No House In Sight, So...

[miusheri]

Put down a deposit today for an apartment, starting August onward. This was a remarkably arduous process, despite the huge number of "for rent" signs around here. Most of the places we called never called back. Others had no-subletting policies, others had no-pet policies, and then there was the one who scheduled an appointment to show us an apartment and never showed up. Never called us back, either, when we called to be all "Uh, WTF? Did we have the wrong day?" Rest assured, it wasn't like this lady was in some accident or something that prevented her from meeting with us. We went back the next day, just in case we'd gotten the date wrong, and there was a note on the door from her, addressed to "Ron" (?), saying she'd stepped out to brunch and would try to swing by later. Dunno who "Ron" is, but if she did swing by later, she apparently couldn't be arsed to check her voicemail. Sorry we didn't fit into your busy social schedule, lady. Sorry, also, that we'll be taking our rent money elsewhere. Sheesh.

Okay, new apartment.

Plusses:

• Still in Shadyside, close (although not as close as we are now) to nice things and bus lines to take us to other nice things. Yay!
  
• Nicely laid out, hardwood floors, new appliances. They're also going to repaint and clean the carpeted areas before we move in.
  
• A dishwasher. I'm floored. I'll hardly know what to do with the damned thing. For the past two and a half years, I've been the dishwasher.
  
• Central A/C. OMGWTF. I've been without that for as long as I've been without the dishwasher.
  
• Coin-op laundry machines in the basement. At last! Laundromat's been a way of life for the past year and a half.
  
• We won't have to lease a whole year. They don't sublet, but they are letting us end our lease next May as opposed to next July. If we find property before that, we'll figure something out.
  
• No longer fretting about being homeless come August.

Minuses:

• Rent's a lot more expensive. Plus, there's a non-refundable pet deposit. But we can definitely afford the increase, and there's no way we're not keeping our cats.
  
• Fourth floor. No elevator. Guh. I don't normally mind stairs at all, but I'll sure as shit mind them when we're lugging up heavy things on a late July/early August moving day. At least that'll be really nice in winter. We probably won't have to touch the heaters.
  
• The windows all look out onto roof areas, no trees or greens. I don't mind this much, but the cats will. Rochester, especially, loves to perch on windowsills and play Master of His Domain. And he really loves it when a squirrel or bird comes to play. We'll have to see if we can stick a bird feeder out on the roof.
  
• Street parking. I've had a dedicated parking space for only a month, and yet I'm so spoiled by it, it's not even funny. Ah well, I lived with street parking the whole time I was in Albany, I can deal with it here. Any bets on how much I'll spend on parking tickets? ;) The Albany meter maids sucked at least a couple hundred dollars out of my pocket during my stay there. Stupid every-street-with-a-different-no-parking-day...
  
• We have to move. Again. Queue rental van expenses, nasty schlepping activities on hot summer days, having to trek all over creation to change our address on everything. And we're not moving into that condo we wanted, which means eventually, we'll have to move. AGAIN. Sigh, so it goes.