Back online...for now

I arrived safely in Michigan a couple of hours ago. I'm here until the 30th (Lord help us all), although it's really more the 29th since I leave at, oh, 8 am on the 30th. The untrusting bastards in my new apartment building all have their wireless accounts password protected, so I haven't been able to get online from home and all "blogging" sites are blocked on my work computer. Therefore, I'll be able to check in with y'all for the next 10 days or so.

The move went smoothly. It came down to the wire, but everything fell into place the day before the move. I was able to do it without springing for a moving truck--my new place was just a few miles from the old one, and I had friends moving carloads of boxes. Sadly, moving my furniture was only a few trips in the back of a Ford truck (although the guys did fit quite a lot into each of those trips, with their Tetris-like loading skillz). It only took a few hours (with a U-Haul, it would have been like 20 minutes, but whatever).

I really like my new place. I have brand new carpet and of course the walls were freshly painted, so that's cool. My favorite part of the apartment is over by the bedroom and bathroom. The bathroom has two doors--one leading out to the main part of the apartment and then one leading to the bedroom. On the way to the bedroom, though, is a little hallway with 2 huge closets on each side, giving it almost a walk-in-closet feel. It's got lots of storage and closets for a one bedroom, too, which is nice. My dining room area is obviously totally empty except for a bookcase, and my living room consists of my small couch, a tv stand and the TV, but overall it's starting to look like a (sparsely furnished) home. I'm kind of looking forward to slowly adding new pieces of furniture over the next few months. I bet I can make some really good garage sale finds. And it's MINE. No roommate. Oh, the giddiness of it all.

Everything else is fine. The kids were nuts this last week and about killed me, but now I'm freeeee till the 4th. I've been seeing a lot of Chad, of course (since I have my OWN DAMN PLACE and can do whatever I want), but we're still more friends than anything. Sort of. It's quite complicated. We care about each other in a more-than-friends way, but we also don't want to screw up our really close friendship. So we're kind of seeing what happens. I've been having so much fun with him, though. It's like having your best friend sleep over a lot (even on a school night, LOL). And for the record, he sleeps out on the couch when he's there. He says it's more comfortable than my bed. (Sometimes he'll lay in there with me, talking with me till I fall asleep, then he moves out to the living room.)

All in all, life is pretty good. Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. They obviously worked. I'm off to get my Facebook fix now (another site that's blocked from work). What's everyone else been up to?

SO. STRESSED.

Theoretically, I'm moving in a day and a half. I still don't know what my final deposit is going to be, and once I find out I have to run to the bank to get a cashier's check or money order....oh, and I still have to arrange to have the power turned on (so it better be able to be done same-or next-day)...all of this by Saturday. Yeah. A little stressed.

On the plus side, I'm pretty much packed.

I won't have internet hooked up right away, so worst case scenario, I won't be back online (as in the blog and Facebook; I can still check email from work) till next weekend, when I get to my mom's house. However, there's a good chance that someone in my new building will have wireless that my laptop can piggyback off (for free. Holla!) so you may be seeing me sooner.

Pray for me!

Operation: Tripoli

Girls' Weekenders (and Missy) will appreciate this.

On Friday, when my friends were over, I went to pull out The Best Game Ever (aka Tripoli)--and realized I had left it behind at my old place. In the month since I've moved, there have been a few times when I've remembered that I'd forgotten something, but I didn't care enough to make a trip back there and sneak back in for whatever it was. But this...this was different. This was TRIPOLI. So tonight, I staged a daring, middle-of-the-night (okay, it was 9 pm) rescue of my beloved game. I figured it was well worth another journey to the land of no power, lights or air. (While I was there, I found my curling iron, too, which I was ALSO looking for the other night. And I grabbed a pack of light bulbs, as well, just because they were there and so was I.)

From the looks of things, Brad still hasn't been back...I have no idea if he's planning on returning before the foreclosure officially takes place (whenever that may be), but he still has a couple of TVs there, plus a pretty sweet metal-and-class TV stand thing in his room. I'm not taking them yet because they're his and I don't want to burgle the guy (LOL. I said "burgle") but at the same time, if he's planning on just cutting his losses at this point, it'd be silly NOT to take them. So I'll probably go back once a month or so and see if he returns.

But for now, you can all breathe a sigh of relief. Tripoli is safe.

Home f'in SWEET home

I try to balance all of my maudlin Shawn posts with a positive one; so in keeping with that theme...

Eight days post-move, we are ready to reveal the new place. We have a couple of little boxes left to go but we're mostly done. And I'm not kidding, yo, it looks awesome.

My favorite part of the new place by FAR are the high cathedral ceilings in the living room (picture 3). It makes the whole room look SO big. And like I said on FB: come Christmas, we're going to be rocking a Rockefeller-like tree up in her'.

Moving: the rest of the story

I know most of you got the email about the big move yesterday (it was crazy hot, we were miserable, it rained, we had to bring everything all the way around the side building and then up 17 steps, REALLY LONG AND STEEP STEPS, to get it inside the new place). Here, though, are some extra details, details I didn't necessarily want to share with people like my dad and grandparents.

1) You know what sucks even more than moving? Having the majority of your moving crew show up late because they decided to go out the night before and celebrate the first week of school by getting schnockered on vodka and playing Partini all night (although hell, you all know *I* would have been there if I wasn't the Final Countdown to moving). We had to start loading the truck at 8 am because we needed to be TOTALLY done by 2:30 to return the truck (plus, you know, we needed to make a fast getaway at my old place, but more on that in a minute); unfortunately, even though we've had this lined up for a couple of months now, Andy (Hot Teacher) was the only one who showed up on time (uncoincidentally, he was NOT at last night's gathering); in fact, he even went with us to pick up the truck. Mike showed up about an hour and a half later, just as we were finishing up at my place (we had planned to be out of there much early than that, obviously, but we were down 3 men at the time), and then the other two rolled over just as we were starting to unload at the new place. Normally I would bitch about them getting there for the "easy" part (why DOES unloading always take an eighth of the time?), but in our case unloading was equally a bitch, due in part to THIS:

This picture doesn't do The Stairway to Heaven justice; you can only clearly see like 7 steps before it kind of blurs together at the bottom, but keep in mind that altogether, it has **17**. And it's STEEP. And narrow.

2) Here's a brief overview of my haul from the old place. I took the bookcase and 2 dressers that I was going to pay him an extra $100 for. At April's urging (actually, begging, cuz she loved it), we also took the suede (or suede like) cream loveseat, to which we assigned a rather generous $200 value. I left him a note explaining that this was in place of the $300 he took from me and DIDN'T give to the electric company.

However, that $300 past due balance wasn't even the FULL AMOUNT DUE. Oh no, on closer reading, that was just the amount needed to get the power turned back on. If he didn't pay it by a certain date, than the full amount would be due. With that in mind (and also the fact that this was only ONE utility that we knew about, not to mention the money I was giving him in rent even though he'd stopped paying the mortgage, AND the food I lost in the fridge when the power was turned off), we also took a runner (for you men out there, it's one of those long and thin rugs) for our hallway, this ionic air purifier for me (to help with the dog), a water purifier from the kitchen sink, and this really nice picture for our wall. I had to be careful; my friends wanted me to clean him out, but as I told Nikki, there's a fine line between "taking what I am owed" and "grand larceny." Still, I feel like I was pretty reasonable, although this was NOT a cheap piece of art that we snagged. (It looks awesome in the new place though, snicker snicker).

We are like 80% unpacked and settled already, due to staying up till 4 am last night, so pictures are coming soon. This is BY FAR the nicest, most grown up place I've ever lived--and I actually contributed to quite a few things to the place! I had more than I thought I did. Until then, here's a picture of our entrance (just inside the door is our Stairway to Heaven, which leads straight up to our place--our whole apartment is upstairs, we just have that private entrance and staircase to get there. It's not a 2-level place or anything).

Oh, and PS--Renee, tell John to bite me. You both know why. ;)

First day of school...

....is tomorrow. I'm as ready as I can be. I should probably figure out what I'm going to wear to make my morning a little less hectic, but otherwise, I'm set. I probably won't be able to sleep tonight, though.

Update on Mrs. A: she actually officially offered me a job last week, but it was as a reading specialist. This means I would work with/pull out the "low" kids in 3rd, 4th and 5th but I wouldn't have a classroom of my room (which is why I turned her down). I told her I was flattered that she thought of me but that I needed my own kids and to remember me at the end of the year when they're making offers for 2010-11.

I move this coming Saturday. In addition to setting up my room, writing lesson plans, attending trainings, GIVING trainings, etc, I've also been packing up my condo. I, in true Jen fashion, haven't really gotten that far yet, so it'll be a crazy week. The good news is that it's not like I have to have ALL my shit packed up and officially out of here next weekend; if I had to turn in keys or something, like when you're leaving an apartment, that'd be a different story. But my friends can help me move my furniture and whatever I have packed and ready to go, and then I'll still be able to kind of come and go over the next week or so and pick up any random crap. (Of course, KNOWING I'll be able to do that is, as you might imagine, contributing to my procrastination.)

OH!! And then I had my interview with Build a Bear yesterday. It actually went really, really well. Apparently there will be another round of interviews (I didn't realize that BaB was as competitive as, like, Harvard or something, LOL), but she pretty much told me that I've at least made it through to round 2 (although she still hasn't completed all of her round 1 interviews, so it may be awhile yet). She asked me a few retail-management questions (what would you do, etc), although I don't have any experience in that specific area, I do have retail experience and I've been a supervisor in a few of my past jobs, so I kind of put all of that together and, well, talked out of my ass. ;) I also threw in some key phrases like "encouraging teamwork", "focusing on each individual's strengths," "giving the employees ownership and emotional buy-in," and "making high customer service a non-negotiable." I almost CRIED at the pure poetic beauty of some of my answers. Interesting side note: after that customer-service answer, she told me that this particular store is #3 in customer satisfaction in the WHOLE COMPANY, so of course she LOVED that answer.

Oh yeah--and I've still been able to fit in a few "meetings" with my friends over the last week, as well.

So...that's what I've been up to. How are all of you?

Street legal

As I approach my one-year anniversary of living in Florida, I went down to the DMV today to obtain my Florida driver's license. (You're supposed to do it within 10 days of moving, so I just missed the deadline.) ;)

And how's THIS for irony: I got hit by a teenage kid today (who, by the way, looked about TWELVE)....in the parking lot of the DMV. We were both at a stoplight to leave the parking lot and enter the main road; for some reason, he decided to back up. (Needless to say, I was behind him.) When I realized he wasn't planning to stop, I started hitting the horn (but not soon enough, apparently. Either that or his reflexes sucked).

"I'm so sorry, ma'am * ," he said as he got out of the car. "I just got my license."

"When?" I asked. "Like 2 seconds ago?"

"No," he answered. "Like a week ago."

"Nice start," I replied.

Since he had just kissed my bumper, I let him off the hook. You could tell he was all shaken up and that this was his first "incident" so I couldn't even get that mad at him. I'm almost proud to be his "first," actually.

*Bastard.

Uh-oh

So Frank drops the bomb on me today and tells me that he's buying a condo, he put the down payment down yesterday and he's moving out in a couple months (end of April or so).

That puts me in quite a pickle.

I've been brainstorming the last few hours, and making phone calls, and heres what I've come up with.

1) Take over the lease and try to find a roommate. This would be nice because *I* wouldn't have to move; plus, I wouldn't have to worry about finding a new place and having to pay first month's rent and a security deposit. We'd just change the lease from his name to mine and life would go on as usual. The major flaw in this plan is FINDING a roommate, since all of my friends (teacher-friends) are all in leases until mid to late summer, depending on when they got down here. I thought about trying to do it on my own till they started getting out of their leases (Joelle and I, for example, had talked about living together when our leases were up), but there's just no way I can swing it on my own. Right now, I'm paying a flat $600 a month for my part of rent, utilities, etc. I found out tonight that rent alone is just over $1000 a month (yes, housing is VERY expensive down here), plus all the bills....I just can't do that on my own. So I would HAVE to find a roommate right away.

My best lead on that is actually another girl at school, who's out of her lease in late March (so the timing would be absolutely perfect) and has already said that she's going to be looking for a new place to live. The big drawback here is that this is the teacher who just had a baby, so I'd be living with an infant. Not that I dont LIKE babies...but...yeah. Still, it would really work out well for both of us, timing wise, etc--plus, I have a washer and dryer in the apt, and I know that that was something she didn't like about her current place --hers didn't, and as you know, you do a LOT of laundry with a baby.

Or, I could find a roommate the way Frank found ME, with roommates.com, but that's taking a big chance again....the whole living with a stranger thing worked out great with Frank, but i may not be that lucky next time.

2) Move into a one bedroom somewhere, but again, I'd have to shell out for first months rent (and security deposit, etc) which is a bit pricey......along these same lines, I know that some apartment complexes let you switch from one apartment to another in the same commplex and consider that "staying in your lease," so Frank's going to check with the office about that possibility (my taking over this lease from him and then switching to a one bedroom. THAT would be great, living on my own and still not having to pay first rent/security deposit, etc, if I can afford it, which I have to look into).

3) As a last resort, there's a teacher in our little social circle who has a condo with a spare (furnished) guestroom.I could ask her if I could rent that out from her through the summer, at least till the other teachers start getting freed up from THEIR current leases, and then move into a new place with my new roommate.

My big problem with options A and B at this point is getting furniture....all the furniture here belongs to Frank--shoot, I still dont have a BED. =-) He did say he'd leave some of it behind, like the entertainment center, couch and maybe dining room table....but I'm still looking at having to get a lot of stuff relatively soon. If I can stay here and just get a roommate, that will help a lot....but if I have extra costs associated with all this (like security deposit, etc, somewhere new) then I may have a bit of a problem.

So....I'm going to start exploring these options and we'll see what shapes up.