Mrph

So, the place I looked at yesterday that I said sounded too good to be true....yeah, it was. It was not in a bad neighborhood - there were lots of really cute and well-cared-for places around it. The buildings themselves were not visibly run-down. It was, indeed, cat-friendly and short-term lease. It was also in total interior disrepair - the first apartment the lady tried to show me had a broken screen door (which elicited no apology, not even a comment about it - it's a broken DOOR!), but for some reason she didn't have the key to get into that one, so she took me to another unit. THAT one had a great layout - much bigger than I'd anticipated (almost as big as my current apartment) - and I would maybe at least have forced myself to continue my polite interest mode (this place had already given off a strong "white trash" - not to be snooty, but true - feel), if it had been in any kind of livable condition. Granted, I am NOT the world's most notorious neat-freak. I can live in my own mess quite comfortably. But this place? Well...as if the smudges on the walls and stains on the carpets (which looked like they hadn't been vaccuumed in, oh, ever) weren't enough, there were SPIDER WEBS in the corners. With SPIDERS! I'm sorry, but NO. Not Acceptable! I couldn't even bring myself to go into the bedroom or bathroom. I just (very calmly, I thought) turned to the lady, said "That answers all of my questions, thank you for your time," and got the hell outta Dodge. If there had been a "I'm sorry, we just haven't had time to clean this one since the last tenant moved out" kind of thing, I might have at least stayed five more minutes. But this place was clearly not a good place for a single girl with my standard of living. Maybe that makes me a snob, I don't know, and I don't care. The first rule of self-defense is to not put yourself in a position where you have to use it.

So, instead, I went over and harassed John at his office for awhile. We ran some errands (well, okay he ran errands and I got dragged along), he showed me what has been going on with some of the illusions in the downtime (Watertight getting cleaned, Black and White getting a new packing case, Osmosis getting sold - thank goodness!), and hung out with Eduardo and his family for a bit (he and his wife run their business out of the other side of the warehouse, and they had their two supercute little kids with them that day). It was fun, and would have gotten me out of dealing with traffic on the way home if there hadn't been what looked like a fairly major accident near the 5/10/60/101 interchange. Took forever and a day to actually get on the 101, but after that, it was fine. (Although yes, John, I am aware that it would be far more convenient for me to NOT have to drive three hours each way to go home.)

Looks like I'm going back down on Friday and maybe Saturday to look at some more places. On the other hand, I've gotten a couple more phone calls regarding potential jobs, which is encouraging. And I'm doing my next ANG drill tomorrow and Thursday since John's next show is the first weekend in April. No idea what I'll be doing - just supposed to report to Sgt. Bivins tomorrow at 0830 and he said he'll have things for me to do.

Class tonight - yay! - and hopefully more knitting! The illusion scarf is officially half done already and I can't wait to get it finished up!