As detailed in this thread, I've recently had to move. I was forced to flee in the middle of the night (alright, actually it was over the course of about a week), taking with me only the clothes on my back, plus a queen-size bed and mattresses, a full-size dining table, a bookcase and enough books to completely fill the trunk of a Kia, a dresser and a large television, an extensive collection of dvd's and a PlayStation 2, assorted knick-knacks, several framed pictures and maps, wall hangings, enough clothing to fill a walk-in closet including more than 100 shirts, a 25-gallon aquarium (with stand) and three obese goldfish, and a laundry basket full of shoes.
While I had been apprehensive and a little pissed before, I've been here three days now and I can definitely say that life is good.
This place is so much better than the other apartment! For one, it doesn't look as though it was last redecorated in 1987. At my old apartment, the bathroom wallpaper for whatever reason brought to mind 16-year-old Charlene standing at the mirror armed with a can of Aqua Net and a comb, teasing until she was certain her hair would be the biggest at the entire Lehigh Valley Mall that afternoon and wouldn't all the other girls be jealous? And what's really wild is that I don't even live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the Lehigh Valley Mall is located.
For another, my bedroom is slightly bigger than the old one. It has more than one dinky window, although unfortunately this did me little good and I spent yesterday afternoon covering the glass with tinfoil and duct tape for that classy and ever-popular "either I work nights or I'm a vampire, or possibly running a meth lab" look. Time will tell if the neighbors complain. Speaking of bedrooms, it would appear that the walls in this new place are slightly more sturdy than those in the old place. You can hear the occasional bump from the bathroom next door and you can hear when the shower or bath is running, but you don't get a play-by-play of your roommates' digestive complaints. This works out for all of us because it means that I, working nights and usually up all night, don't have to sneak downstairs shrouded in shame to use the downstairs bathroom when the call of nature refuses to go to voicemail.
There are other things I could say about the apartment itself, but suffice to say I'm living with two people who can't abide a dirty abode and this is quite nice. The other place looked like white trash other than myself lived there. In this new place we've even got an aspiring interior decorator. What's odd is that he's straight, Korean, and an ex-US Marine. I figure... whatever gets you through the night. If you want to decorate, decorate. The result is that our living room looks like a sitcom set -- one of those sitcoms set in New York where everyone lives in an Apartment Much Nicer Than Yours and where their furniture and wall coverings are as hip as is befitting of a bunch of 20-somethings living together -- except for the fact that the furniture is not positioned to face a wall.
The dishwasher in the kitchen works, too. It didn't at the old place. Just thought I'd throw that out there.
Outside the apartment, there's a pool, tennis court, and basketball court and these are all amenities I've never had before because over the course of living on my own, I've lived in one rundown house, and one rundown apartment that backed up to a swamp. No pool, in other words. I've already made use of the pool when I and my roommates went to spend about four hours having a ball in it. I'm sunburnt, of course, but as they say, it's a good hurt. I'm also looking quite buff thanks to having to move all this furniture around. My arms are darn sexy if I do say so myself.
Finally, this apartment complex is named for a creek, and while apartment complex names usually drift in from the planet of RealtorSpeak, where descriptions have no connection whatsoever to reality, I was shocked to discover that there is indeed a small creek flowing through the complex and we're right next to it. You can see it from the balcony off the dining room, as well as from the bedrooms of my two roommates. My room, meanwhile, before I covered the windows looked out on a stand of pine trees and the tennis and basketball courts.
All in all, things are great here. I'm feathering the absolute shit out of my nest and expect to pick up a couple of pieces of new furniture this week, hopefully. And, my obese goldfish are bumping into each other across the room even as I type. At the old place my room was too small to keep the aquarium in there with me and the fish lived in the living room instead. If all goes well, I'll have the entire room squared away by the time my boyfriend comes to visit for a week later this month.
There have only been a couple of small problems. The first was that the dryer almost caught fire the first time we used it, so we've called in the complex maintenance to clean out the vent and put a cover on it. If that doesn't work, we call the store I bought the washer and dryer from. The other problem is that the ex-Marine aspiring decorator keeps a stupid person as a sort of pet. The stupid person sleeps in the living room, while I and one roommate have bedrooms, and the decorator has the finished basement all to himself. I've found it easy enough to ignore the stupid person thus far, although from time to time he'll say something so idiotic that all of us stop what we're doing and stare at him. Then he forgets whatever it was he was talking about and wanders back into the living room to play Call of Duty 4. According to the ex-Marine aspiring decorator, this can be blamed on all the drugs the stupid person used to do.
But, all in all, things are just fantastic. I (heart) this place!
While I had been apprehensive and a little pissed before, I've been here three days now and I can definitely say that life is good.
This place is so much better than the other apartment! For one, it doesn't look as though it was last redecorated in 1987. At my old apartment, the bathroom wallpaper for whatever reason brought to mind 16-year-old Charlene standing at the mirror armed with a can of Aqua Net and a comb, teasing until she was certain her hair would be the biggest at the entire Lehigh Valley Mall that afternoon and wouldn't all the other girls be jealous? And what's really wild is that I don't even live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the Lehigh Valley Mall is located.
For another, my bedroom is slightly bigger than the old one. It has more than one dinky window, although unfortunately this did me little good and I spent yesterday afternoon covering the glass with tinfoil and duct tape for that classy and ever-popular "either I work nights or I'm a vampire, or possibly running a meth lab" look. Time will tell if the neighbors complain. Speaking of bedrooms, it would appear that the walls in this new place are slightly more sturdy than those in the old place. You can hear the occasional bump from the bathroom next door and you can hear when the shower or bath is running, but you don't get a play-by-play of your roommates' digestive complaints. This works out for all of us because it means that I, working nights and usually up all night, don't have to sneak downstairs shrouded in shame to use the downstairs bathroom when the call of nature refuses to go to voicemail.
There are other things I could say about the apartment itself, but suffice to say I'm living with two people who can't abide a dirty abode and this is quite nice. The other place looked like white trash other than myself lived there. In this new place we've even got an aspiring interior decorator. What's odd is that he's straight, Korean, and an ex-US Marine. I figure... whatever gets you through the night. If you want to decorate, decorate. The result is that our living room looks like a sitcom set -- one of those sitcoms set in New York where everyone lives in an Apartment Much Nicer Than Yours and where their furniture and wall coverings are as hip as is befitting of a bunch of 20-somethings living together -- except for the fact that the furniture is not positioned to face a wall.
The dishwasher in the kitchen works, too. It didn't at the old place. Just thought I'd throw that out there.
Outside the apartment, there's a pool, tennis court, and basketball court and these are all amenities I've never had before because over the course of living on my own, I've lived in one rundown house, and one rundown apartment that backed up to a swamp. No pool, in other words. I've already made use of the pool when I and my roommates went to spend about four hours having a ball in it. I'm sunburnt, of course, but as they say, it's a good hurt. I'm also looking quite buff thanks to having to move all this furniture around. My arms are darn sexy if I do say so myself.
Finally, this apartment complex is named for a creek, and while apartment complex names usually drift in from the planet of RealtorSpeak, where descriptions have no connection whatsoever to reality, I was shocked to discover that there is indeed a small creek flowing through the complex and we're right next to it. You can see it from the balcony off the dining room, as well as from the bedrooms of my two roommates. My room, meanwhile, before I covered the windows looked out on a stand of pine trees and the tennis and basketball courts.
All in all, things are great here. I'm feathering the absolute shit out of my nest and expect to pick up a couple of pieces of new furniture this week, hopefully. And, my obese goldfish are bumping into each other across the room even as I type. At the old place my room was too small to keep the aquarium in there with me and the fish lived in the living room instead. If all goes well, I'll have the entire room squared away by the time my boyfriend comes to visit for a week later this month.
There have only been a couple of small problems. The first was that the dryer almost caught fire the first time we used it, so we've called in the complex maintenance to clean out the vent and put a cover on it. If that doesn't work, we call the store I bought the washer and dryer from. The other problem is that the ex-Marine aspiring decorator keeps a stupid person as a sort of pet. The stupid person sleeps in the living room, while I and one roommate have bedrooms, and the decorator has the finished basement all to himself. I've found it easy enough to ignore the stupid person thus far, although from time to time he'll say something so idiotic that all of us stop what we're doing and stare at him. Then he forgets whatever it was he was talking about and wanders back into the living room to play Call of Duty 4. According to the ex-Marine aspiring decorator, this can be blamed on all the drugs the stupid person used to do.
But, all in all, things are just fantastic. I (heart) this place!
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