(no subject)

I'm not sure what the point of this thing is, but it's kinda cool although it doesn't seem to work exactly right. brombear had it in his lj, but it didn't show me his result, it showed the result for my own livejournal name and icons (but if you go to the comments page then it works the way it's supposed to -- don't ask me why). So I've saved my own silly banner and uploaded it above so other people could see it, along with some of my friends. You should eventually see the one the thing makes for you (it takes a while to appear though).

Like I said, kinda cool, fairly pointless, doesn't work exactly right, but interesting I guess. Works best if you have enough different icons to work from.

It also makes you aware of who has odd-shapped icons when I put them all together like above. ^_^

Who else is love?

pseudomonas me scripsit anno 2005

Full speed ahead!

I very much wanted to find an apartment to move to this weekend. It's not that I had to do it immediately, but... the longer I waited the more anxious and uncertain I would have become. It was best if I could get things figured out quickly, and the weekend was the best time to do it.

So I woke up Saturday at 9 am and decided that although I still felt tired it was high time to get moving. Therefore, I promptly goofed off for an hour and a half on the computer. I'm a world-class computer goofer off-er, if I could get paid for doing that I would be set for life.

Finally I drug myself away from the computer, took a shower, and laid down on the couch to watch some television. Because, you know, I had to let my hair dry. For an hour or so.

Eventually I boxed some stuff up, on the theory that this, too, was work needed for me to move. Basically I was dreading the whole apartment-hunting thing -- calling people, arranging to see apartments, driving all over the Puget Sound to look at different places. It sounded like torture. It was pouring down rain and I really didn't want to go anywhere or do anything.

I had started my apartment hunting a few weeks ago by checking out Craig's list every day and bookmarking anything that sounded good. I was looking for something around $700 or less, 2 bedroom apartment or something with a lot of room, South of Seattle. I mostly looked at Burien and Renton and points South, as far as Federal Way and Auburn and Pacific but not Tacoma. I didn't want to live in Tacoma. Appliances were good -- if I could get a washer and dryer in the apartment, that was very good.

What I soon discovered was that listings at Craig's List disappear in only about a week, and then I was left with a lot of nifty bookmarks to dead-end pages, and half-remembered listings of places that had sounded cool but which I now had no way to look up or contact or learn more about. So at the begining of this week I started printing out any listing that I liked. I e-mailed one listing, but many of the others listed phone numbers and suggested you call them, so I just stacked them into a pile to work through on Saturday.

I went through these on Saturday, and started sorting things to the back of the list if it didn't have all the things I wanted or didn't look all that great. The one place I'd already contacted, via e-mail, sounded good but I had no phone number and I figured trying to arrange a time to check it out this afternoon via e-mail was probably not going to work.

I wound up with a couple of listings that seemed very promising. One was a $650 a month apartment in the Renton highlands. I called this guy, who had a bit of an accent and also did not seem like he was that much on the ball -- this was not a professional rental company, just some guy with one apartment to rent. Also it turned out that there was a washer and dryer available on site but not one in each apartment. The guy wanted a full month's rent as a deposit -- $1300.00 up front. That was a lot -- too much, really, unless I avoided paying any other bills and ate ramen for a month. The final straw for me was that I had printed this guy's listing out twice -- once last week and once this week -- and the price had dropped from $695 to $650, which to me indicated that he might eventually want to jack it back up if he thought he could get away with it. I said I'd call him back if I wanted to see the place.

The other place I called was in Auburn. I'd found several possible places in Auburn to check out, but this one sounded the most promising (also the most expensive, if I went for a 2 bedroom deal). I called the number and spoke with a very professional person who gave me the address and said she would fax the person on site and I could drop by any time in the afternoon to check things out.

It was still pouring down rain and miserable as I drove South, and I was wondering about making the trip to visit just one place, and how many more trips like that I might expect to make. The valley was very flooded -- one of the fields that I drive by on the way to work was nothing but a giant lake, and the water was very close to road level. I really wasn't looking forward to living in the valley.

The place was on the East side of Auburn, and wonder of wonders, it was up in the hills, with woods and trees on all sides. I liked that immediately. They had 1-bedroom apartments for $645 and 2-bedroom 2-bath apartments for $725. I'd decided that I really wanted the 2nd bedroom, I own too much stuff for a 1-bedroom apartment. She showed me the apartment which was very nice, more or less like the place Chuck moved into, except that I had to choose between a first floor or second floor apartment, there were no third floor places with vaulted ceilings available. Naturally I wanted the first floor, I wasn't interested in having other tenants both above me and below me.

So that was it -- I put down a deposit and filled out the application. They need to do the background and credit checks and all of that, of course, but I don't anticipate any problems.

I remember how Darrell used to shop for clothes. He'd walk into a store, try something, and if it fit he'd buy it and be done. I never really understood what was so horrible about actually shopping for clothing as opposed to walking in and buying the first thing you saw, but when it comes to things like cars and apartments I guess I'm more in the Darrell mold. True, I did a lot of browsing online, but when it came time to sign, I went for the first and only place I looked at. But you know, if it has everything you want, then why look any further? ^_^

When I got home there was a message from David, who had helped Chuck buy some Ikea furniture and move it to his new place. He had boxes from Chuck to bring over. Now I have boxes that Tom left, boxes that I picked up for free from someone who advertised them on Craig's List, boxes I got from work, boxes that Jeff and Jeri-Lynn gave me, and boxes from Chuck, not to mention the 15 or so big plastic tubs that I've acquired for the move.

Frankly, I don't see how I could possibly run out of boxes now. ^_^