I know, I know, I’ve sucked at blogging lately. It will get better over the next week, I promise. And I do have excuses!
First, I moved. Which is a whole lot more difficult than it sounds. We spent two full days apartment-hunting without much luck — the neighborhoods we were looking in (East Village, Lower East Side) don’t have great vacancy rates right now, and we were getting pretty depressed at the prospect at staying in our old neighborhood (Upper East Side) or moving to the financial district (Hell-hole). Everything we saw in our ideal neighborhoods was both tiny and disgusting. So when we found a decent-sized apartment about three weeks ago, we put a deposit down on it immediately, despite the fact that the bathroom was yet to be re-done. The super, Jose, (who we suspect is either an alcoholic or a drug addict, although he may just be a little off) told us we could move in on August 25th, which was fantastic because we had to be out of our apartment by the 31st, and it would make all of our lives easier if we could move downtown a few days early.
Well. Shannon (my room mate) went to the apartment on the 25th to pick up the keys from Jose. Jose had no idea who she was or what she was doing there, and informed her that the bathroom still wasn’t done, and wouldn’t be done for a few more days — by Sept. 1st at the earliest. Which is clearly a problem, since our lease started on August 25th, and we needed to be out of our uptown apartment before the 1st. We called the management company, who are possibly more incompetent than the super, and told us that the lease says Sept. 1st. “We know that,” Shannon explained, “But look at the bottom section. There’s an addendum, which says that we’ll pay extra to move in a few days early. It’s right there, at the bottom.” Apparently they were unable to locate the very clearly placed addendum at the bottom of the lease, and continued to insist that it started Sept. 1st. “I have another document from the brokerage company that says August 25th,” Shannon told them. “I can fax it to you.” Nope. September 1st.
Next we call our broker, who isn’t picking up his phone. We leave several messages and don’t get a call back. Now, I understand that brokers probably don’t feel like it’s their responsbility to take care of this, but we paid those fools $4,000 to basically do nothing — they can do ten minutes of work for it. Finally I call again and leave a message saying that we’re coming down to their office to discuss this in person — and get a call back within 15 minutes, I’m assuming because they don’t want two disgruntled customers storming into the office and scaring away business. They assure us that the lease started on the 25th, and they say they’ll go down to the apartment and check it out.
A few hours later they call back. The bathroom isn’t anywhere near done, they say, but it will definitely be done by the first. We arrange to move all of our stuff in on Wednesday August 30th, because we need it out of our apartment. They tell us that we can move it all into Shannon’s bedroom, since the kitchen and my bedroom will be full of construction equipment for the bathroom.
Sounds good to us. We find a moving company, and make an appointment four days in advance. They day before we’re supposed to move, we call and confirm our 5pm moving time, and we pack up all our stuff. Wednesday at 5pm rolls around. No movers. At 5:30 we call, and are told that they’re running two hours late, and won’t be at the apartment until 7. We’re pissed, because we both have school the next day and we know that moving will take at least five hours. But what else can we do? We suck it up and wait until 7. No movers. We call again. “Their van broke down,” the guy on the phone tells us. “They’re waiting for a tow truck.” You have got to be fucking kidding. “They’ll be there at 10,” he says. Which is a number that he’s clearly just making up, as he obviously has no idea what’s even going on. I do a little yelling into the phone, and then Shannon and I go outside looking for a place to steal wireless from, since we had already packed up our router and couldn’t get internet in the apartment. We find an ad on Craig’s List for a last-minute mover, a guy who says he as a reliable crew and can come almost any time. We call, and he tells us that he’s on a job right now, but can be at our place by 10. We tell him what we need to move: Two full beds, a kitchen table, a desk, four dressers, some chairs, and about 15 boxes. Not a problem, he says, he’ll be there at 10. We’re irritated that it’s so late, but hey, we’ll take what we can get at that point — and we’d rather be up all night moving than wait for Thursday, which is the last possible day that we can be out of the apartment.
We have a nice sushi dinner while we wait.
Ten o’clock rolls around. No mover. He finally shows up at 11 — alone. And skinny. And hipster-y. And with a white Chevy van instead of a moving truck. Also possibly stoned. Fuck. He walks in the apartment, takes a look around and goes, “Woah, you guys have a lot of stuff.” Yeah, dumbass, two full beds, a kitchen table, a desk, four dressers, some chairs, and about 15 boxes, just like I told you on the phone. “This is gonna take a really long time,” he says. Yeah, we know. “No, I mean, this is gonna take a really long time.” We know. That’s ok, we’re prepared for it. “No, it’s gonna take a really long time.” Ok, how long? “Really long.” Like… five hours long? “A really, really long time.” Well, that’s ok, we tell him. We need to have all of this out by tomorrow, so that’s fine if it takes a while. “Well,” he says, “I have to work at 8am tomorrow, so…” You’re joking. “I think you guys would be better off trying to find someone tomorrow,” he tells us. We just stare at him. “Yeah, this is gonna take a really long time. Find someone tomorrow.” And he walks out the door.
We sit down, surrounded by boxes, and start to laugh hysterically. At some point we both also cry while we’re laughing. And what can we do? She goes to her boyfriend Nick’s apartment, and I stay at a friend’s. The next morning I skip school (it was her first day at the school she’s student teaching at, so she couldn’t miss it), Nick calls in sick to work, finds movers for us, and we spend the day moving from the Upper East Side to the East Village. The boyfriend did good work, and hired us movers who not only showed up, but showed up early — with an entire truck that fit all of our stuff. Amazing. The whole ordeal took about four hours, but it got done.
Good, right? Especially since at this point it’s the 31st, and so the apartment should be pretty much ready for us to start living there the next day?
Wrong. We walk in and there’s shit everywhere. Shannon’s room is cleared out, so we put all of our stuff in there, but there is equipment and paint and general mess all over the kitchen and all in my bedroom. The bathoom doesn’t even have fixtures in it yet. Nor does it have a floor. There is no possible way that it’s going to be ready by the following day.
I call the management company yet again, and speak to a woman whose listening skills aren’t the greatest — as in, I say three words and she interrupts me, then gets frustrated when she doesn’t understand what’s going on. She says that the bathroom will be ready by the next day. I try and explain that it is physically impossible for that bathoom to be ready by the next day. She says she’ll call the contractor and call me back. It’s now five days later and I still haven’t heard back.
Luckily, we found the contractor in the building, and he’s the only competent person we’ve dealt with this entire time. No, the bathroom will not be ready by the first, he tells us, but it will definitely be ready by Monday. Ok.
So I escaped the city for the weekend and went out to the Hamptons, which was nice, except we got rained on the entire time and so I didn’t come back with much of a tan. And I didn’t have internet access, and so blogging was a no-go. Got back Monday afternoon, and went to the apartment. Bathroom is done, and it’s lovely. The apartment is adorable. My room is tiny, but I had the big room last year and so it’s Shannon’s turn. And my little tiny room is kind of cute — it works well, I think, with my Turkish bedspread and my red/orange/pink color scheme. We got it pretty much all set up, and even bought curtains. Curtains! I feel like a real grown-up living in a place with curtains. We still don’t have internet, but will be placing a call to TimeWarner today and hopefully will get it all together soon. We drank some wine, ate some pomme frittes with mango chutney mayo from the place next door, and went to bed happy.
Until we woke up this morning and discovered that there was no hot water. I braved it in the freezing cold shower anyway, until the water turned completely off. It came back on a few minutes later, so Shannon got to take a cold shower too, but it was not pleasant. Hopefully that’ll be fixed soon.
So that’s where I’ve been. And my computer is still at a friend’s place, since I didn’t want to leave it unattended in the apartment while construction workers were coming in and out all day. We don’t have internet anyway, so it’s no big loss, but blogging will probably be fairly light until I get it back — which will hopefully happen this evening, but I’m not counting on it. I may, however, decide to flee New York City and move to, say, San Francisco (or anywhere else in the world), where I suspect it’s a little easier to get things done.