Home Away From Home

I started trying to find an apartment last week, when I knew with a reasonable level of confidence that I would in fact be moving to this project. I figured that I'd get a small, cheap apartment as close to the project as possible since I likely won't be spending much time in it. But do I really want to go through the cheap apartment hell again like the last time?? Even a more expensive apartment can have horrible neighbors. I told myself that it didn't matter, I probably wouldn't be there long anyway.

So I started a list of apartments sorted by distance from the project and started *gulp* making phone calls. The very first place was for old, poor people. At least he was nice when he told me, and he said it right away... But that kind of defeat is really hard for me to get past and keep going, but I can't just not have anywhere to live. The next three places didn't answer, geeze they keep weird hours. The fifth place sounded great, they had a one bedroom apartment opening up the day I start my new job, laundry on site, $450/month rent and only $250 deposit! And then I remembered my most important question: did they allow pets *sigh* they do not. Back to the drawing board.

I tried a couple more places and got answering machines. Then another place that had a message starting out with "If this is a police or fire emergency, please hang up and dial 911..." I decided I didn't want to live anywhere that felt that had to be the first thing on their answering machine. I think that's about where I gave up for the day... or week. Every time I thought about looking I would get sad because I already found the most amazing home-away-from-home I could ever hope to find, and now I have to leave it! I mean, nothing could compare to how welcome these folks have made me feel. It's like I'm part of their family, and now I'm abandoning them... *sniffle*

Ok, no more wallowing! My work partner is very fussy about where she lives and only looks at houses (she has even more crap than I do!). Anyway, she looked at a couple places this past weekend and while she didn't find any she liked, she gave me a number to call about a little house she thought might work for me. It has three bedrooms, one bath and is $650/month. And they allow pets!! It's also only about 30 minutes from work, in a nice little town that several folks from work lived in when they were on this project the last time around. Anywho, I'm gonna check it out Thursday after work... All I should hope for is a decent house I can live in...

After meeting my 'Bama "family" my mom turned to me and said "I don't know how you do it, but everywhere you go people just adopt you!"