Rental follies

It seems to provide me with some sort of odd centre or structure to have something to fixate my worry on. Regular readers will know I had more than my share of things to worry about at the end of last year. With the new year, I of course have the old standards (money, giant ethics exams, finding suitable practicum experience, why the hell didn't I just get a mail order PhD....), but I also have a new one: moving!

I have been in my current apartment now for nearing on two and a half years. I have wanted to move out of it for probably two of these years. In part, this is due to somewhat shady former managers, who had no interpersonal sense at all, and kept on letting any guy with a rucksack and a damage deposit move in. Apartment #103 seemed to be especially cursed. I'm not sure why that particular apartment attracted such low lifes. I remember getting around 4 hours of sleep the night before a major presentation after having to call 9-1-1 due to a complex series of fights involving the then #103 resident (who, as a random side note, gave me his ex-girlfriends earrings when I first moved in because he had no use for them. Ummmm.... thanks? I can say that they have never touched my earlobes!), which finished off with him attacking a 16-year old girl who had herself tried to assault the people in the apartment beside them for complaining about their noise.

Thankfully, we soon got new management, who managed to weed out most of these folk. I don't miss the days of coming in to see one of my neighbours shouting racial slurs at another.

Lest you think I shacked up in a crack den, I assure you that for the most part, my apartment is decently nice. I have a fair sized corner suite with a large balcony. The whole place has this whole pseudo-Alps air going on, which is kind of charming, However, the windows are single-paned and never close all the way, meaning I'm lucky to get my apartment to room temperature during a cold snap. I also once found a spider the size of at least half of my palm in my kitchen once. Great considering I am a total arachniphobic. Oh, and my upstairs neighbours' teenager daughter had sex on their balcony for a good chunk of the first summer I was there (yes, I recognize that some of you would consider that a plus. I, however, did not. Though it was preferable to when she pumped Matchbox 20).
I'm also tired of the suburbs. It seemed like a good idea back when I first moved here, due to proximity to campus and my lack of a car. However, I've gotten a little stir crazy living so close to so many amazing neighbourhoods, yet living in a bland suburb I feel utterly apathetic about... though there is a Wal-Mart nearby! *shudder*

So why am I still here? As a grad student, there are probably only two times a year that it is even plausible to consider moving-- May and September. The end of the semester of December doesn't count, because moving during the holidays is certifiably insane (it's in the DSM, I swear!). September is still pretty unadvisable because you are fighting with countless students. The first May, my long-term boyfriend finally managed to move here, and despite my protests, vetoed moving for a year, saying he just needed to settle. The next May, we discovered that we completely disagreed about where we wanted to move, me wanting to move further into the city, him further out. With that and money worries, it was yet another summer here. We split up right after the eligible August/September moving time (dammit!!), and considering I was finishing my MA that semester and wouldn't have the time or money to even consider moving, I kept the apartment.

Having finally come into a bit of financial flexibility, I decided to move for May 1st. This was before I knew of the hulking ethics oral examination right before. Or the fact that May 1st falls on a bloody Tuesday, and I feel horrible asking anyone to take a day off work to help me move. Let me also qualify this by the fact that I have never owned a car, and thus have not driven one with any regularity since I moved out of my parents' place at 19. As such, I don't trust myself much with a giant U-Haul van. However, I trust moving companies even less-- note to vigilant readers who actually made this far, remind me to blog about the epic moving disaster I had moving between provinces a few years ago... it's a doozy!

I'm still determined, though. So I neurotically check Craigslist for the hope of finding a perfect apartment available for April 15th, so I can suck up the extra half month's rent for the luxury of taking my sweet time moving in. I neurotically check my bank statement figuring out what my absolute rent limit is and force myself to not even look at anything that is $50 over that. I neurotically google earth potential apartment buildings. All this despite the fact that nothing eligible for my moving date is even available yet. Sigh.

I am excited about the notion of selfishly choosing an apartment according to no one's standards but my own! And even more excited about finally living in the city this summer. Picnics every day (schedule permitting, of course)!