photo saturday: my place

I took these in May just after I moved into this apartment but never got around to posting them... they were supposed to be part of my "exposing my apartment" series (which included instalments from 2006, 2008, 2010 and the "new bookcases" post from 2013).

So why now?

Because my land agent called me on Thursday to tell me that the owners aren't going to be renewing my lease when it expires in February.

Once again (even though we're talking about completely different owners to the last time this happened) this isn't that much of a surprise... I haven't mentioned it in any of the blog posts, but the agent called me before Christmas and said that the owner wanted to have another real estate agent through to give a valuation. Weird, I admit, but they did the same thing around the same time the photos in this post were taken, and nothing came of it... so I thought maybe it was something they just did from time to time.

The agent came, with an offsider (who it seemed was just there to write a lot of things down) and I basically gave them a rundown on all the things that really should be fixed up... all those niggly little things that I was quite happy to live with, but that would be nice.

And then she called me to tell me she wanted to come back, along with the owner and "her painter" to look at some things to, as she put it, "spend money on".

So I finally met the owner... which was fine... slightly weird but fine. And I told him directly that they had a tenant for as long as they wanted one.

Turns out they only want one until February.

So I'm left, yet again, in the unenviable position of needing to find a new place to live. Which is all the more of a pain in the ass because, for the few faults this place has, and any of the minor complaints that I've had in the two years (like the occasionally noisy neighbours, the fact that the gas meters are both inside the house), this place is about as perfect as anything I could have hoped for. There's a ton more room than the old place, it was essentially only two streets away so moving wasn't overly complicated, the view of the city is amazing, the fact that the slightest breeze runs right through the apartment and that I finally had space to put artwork on the walls.

And now I have to leave.

I spent the majority of Thursday after I found out in that same state I was in the last time... somewhere between feeling like I want to throw up and wanting to break down in tears (and yes, I'm aware how much of a First World Problem this is, but it's the only world I have). Which is great when you're trying to be a productive member of the world.

But I've bookmarked a number of places which all have open inspections next week and I know after last time that if needed I can pack up my entire apartment in nine days.

And once I have a new place I'll book the nice guys from MiniMovers again, get them to deliver a stack of boxes and then start deconstructing my life.

I was only thinking last week that I really need to clean out both the wardrobe and the kitchen cupboards... clearly that was a matter of being careful what you wish for.

Stay tuned for further updates. Oh, and keep your collective fingers crossed for me.

The only, very, very tiny positive is that my agent agreed that the inspection I had scheduled for next Tuesday is essentially pointless and we cancelled it. Actually he's been great through my whole tenancy, and one of the first things he said to me after he told me the bad news was that he's already had a look on their books to see if there was anything else I would be a good fit for. Which, although there wasn't, was very sweet of him.

Unsurprisingly, everything else that happened this week seems inconsequential... but last Sunday morning I managed to break one of my favourite glasses (as in drinking, not eye), plus I wanted to take my netbook to Crumpler to check the size of a camera bag that I looked at last week (but never blogged about because I wasn't sure if I could be bothered going back).

So first I went to Crumpler, managed to shove my netbook in the "iPad" pocket of the camera bag, bought it (it's pretty damn nice, and I still have room left over to actually put my glasses in there, or a bottle of water or something)... then headed off to IKEA to buy a couple of replacement glasses. And I walked out with both them and a "moose head bird house"... I don't know how else to describe it... fuck knows what I'm going to do with it, but it's cute.

I don't think there's much of anything else that happened during the week until the aforementioned phonecall.

Oh, there was one other thing, when I called into the main branch of my bank in the city to pick up "all the coin bags"... turns out they have a coin counting machine... but more on that in a little bit.

This morning was a little slow... but as usual, I got myself downstairs just as Ma arrived. The supermarket excursion was pretty damn average... and we didn't really buy all that much stuff... especially since I managed to live on leftovers for three days (well, three days including the original meal).

Our regular checkout girl was finally back, so we were able to give her the Christmas goodies we'd put to one side for her. It's always amusing to see how appreciative people are about getting our goodies... I assume I'll have a similar experience when I take the batch to Tink next week.

After we'd come back and unpacked, I filled up one of my backpacks with loose change (well, not filled, but it was certainly very, very heavy given that it contained the oddly precise 1270 coins of various denominations)... I wasn't particularly precise, I just emptied between half and two thirds of each of my money boxes into the bag.

Then we drove into the city and Ma dropped me at the bank so I could make use of the coin counting machine. The rest of the bank was shut, so it was just me and the machine (well, initially it was me, an old dude who was also using the coin machine and his dog)... and then I filled it up so much that the machine went "nah, that's it, no more" but because I was trying to do about three things at once, all while there was an alarm blaring away somewhere in the bank for some unknown reason, I somehow rejected the entire first attempt and had to start over from scratch.

I did manage to get all my coins through though, but it seems like he machine is only capable of coping with between $500 and $600 before it needs to do the rest as a new transaction. It doesn't tell you that though... it just lets you dump all your coins in and then vomits the ones it doesn't want when you're done. But in the end I deposited $1087.50, which is slightly less than I was expecting, but every little bit helps, especially since I'll have to shell out for a bond and the movers and all the other little incidentals that comes with moving house.

From there we dropped into Swatch so Ma could get a new battery, and that was really about all we needed to do... we did wander down to Zing so I could put a preorder in for the new Assassin's Creed Pop Vinyl toys to go with all my other AC boys... and we poked around Spotlight and Lincraft... and grabbed a drink... and that was pretty much it.

Short, sharp and shiny as they say.

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