So, moving into my first f'realz-apartment-that-I-have-to-get-a-job-to-have-enough-money-to-pay-rent-and-bills-and-whatnot has been nothing short of hellish.
Ask Guido, he'll tell you that when we drove around Waco looking at properties, this one seemed like the obvious choice for a new Baylor student -- pretty buildings, close to campus, 24-hour emergency maintenance, security service, relatively low rent for the large apartment.
In June I signed a lease for Apt. 610, a first floor, tan carpet apartment for $550. According to the lease, my tenant-ship would begin August 15, 2005. This is where it all began.
On that fateful Monday, my dad, who had been given the task of moving me in, took me to IHOP for breakfast before we made the 1.5-hour drive from Dallas to Waco to move in. I had been asked to call the apartment office to give them a rough estimate of my arrival time, so I called shortly before we left IHOP. The conversation went a little like this:
Apartment Person: Hi, thank you for calling RiverCrest, how may I help you?
Stretchy: Yeah, I'm supposed to be moving into apartment 610 today and I'm just calling to let you know that I should be there in about two hours.
Apartment Person: *pause* 610? Just a second... *there is shuffling on the other end, presumably as she looks for my lease* ...Uh... could we call you back? It seems the people who lived in your apartment never turned in their keys.
Stretchy: ...O...kay... *gives number*
So Dad and I finish eating and just chill out for a while waiting for the apartment people to call back, and they do. This time, I accidentally hang up before I can answer the phone, so they call my dad's and talk to him:
Apartment Person: Okay, so it turns out there are still people living in your apartment.
Dad: *Incredulous face (my dad is good at those)* Are there?
Apartment Person: Uh... and their lease is not up...
Dad: My daughter insists that she signed a contract stating she would move in to that apartment today.
Apartment Person: Uh.. yeah, she sure did. Uh... we can move her to another apartment, if we have one available...
Dad: You DO have one available -- the one she signed a lease for.
Apartment Person: Well... does it have to be a downstairs apartment?
So, I'm "upgraded" to a second-floor apartment with green carpet and vaulted ceilings, and, out of the goodness of their hearts, the apartment people have agreed that I should not be charged the extra $10 one would pay for vaulted ceilings. Apparently, someone is moving out of this new apartment and the apartment people rush him out so that it will be ready when I arrive.
We get there, sign my NEW lease for an apartment that is actually empty, and go check it out.
At this point, I think I'll just enumerate the problems we discovered right away.
1) front door sticks
2) someone put a hot iron on the fucking carpet
3) dryer hose is not attached... is the carpet in front of the washer and dryer DAMP?!
4) OH MY GOD THERE ARE ANTS EVERYWHERE
5) What's that smell?
6) Where's my mailbox key?
Those are the INITIAL problems. It took a month and a half and a new apartment manager to light a fire under the collective ass of her worthless staff to get me a new mailbox key, by the way. My dad laid out ant poison which pretty much solved that problem (although I think they're back and I have to go get more poison). Someone eventually came and cleaned the carpet in front of the washer and dryer, but I'm pretty sure it's moldy underneath, and no one seems to want to deal with that, so I'm stuck inhaling mold. The smell mostly went away after we bought a billion air fresheners.
So now I'm on my own, my dad is gone, my furniture is in, I'm feeling great, because it may not be a palace, but I have my very own apartment. One day, Guido's mom calls. See, Guido's family lives in this town, and his mom wants to come over and see my apartment. So I panic and go on a whirlwind cleaning spree, which includes loading and starting the dishwasher for the first time. Oops.
When the first rinse cycle starts on the dishwasher, I am horrified to discover that something is broken and water is pouring from the dishwasher into the cabinet under the sink and onto my kitchen floor! And Guido's mom is minutes away! Oh my God, what will she think when she sees this?! And so on...
So I call the office and tell them what has happened. The girl on the other end sounds as shocked as I am and promises maintenance help within the hour. So I sit down and wait. And wait. And Guido's mom and grandmother come and shake their heads at the mess and leave and I wait. And I call back and am informed that maintenance is seeing to other emergencies, as though water all over my fucking kitchen is not an emergency. It actually is an ENTIRE DAY before anyone comes to even investigate the problem, and then it is TWO OR THREE DAYS MORE waiting for a new part to come in before I can actually turn my dishwasher back on.
So, after that, things run sort of smoothly. Pretty well, actually. In fact, I'm gonna celebrate and get a puppy. And I do. And she is awesome. And I don't pay my pet deposit for two whole months because 1) I have run out of checks, and 2) Screw them, they took a month and a half to get me a mailbox key, they can wait for my check.
And then I discover a problem with owning a dog: mice. These stupid rodents chew through my bag of dog food, so I call the office, and the manager, being competent and NICE, calls pest control that very day and someone is sent over THAT DAY. Whoa. The pest control guy investigates and decides to lay out poison. He promises that this poison has a low secondary-poisoning rate, so my dog should be cool, but just in case he's going to put the bait out where she can't get it -- behind the fridge, behind the stove, and in the pantry so I have to keep the door closed.
Not only do these mice go right through that poison like it's candy, they drag it out into the middle of the kitchen AND MY DOG EATS IT. She is currently on medication so she will not DIE from eating POISON. I don't know if y'all know, but rat poison contains blood thinners that cause internal bleeding, and that's how it does what it does. INTERNAL BLEEDING. THEY TRIED TO KILL MY DOG.
So I'm like, "Whatever. Mice and a live dog are better than a dead dog with or without mice." So I take the vet's advice and plan to lay out D-Con when I go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, when my dog won't be in the apartment to eat that which she should not eat. And, really, there aren't any big problems. A maintenance guy stuffs steel wool in the mouse hole in an attempt to keep them out, and I buy a big plastic container for my dog food.
I'm almost done, seriously.
This morning I discovered I have super-rodents.
At first, I just stood there, mouth open, staring in disbelief. Did they completely eat the handle?! There are pieces of it inside the container...
Oh, wait.. there's the rest of it...
So now I'm waiting for another pest control visit. The last time they came they left glue traps for ME TO PUT OUT. Like hell I'm going to lay out glue traps and then DEAL WITH IT WHEN I FIND A CUTE LITTLE MOUSE STUCK TO THE TRAP AND NOT DEAD.
I took the pictures because I'm sort of hoping something like this is grounds for breaking my lease and getting the hell out of here.
So, how was your day?
Ask Guido, he'll tell you that when we drove around Waco looking at properties, this one seemed like the obvious choice for a new Baylor student -- pretty buildings, close to campus, 24-hour emergency maintenance, security service, relatively low rent for the large apartment.
In June I signed a lease for Apt. 610, a first floor, tan carpet apartment for $550. According to the lease, my tenant-ship would begin August 15, 2005. This is where it all began.
On that fateful Monday, my dad, who had been given the task of moving me in, took me to IHOP for breakfast before we made the 1.5-hour drive from Dallas to Waco to move in. I had been asked to call the apartment office to give them a rough estimate of my arrival time, so I called shortly before we left IHOP. The conversation went a little like this:
Apartment Person: Hi, thank you for calling RiverCrest, how may I help you?
Stretchy: Yeah, I'm supposed to be moving into apartment 610 today and I'm just calling to let you know that I should be there in about two hours.
Apartment Person: *pause* 610? Just a second... *there is shuffling on the other end, presumably as she looks for my lease* ...Uh... could we call you back? It seems the people who lived in your apartment never turned in their keys.
Stretchy: ...O...kay... *gives number*
So Dad and I finish eating and just chill out for a while waiting for the apartment people to call back, and they do. This time, I accidentally hang up before I can answer the phone, so they call my dad's and talk to him:
Apartment Person: Okay, so it turns out there are still people living in your apartment.
Dad: *Incredulous face (my dad is good at those)* Are there?
Apartment Person: Uh... and their lease is not up...
Dad: My daughter insists that she signed a contract stating she would move in to that apartment today.
Apartment Person: Uh.. yeah, she sure did. Uh... we can move her to another apartment, if we have one available...
Dad: You DO have one available -- the one she signed a lease for.
Apartment Person: Well... does it have to be a downstairs apartment?
So, I'm "upgraded" to a second-floor apartment with green carpet and vaulted ceilings, and, out of the goodness of their hearts, the apartment people have agreed that I should not be charged the extra $10 one would pay for vaulted ceilings. Apparently, someone is moving out of this new apartment and the apartment people rush him out so that it will be ready when I arrive.
We get there, sign my NEW lease for an apartment that is actually empty, and go check it out.
At this point, I think I'll just enumerate the problems we discovered right away.
1) front door sticks
2) someone put a hot iron on the fucking carpet
3) dryer hose is not attached... is the carpet in front of the washer and dryer DAMP?!
4) OH MY GOD THERE ARE ANTS EVERYWHERE
5) What's that smell?
6) Where's my mailbox key?
Those are the INITIAL problems. It took a month and a half and a new apartment manager to light a fire under the collective ass of her worthless staff to get me a new mailbox key, by the way. My dad laid out ant poison which pretty much solved that problem (although I think they're back and I have to go get more poison). Someone eventually came and cleaned the carpet in front of the washer and dryer, but I'm pretty sure it's moldy underneath, and no one seems to want to deal with that, so I'm stuck inhaling mold. The smell mostly went away after we bought a billion air fresheners.
So now I'm on my own, my dad is gone, my furniture is in, I'm feeling great, because it may not be a palace, but I have my very own apartment. One day, Guido's mom calls. See, Guido's family lives in this town, and his mom wants to come over and see my apartment. So I panic and go on a whirlwind cleaning spree, which includes loading and starting the dishwasher for the first time. Oops.
When the first rinse cycle starts on the dishwasher, I am horrified to discover that something is broken and water is pouring from the dishwasher into the cabinet under the sink and onto my kitchen floor! And Guido's mom is minutes away! Oh my God, what will she think when she sees this?! And so on...
So I call the office and tell them what has happened. The girl on the other end sounds as shocked as I am and promises maintenance help within the hour. So I sit down and wait. And wait. And Guido's mom and grandmother come and shake their heads at the mess and leave and I wait. And I call back and am informed that maintenance is seeing to other emergencies, as though water all over my fucking kitchen is not an emergency. It actually is an ENTIRE DAY before anyone comes to even investigate the problem, and then it is TWO OR THREE DAYS MORE waiting for a new part to come in before I can actually turn my dishwasher back on.
So, after that, things run sort of smoothly. Pretty well, actually. In fact, I'm gonna celebrate and get a puppy. And I do. And she is awesome. And I don't pay my pet deposit for two whole months because 1) I have run out of checks, and 2) Screw them, they took a month and a half to get me a mailbox key, they can wait for my check.
And then I discover a problem with owning a dog: mice. These stupid rodents chew through my bag of dog food, so I call the office, and the manager, being competent and NICE, calls pest control that very day and someone is sent over THAT DAY. Whoa. The pest control guy investigates and decides to lay out poison. He promises that this poison has a low secondary-poisoning rate, so my dog should be cool, but just in case he's going to put the bait out where she can't get it -- behind the fridge, behind the stove, and in the pantry so I have to keep the door closed.
Not only do these mice go right through that poison like it's candy, they drag it out into the middle of the kitchen AND MY DOG EATS IT. She is currently on medication so she will not DIE from eating POISON. I don't know if y'all know, but rat poison contains blood thinners that cause internal bleeding, and that's how it does what it does. INTERNAL BLEEDING. THEY TRIED TO KILL MY DOG.
So I'm like, "Whatever. Mice and a live dog are better than a dead dog with or without mice." So I take the vet's advice and plan to lay out D-Con when I go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, when my dog won't be in the apartment to eat that which she should not eat. And, really, there aren't any big problems. A maintenance guy stuffs steel wool in the mouse hole in an attempt to keep them out, and I buy a big plastic container for my dog food.
I'm almost done, seriously.
This morning I discovered I have super-rodents.
At first, I just stood there, mouth open, staring in disbelief. Did they completely eat the handle?! There are pieces of it inside the container...
Oh, wait.. there's the rest of it...
So now I'm waiting for another pest control visit. The last time they came they left glue traps for ME TO PUT OUT. Like hell I'm going to lay out glue traps and then DEAL WITH IT WHEN I FIND A CUTE LITTLE MOUSE STUCK TO THE TRAP AND NOT DEAD.
I took the pictures because I'm sort of hoping something like this is grounds for breaking my lease and getting the hell out of here.
So, how was your day?
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