Tag: moving

Utilitarian

All utilities have been arranged for transfer or setup at the new apartment. Disturbed to find that the basics, like electricity and gas, now want a credit check before they’ll set up service (supposedly they’ll insist on a deposit if you have bad credit or don’t submit to the check)… but AT&T is perfectly happy to set up phone, internet, and TV service, for considerably more than the monthly electric bill, without insisting on anything up front.

Now that I think about it, gas & electricity might be required to give you some leeway once you have service, on the grounds that if it’s 20 degrees and you lose your heating, or 110 and you lose your air conditioner, it might actually be a life-threatening emergency.

Whereas if you don’t pay AT&T, and they shut off your internet access, it only seems life-threatening!

Stuff

You never realize just how much stuff you have until you have to put it all in boxes. It’s getting down to the wire now, coming up on Saturday, and the go-through-everything-and-triage plan is about to give way to the just-shove-it-in-a-box plan.

Last Thursday, alenxa went out to look at condos with our realtor, and found one that looked promising. She arranged to go back that evening when I could take a look at it. Unfortunately we basically need to put an offer in now, and jump through a bunch of hoops. We jumped through the first one, but with all the moving prep, neither of us is in the mood for jumping through any more.

Cleaned out the refrigerator the other day. Katie looked through the fridge, and I took on the task of opening and cleaning the containers.

Sunday was mostly spent cleaning, since we’ve got an inspection scheduled with the apartment complex tomorrow. We want to make sure they don’t try to charge us for any of the remodeling that they’re going to do anyway.

I’ve taken 2 days off later this week, and I’m not sure it’s going to be enough. The place is full of boxes, even after taking stuff to storage.

Current Mood: 😯anxious

Movies, Moving and More

  1. Saw Iron Man on Saturday. Very good, possibly the best superhero movie since the first Spider-Man. Perfect balance of action and humor — it knew when to take itself seriously, and (more importantly), when not to.
  2. Tried “curry chips” at an Irish pub near the movie theater. French fries, only lightly salted, and a bowl of curry to dip them in. Surprisingly good.
  3. Also watched Never Been Kissed via Netflix. Funny, but in a painful way, since the movie is all about public humiliation.
  4. Boxed up most of the books on our main 2 bookshelves. The plan is to put most of our books (and the shelves) in storage until we get a more permanent place, except for one to-read box. 10 boxes later, we still have the non-fiction shelf, the manga shelf, the humor+coffee table shelf… We’re going to need more boxes.
  5. Speaking of which, we’re down to less than 2 weeks to the move. Once we landed an interim apartment, I was relieved, but now I’m starting to worry about whether we’ll have time to pack everything up. Which reminds, me, I never got a response on my request for a quote for movers. More calls to make…
  6. Finally replaced the last of my large plain T-shirts with mediums after almost a year of holding at 150-155 lbs. Printed shirts are a bit trickier.
  7. Sleepy+hungry. Finally got around to reading Superman: Birthright last night, which was considerably better than the online consensus would suggest. But it meant I was up past midnight, and I got up early so that we could go to the DMV before work this morning. (alenxa and I both had stuff we needed to do there…this week. The funny thing is, we ended up at windows right next to each other, despite being in different queues.) So I got too little sleep and had breakfast 2 hours earlier than usual, and now I’m ready for lunch at 11:00.
Current Music: Jet Black Sunrise (Gin Blossoms)

Moving! Stage 1 of 2

With our move-out date (May 17) rapidly approaching, it became clear that we weren’t going to have a condo in time to move straight from our current apartment. We asked about moving to another unit in the same place and staying month-to-month, but they wanted a minimum 3-month occupancy, and $200/month on top of the market value for the privilege of not signing a lease. With the post-renovation price hikes, the result was that it would have cost us more to rent a studio than we’ve been paying for our 2-bedroom apartment. Not an option.

alenxa found a place just a few blocks away that does everything month-to-month, was reasonably priced, and isn’t in a scary part of town. We toured the property and filled out an application on Monday, and signed the paperwork this morning.

So we have a place to live!

Pros:

  • We don’t have to put all our belongings in storage and move in with my parents for a few weeks.
  • Once we find someplace permanent, we won’t have to break a lease to move out.
  • We already know the nearby grocery stores, restaurants, etc.
  • It’s quiet.
  • It’s reasonably located for my commute.
  • It’s on the ground floor.
  • Laundry room uses a card system instead of quarters.

Cons:

  • It’s smaller (1 bedroom), so we still have to move some stuff into storage. But even including the storage cost, it’s still cheaper than that studio would have been.
  • There’s no guest parking, and street parking is extremely limited.
  • There’s no dishwasher. I think I can deal with that for a few weeks/months.
Current Mood: 🙂relieved

Coming Up

Things I’m looking forward to in the next few months:

  • Having a new place to live.
  • Going to see Bernadette Peters in concert.
  • Firefox 3 being released (I’ll get to use inline-block on websites!).
  • Our annual trip to Comic-Con.
  • Seeing my name in print as a contributor to The Flash Companion (about the comic character, not the animation format).

Things I’m not looking forward to in the same time period:

  • Getting that new place to live.  All the financial crap and wrangling.
  • Packing everything up to move.  I think I won’t mind the actual moving as much as the packing.
  • The possibility that we might have to move twice, if we manage to buy a place but it isn’t ready for move-in before we have to clear out of this place.
  • Possible shuffling around on projects at work.
Current Mood: 😡stressed