My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle.It's not really surprising, but the speed at which I went from cautious optimism to flat out panic on Friday was slightly breathtaking...
Buffy Summers, Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Earshot
But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
After last weekend's "fun and games" I spent a little time on both Saturday night and Sunday putting stuff into boxes, but gave up after around three... partly because I just couldn't summon up the energy to do any more. It wasn't actually until Friday night that I picked up the big roll of sticky tape and shoved more of my life into tiny cardboard boxes.
Tuesday night I went to see another apartment in Kent Town... and I'm pretty sure it was designed by the same architect as my old place... it had the same textured ceiling, same window designs... although the up side was that this had been renovated in the last couple of years so it had a brand new kitchen, a shiny bathroom and polished concrete floors.
But than I had the dilemma that I wanted that place over the place I looked at last Thursday, but it was a case of waiting to hear from them before the first place called me.
In the end I shouldn't have been so concerned because I had to call both of them myself, only to find out that I hadn't been successful in either application. Which was pretty much the point on Friday where my optimism turned to panic. I will say that I'm glad we weren't that busy at work because I spent the majority of my afternoon looking through the rental listings and trying to find something in the right price range in something that could be considered the right location and roughly the size I need it to be.
For the purposes of Friday's search, "the right location" had to be stretched more than I would otherwise have liked... but I still came up with a few places to look at over the next week.
I also happened across a number of ads relating to my old apartment block. I saw the first one by accident, and legitimately wheeled my chair away from the computer so that I wouldn't be tempted to click on it. As I think I said last week I didn't want anything to do with the old place... like breaking up with somebody and not wanting to know if they're happy or miserable or anything at all... you just want to remember them as the broken down wreck they were when you left them.
But the thumbnail image on the ad made me so very curious that in the end I had to look... and to go back to the ex analogy, it's like dating somebody who was the aforementioned broken down wreck and then seeing them after they've had some ill-advised plastic surgery, put on 20kg of muscles and gotten a number of pretty but pointless tattoos.
Essentially, I can't get my head around what the hell they've done to the places, but I do know that whoever the architect was, they were clearly a moron. Cutting down windows from being essentially a whole wall to being a tiny slit a couple of feet tall, and rearranging the layout in ways that don't make the least bit of sense. Well, I'm not saying the layouts are bad... however I lived in that apartment block for seventeen years and I could not make the least bit of sense out of a number of the layouts... the bathrooms generally made sense, as it would have been too damn hard to move all the plumbing, so the showers, sinks and toilets all look to be in exactly the same locations, but it's all clearly brand spanking new and otherwise completely confusing.
And I know that what I was paying at the time was much, much less than what the going rental rate should have been, but they're now wanting to charge three times the rent for apartments that appear to have 10% of the light they used to have. But they have a dishwasher, so that's something I guess.
Would I consider going back there, I hear you ask... in a word, fuck no. Firstly even with the renovations there is no way in the world that they're worth the rent they're asking for them. Secondly depending on what they hell they've done to the layout when you're there in person, I don't know that they would necessarily feel any bigger than they did when I lived there. Which definitely means that they're over-charging.
The only up side seems to be that they're being sold off individually, so my previous useless excuse for both a human being and a landlord doesn't have his grubby little fingers anywhere near them... possibly. Maybe he's kept a couple to rent out and is selling off all the others, I don't know. I certainly hope not, for the sake of the people moving in there.
I even finally, after over two years, went down my old street this morning and parked outside the apartment block to see it all in the flesh. We didn't get out of the car, but I just wanted to break myself of that particular habit or superstition or self imposed ban on even looking down that particular street when we drive past. It does help that I think the majority of the changes made to the place are blatantly ridiculous and while they look good in photos, they won't add to the overall living conditions of anybody who moves in there.
But again, that could be the ex thing again... where it doesn't matter what your ex does to make themselves pretty, you always assume that they're not going to be as happy with their new beau.
Yeah, I know, I've spend too much fucking time thinking about this.
Moving right along...
Partly because this week has been hot (and more importantly very humid, which is always much, much worse) and I still haven't completely regained my pre-eviction appetite (which isn't necessarily a disaster), so dinners this week have either been non-existant or else mostly involved carbs... or carbs and protein.
And mostly it was haphazardly thrown together stuff at the last minute. So hopefully I can manage something better this week.
Which pretty much brings us around to today...
Today was mostly about running from place to place to looking at potential apartments. It started in the usual way, with a somewhat meagre shopping excursion (seriously, I barely bought anything at all beyond some stuff to make salads and fruit to make a smoothie tomorrow).
Then the first apartment was only a couple of streets away, and we walked over to check it out. It was definitely the most heavily visited open inspection we went to all day... and while I'll probably put in an application, the best thing it had going for it was the location.
From there we headed out to Ashford to a place that was pretty large, but essentially in the middle of the wasteland as far as I'm concerned. Could I cope, probably, but yeah, it would be a definite adjustment. There was only one other guy who showed up for that one... wearing the weirdest pair of red and blue sunglasses... like one lens was red, one was blue, like old school 3D glasses, but he was walking around in the world wearing them... weird as hell.
Lastly was one near Burnside, and as we had a little time to kill we wandered around the Burnside Shopping Centre until it was time to go and see the apartment. It was decidedly 1950's... possibly 60's and had a couple of really weird details, but the kitchen was brand new and very pretty. There was only one other couple there while I was there, but we did see another couple who looked like they were about twelve headed that was as we left.
Interestingly, of the three locations, the one out in the wasteland is the only one that seems to be using the default rental application. And it's the only one that won't require the usual 100 points of ID... again, weird. Not a single one of the applications from today was the same as any of the others.
From there we headed down Greenhill Road and stopped off at Haighs briefly, which could be an occupational hazard if I happened to get that apartment.
And then we headed over to Galaxy Toys so I could pick up the latest series of Lego minifigures. I'd seen them in Target this morning, and started going through the box but I just couldn't be bothered to be honest... clearly I'm out of practice after the last few series. As always when heading into Galaxy Toys it tends to end up being a pretty short, sharp and shiny visit. Walk in, have brief amusing conversation about the pop culture teeshirt I was wearing, indicate I want the whole series of minifigs, pay for minifigs, leave.
Ma and I stopped off briefly at Big W for no real reason other than we were in the neighbourhood... only to discover that their air-conditioning wasn't working for some reason, so we didn't really hang around, we just grabbed a sausage sizzle from out the front and then came back here.
In theory I have Monday off from work, although I think I may end up going in, at least in the morning, in order to put these applications in, and to be honest, while I still need to pack up a bunch of stuff, I know that I'll be able to do that in very short order once I actually have a moving date. And a lot of that would be kitchen stuff anyway that I wouldn't really want to pack until the very end.
I thought there were some open inspections on during the day on Monday, but the first one is around 4:30, so the day is pretty much all mine.
We'll see how I feel when Monday rolls around.
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