hell, all my stuff is still in boxes. I'd have to pay for this move ($400 at least), but it seems like the stress of moving again would be reduced.

I'd have to go back to a personal Comcast account, but checking their site, I could get it for $30 -- same as here. And I bet, unlike here, it won't go down every couple hours.

While I'd really rather not move again, I'd have to move soon anyway -- into the unit I leased, if nothing else. So if I'm going to move, I could at least try to improve my situation.

I'm going to see a place that looks reasonable tomorrow. The clock is ticking, I'll need to be out before the apartment I was supposed to move into is ready, and unfortunately I don't know when exactly that is.

I wish I wasn't so awful at looking for apartments. I hate doing it, so as soon as I find one that seems reasonable, I jump on it so I don't have to look for more.

I put in an application for a new apartment today. While I haven't heard back yet, my credit and rental history are very good, so I don't expect there to be any problems (famous last words). The studio apartments are all currently being renovated, due to be done by August 1st, and I need to move in in September, so turned out I got my pick of them (picked a corner unit in the back, hopefully will be the quietest). Ground floor. Apartment choice isn't in writing yet, I need to see to that.

Other notes:

No air conditioning, windows only in the front of the apartment (so no cross-breeze). It's early July and I haven't yet used my AC once this year, so... hopefully that won't be too big of an issue.

Has washer/dryer! That's a big, big positive and one I hadn't figured I'd be able to get. (Also has a dishwasher, which rocks.)

Pent rent is such a scam. I have to pay $65 extra every month because I have a cat... My current pet rent is $25, which is still a scam, but less so than $65. Highest listed pet rent I've seen was $75, so $65 is pretty bad.

Oddly the apartment comes with "high speed internet access". If it really is good access, I can drop Comcast, which will save me over $100.

It's maybe 5-10 minutes further from work. Technically it's one town over from where I am now, but it's so close to the border, it might as well be the same town.

Water/trash/net is about $100 a month extra. (I'm currently paying about the same for just water/trash here.)

Big minus: No assigned parking. Street parking is insanely jammed. There's a resident-only parking lot, but it's small. I strongly suspect there are more apartments than spots. This is likely going to be the issue that makes me eventually move. Sad. (You can get an assigned spot, but it's $160 per month...)

Is it perfect? No. But it's in my price range, and I'm getting more features than I had hoped I would (washer/dryer), so hopefully it will work out. It's really, REALLY small. I've always said I never needed much space and my current apartment is too big for me, so I guess I'm going to get to test that out. :P

1) I got heat in my apartment. After a cold weekend, this afternoon they got it working. Darned good thing I live in California and not somewhere really cold.

2) The change in gyms was lest costly than I thought it would be! Turns out the Y has a 30 day money back guarantee! So I got a $70 refund for the month of membership (though I still had to pay the initial $160 membership fee). Plus the new gym gave me three free weeks to make up for the Y, which comes out to about... $30-something dollars.

I'm going to go swimming there tomorrow. I really hope it works out. It's going to be a wonderful thing to be able to go anytime or day I want, instead of having to go during a brief window a couple times a week. (The place is open 24/7, so really, anytime I want.)

Oddly there's no life guard for the pool. I can swim just fine, but still, that's a little worrying.

3) I finished book #45 for the year. The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, book two) by Patrick Ness. A good book, but not as good as the first one. Two POV characters instead of one is really dampening my enjoyment of it. The POV changes between them as frequently as every paragraph (with a header over each paragraph). Having two POVs in the same room/scene looking at the same thing just doesn't work for me.

I'll post a better review after the third and final book, which I'm reading now.

4) Bonus item! Had doctor appointment today, she was very happy with my bloodwork numbers. One day soon I will post a write-up of medical stuff, but I keep dragging my feet on it...