Currently Listening Bramble Rose By Tift Merritt Virginia, No One Can Warn You see related

Spare Keys all Around

"Whatever you do, don't have a 'whatever' life." - Hailey Duff "Whatever"

  A collection of random facts to give you a basic idea of what this move has been like.

  1) I am receiving mail for five people that are not me.  Thus far, I have received one thing that was mine, and not addressed to "Occupant".  Thank you, Joshua and Stephanie.

  2) I now have a town tag, a library card, and a discount card for the grocery store.  Fear me, ye pie-selling minions, for I am coming to a check-out line near you!

  3) I have met three neighbors.

  4) I have had three guests.  One of them said she would have paid movers to break my camel end table, but she liked my mirror.  You win some, you lose some.

  5) My first day of orientation is Monday.  It will be a ten and a half hour day.  I have been advised to wear comfortable shoes.

  6)  I still need a desk.

Currently Listening Shrek - Music From the Original Motion Picture By Various Artists - Soundtrack It is You (I Have Loved) see related

Unbelievable

"God gave me both a body and a brain." - Rose O. Greenhow

  And so today, I was admonished not to "let [men] see how smart you are", in order to up my chances of getting married.

  It was a great moment for womankind.

Currently Listening Sissel Shenandoah see related

Life (Insurance) Lesson

"Life is real!/ Life is earnest!/ And the grave is not its goal./ "Dust thou art/ to dust returnest"/ was not spoken of the soul." - "A Psalm of Life" Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  I move one week from today.

  My room is a disaster area, snowed under in a small blizzard of all the paperwork that comes from dealing with an apartment, a property management group, and one's employers.  There are occasional seismic tremors of laundry, minor landslides of file folders and books. 

  I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I have no adult life skills.  I mean, shouldn't I be more organized?

  And shouldn't I know more? 

  One of my delightfully adult tasks is to select my insurance plan.  This sounds easy enough, until you start wading into the pool and discover the magic world of fee for service, regional and nationwide providers, and extended hospital stays.  How do you gamble?  That you'll be sick or that you won't?  That broken bones will happen near an approved hospital or that they'll happen at three in the morning in a strange town? 

  Oddly, in the midst of all this, one thing is easy:  life insurance.

  I have never had life insurance before and frankly, when you watch as much "Oxygen" and "Lifetime" as I do, you learn a little something about it.  If you want to avoid being knocked off by some random stranger bent on wiggling into your circle of friends, cleaning out your bank account, and making cookies with your mom, you have one option:  be worth absolutely nothing financially.

  I think I can do that.  Now what to do about a co-pay or a deductible...that's another story.

Currently Listening The Best of Andrea Bocelli: Vivere By Andrea Bocelli Sogno see related

Read All About It

"So bid your troubled heart be still." - Andrew Petersen "Canaan Bound"

Virginia Woman Finds Apartment At Reasonable Rent; Neighbors Stunned, Resentful

  Monday-  A Southwest Virginia woman may have become the first resident in at least a decade to acheive a feat many considered impossible:  locating a reasonably priced apartment in one of the most crowded regions of the country.

  For the find, the woman credits her sister-in-law, who took to Google on her behalf, locating the one bedroom, one bath unit a mere street over from her own residence.  "I thought it almost sounded too good to be true," the sister-in-law told the press.  "A parking space and a washer and dryer in the unit?  And the rent is a steal.  For this part of the country." 

  The unit, which the woman toured late Thursday afternoon with her father and sister-in-law, includes a fireplace, a full-sized bathtub and a fourth floor balcony, equipped with a safety railing that is "really bolted in there."  While the woman's mother initially expressed concerns about visibility, she was soon reassured by the apartment's fourth-floor location and her daughter's observations that "Superman might be able to look in at me, but other than that, voyeurs are going to have a hard time.  Besides, there's a tree."

  More shocking still is the apartment's location, which is a mere three miles distant from the woman's office.  A Chic-Fil-A, Target, and Giant are all within easy reach.

  Community reaction to the impending new arrival was mixed.

  "I'm stunned," said a neighbor.  "I've been looking for reasonable rent for years and this chick just blunders right into it?  There's something not fair about it.  And she better not be playing her Arabic pop at all hours or leaving trails of Coke cans to her door.  That's against the bylaws."

  "As long as she doesn't throw stuff off the balcony, I guess I can live with it," another neighbor said.  "It helps that she probably won't have much of a social life.  But I'm still mad about the reasonable rent thing."

  The woman plans to move in early July.

 
  Thanks for your prayers.  I'm very grateful.

Currently Listening 3O Greatest Hits [Best Of] You're All I Need to Get By see related

House Hunt

"But what are sighs and what is sadness/ to the heart that's going home?" - Enya "Long, Long Journey"

  When I was little, my mom and I used to read this book called, "Home for a Bunny".  It was about a little bunny, who, for some reason, moves out of his burrow and goes in search of somewhere else to live.  Along the way, he encounters various other creatures in their nests and holes and asks if he can move in with them.  He is rebuffed every time and sent on his way, until he meets another bunny and they live together very happily in a burrow big enough for the two of them.

  I always thought the other animals were sort of mean to the bunny, turning him down like that.  Turns out that's just the harsh world of house hunting.

  It's not that I didn't know it was cut-throat.  Hey, my dad and I undercut a med student by a mere four hours to snatch up my Georgetown apartment before the poor guy could even get there to look.  (It was ten minutes from campus and pretty wonderful.  No way he wouldn't have taken it.)  I lived there very merrily for two years, fending off the occasional incursion by ants, termites, and the odd garden snake. 

 And now, it's time for yet another round of the nail-biting, Tylenol-gobbling, Coke-swilling marathonthat is  apartment hunting in one of the worst areas of the country in a lousy economy.

  I struck out tonight with the apartments recommended to me by my office mates, with hair-raising results.  Everything is expensive.  One place has a laundry room but no washer/dryer units in the apartments.  One place has eight sex offenders within a one-mile radius.  And then, there are the online reviews. 

  Oh, the reviews.

  I quote.

  "Power will blow out if you use a vacuum and they are overrun with crickets in the spring."

  "The gross people in the apartment below us were finally evicted, which helped tremendously with the cockroach problem...they're probably still here, but at least we don't see them anymore."

  "The maintenance staff is very good, though their grasp of English is not."

  "Would pay the extra money to live somewhere else."

  And, my personal favorite:

  "... the property manager is a nosey, condescending wench."

  I am ashamed to admit that I had a good cackle at the property manager's expense.

  So, pray for me.  I have to find somewhere to live by the end of this week, and I'd rather not end up overrun with crickets, sex offenders, and wenches.