Update

I figured I should update you on the happenings of the last week or so with my new living situation.

Newsflash: My landlord still sucks.
We sent him a list of things that need to get done in our place three weeks ago when we moved in, we have followed up twice, and finally I sent him a stern email to get them done asap (among some other terse choice words). It finally decided to rain in So Cal this past week (we have a "rainy season" which is from the first of October to the middle of November, then we don't see rain again for the whole year), so from Tuesday to late Wednesday night it was a steady, healthy rain. Perfect for the earth, horrible for my shoddy apartment. We don't have weather stripping on our front door. We have been asking for it since we moved in. Weather stripping is a necessity for any dwelling for many obvious reasons.
Our reasons include:
1) Blocking out the noise from our annoying Asian neighbors who have a child who screams bloody murder literally all hours of the day.
2) Blocking out the desert draft that comes across LA when the sun goes down. Once our thermostat starts working (yes folks, that's on our list to our landlord too, but has he fixed it? Nah) our energy efficiency will be terrible if we don't block out that draft.
3) Bugs. Big ones. Enough said.
4) It was pouring for two days straight. We don't have eaves or any kind of overhang over our door; its very open to the elements. And when I say "open to the elements" I mean that water was puddling and spewing around, and under our front door onto our new, real, hardwood floors.

Great.

I pay almost $900 in rent a month. I think I deserve what I ask for. Not even what I ask for, but what a functioning, proper, modern, and stylish apartment that's worth $900 needs. Even trailers have weather stripping. Even the cheapest Motel 8 has some sort of central air, and a housekeeping staff. I deserve to move into a spotless, unstuffy apartment, and I sure as hell deserve to get all of these requested things within a month of moving in without a smidgen of a hassle. He never did clean the house. We finally got fed up and did it ourselves. The blatant lack of cleaning was the last straw for me, so all these other things that are not getting done are only cycloning my rage into a Twister (starring Jodie Foster) style wrath.

He finally came yesterday and installed weather stripping because that was the thing I specifically bitched him out about in the email. Everything else on our list of about 6 things remains untouched. I'm guessing I'll probably have to send him a separate phone call/email for each. We'll see.

I have symmetry issues. I want EVERYTHING to be perfect, clean angles, yet I cannot for the life of me hang a shelf or towel bar straight. I decided I have too many projects that involve things being leveled properly, so I need to hire a handyman. I have this amazing plan of walking into Lowe's, going to the Customer Service counter and getting the assistance of this nice older man with while hair who's been a handyman for years. He would get in his 2008 red Ford pickup equiped with all of his tools, and come to my house to put up my curtains, and hang my shelves and large wall mirror. I'd offer him lemonade, he'd talk about his grandkids in college, and I'd pay Lowe's a reasonable hourly rate for his services. But, I don't live in Palm Coast anymore. I'm probably either going to ask for assistance from Lowe's and pay out the butt for them to come to my place and spend too long doing my projects. Or, I'm going to have to resort to getting some sketch handyman guy off of craigslist who will later come back and rob my house with his cousins since he will then know where I live. Looking forward to it.

I've been involved in this terrible drama between me and my old roommates. One of them has terrible fiscal responsibility (for the sake of this story let's call her the FIO, Fiscally Irresponsible One) and bounced MANY a check during her stay with us which was a huge pain in the ass. She is too prideful to tell us about her financial issues, so we would never know our utility accounts were in trouble until the next bill came and we had bounced check fees. We'd then gently have to confront her to pay for not only her part of the bill, but the fees that were tacked on. I'm sure my credit score just jumps for joy when the gas bill, that's in my name, has an overdraft/hold fee multiple times.

I understand. We have all been there. Those days of growing up where you throw your credit and finances into disarray because you don't know any better. But you'd think after the first, or 16th, bounced check, or after all the creditors calling and sending you letter after letter, you'd learn your lesson. Apparently not. As my beautiful roomie Gina would say, "You are almost 25. That's halfway to 50. Get your shit together."

Our last month of living together rolls around and we are working hard to finish out the last of our bills and get a walk through scheduled with our landlord so we can get our security deposit back. Me and my roommate find out from our landlord a week before we are supposed to move out that the FIO's rent check bounced for the last month's rent. She now owes $850 in overdue rent and fees. Our landlord keeps getting excuses from her. Our landlord tells us that if FIO doesn't get the money to her, in cash or money order, in two weeks, it will be taken out of our security deposit, aka, the $291 each we were to get back would then be dwindled to $25 each. Oh. Hell. No. Me and my roommate are furious. While we are not surprised, we are pissed that FIO wouldn't warn us that she is in this deep, and now, its come to the end of the line and she may end up using our hard earned security deposit portions to cover her ass. We confront her. She says she'll "take care of it". A week and a half goes by. She still hasn't. Me and my roommate are freaking out. While we hope she's a better person than that, FIO could easily just let the security deposit cover her debts and never speak to us again, leaving us no choice but to take her to small claims court. Or, she'd let the deposit cover her and then we'd have IOU's from her. Oh, did I mention FIO already owed my other roommate almost $150 from the many times my roommate has "fronted" (as she likes to call it) her for other bills she couldn't afford at the time? Hell if we're getting an IOU from her. We KNOW she's not good for it. And its OUR money. We have an intervention the night before the money's due. She NEEDS to find it. She needs to put her pride aside and start asking people for loans. FIO tells us she "hopes it can happen and she'll do her best". Me and my roommate leave the meeting more scared than ever. The next day we are on FIO's ass ALLL DAY LONG. We are checking in with her and our landlord simultaneously. We want to know every move they make so we know when this transaction will go down, that is, if it does go down. We realize the horrible truth that that day was Colombus Day. Banks are closed. We beg our landlord to move the deadline to the next day. She obliges. (She is the nicest. I can't believe she was so forgiving and understanding. God bless her please.) The next day we don't hear from FIO until I text her at 1:30. She answers that she's on her way to our landlord right then to put the money order in our landlord's hand. (Why we didn't hear about it, we don't know, but at least it was happening.) She texts us the transaction was complete and that our landlord would cut our checks that day. The landlord calls us to verify. Crisis solved, although not without tons of stress, a few borderline anxiety attacks, angry outbursts, and hostile texts/emails.

On another note, Gina texts me two days ago to tell me she's been released from work early. She has a fever. Yesterday she goes to the doctor. I meet her at home last night and she mentions to me the doctor thinks it may be the swine flu.

Never a dull moment.