Rent to us! We won't grow pot!

Apparently there is a new trend: Landlords are increasingly seeing that properties they've rented out have been turned into marijuana grow rooms. This pretty much destroys the property. Todd and I have long considered ourselves great tenants, but now we have yet another reason: We won't turn our apartment into a grow room! We should make sure to tell this to the rental agents and landlords that we meet. It'll make us a shoo-in for any apartment!

Mental Notes and Breadboxes

I've thought a number of times recently about doing a blog entry. Usually, I haven't had time to do a blog entry right when I think about it, so I've made a mental note to do it later. The problem with mental notes is that they get lost. Or I come back to them later, and the oomph that was there before that would have propelled me to write something is gone. Too bad I usually feel too busy or exhausted to do a blog entry when I have an idea. It seems like I think about doing something and then I look up and it's 3 days later. Why is this happening? Oh yeah: I work full time at a high-stress job, I'm studying for licensing (minimally, at the moment, but it still takes time and energy), I'm training for a big hiking trip as well as a half-marathon, and now we've begun looking for an apartment. No wonder my mental notes are getting lost in the shuffle.

Every time I apartment hunt, I'm reminded of why I hate moving. The search for the perfect (or even a decent) apartment takes over your life. Plus, I feel like I just moved. We still even have some packing paper. And we never did get around to buying plants, since we knew we wouldn't be in this place long. Why buy something that you'll just have to move in a year? So we've just been biding our time in a plantless, paper-filled apartment until we can leave.

We saw some apartments this weekend that were problematic. Todd and I have been spoiled with our last several apartments in terms of their size. For instance, we like to both be able to stand in the kitchen and turn around. And, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, our last apartment in California was Fa.Bu.Lous. So I compare everything to this superapartment. I will probably never live in an apartment that nice again unless I get extremely lucky. And I don't win raffles all that often, which I will take to mean that I don't have very good luck.

But back to the problems with some of the apartments we've seen so far: They were miniature. And expensive. I realized that I need to start asking agents if the apartment is bigger than a breadbox before I agree to see it. The first place we saw looked like a cell at a penitentiary and it was $1400 a month. Astronomical, but very close to the Central Square station, which makes transportation easy when your parole officer gives you the go-ahead.

Luckily, we've also seen some apartments that are a bit closer to what we want, so we can be hopeful of finding something. We're even offering a reward to someone who might help us find the perfect apartment by tipping us off to something good. I'm not at the point of starting to read the obituaries. Yet. But if you know someone with a great place on the Red Line between Alewife and Central who is pretty sick, let me know. And if you think they will probably die or at least need to go into the hospital for a long stay by August or September first, I'd be happy to give them a ride to the ER in the front seat of my U-Haul.

Neighborhood Spy

It seems that our crazy-ass downstairs neighbors have moved, and in a very weird way. A couple of weeks ago, Todd and I noticed that we didn't hear any noise coming from downstairs, and their cars seemed to be missing. We thought that maybe they had moved, but we hadn't seen a moving truck or anything. Where was the usual grunting, sweating and cursing that accompanies a move? Usually it's pretty easy to tell when your neighbors have moved. We thought this was all a bit strange, but stomped happily across our floor and enjoyed the lack of stale cigarette smoke floating upstairs.

Today, I ran into the landlord and he told me that they indeed have apparently vacated the apartment, but seem to have left all of their furniture and belongings behind. And their stuff was in boxes, so it seems like they must have been intending to move it. When the landlord told me this, I wondered if they were dead in the apartment or had been abducted or something, like in a bad horror flick. Or maybe they were running from the law and had to leave in a rush! But, since this is reality, this is likely not the case. Maybe they just decided that they had bad taste (which they do) and needed to start over with some new furniture. And if this is the case, maybe they weren't so crazy-ass after all.

When Todd and I give the landlord our notice, we'll have to make sure to specify that we intend to take our furniture with us.