On the move

Mother of God what a day. I took possession of the new apartment this afternoon. Of course it always looks smaller when you go back to move in but it's actually the perfect amount of space for the few possessions I still hold in this world. I brought in the first load of odd items that are light enough to carry that I don't trust to the movers, like my four surviving plants, my ancient globe that still shows the Belgian Congo and my plaster grotto sculpture.

I expected to be done in a hour. It took four by the time I resolved the initial issues. I got into the place and there was no electricity. The electric company told me it was on. Of course they're short staffed in the office this afternoon and really busy because it's Friday so you can't reach them by phone so I had to drive over to the office to find out why. Turns out it was the breakers were off. Duh. Leave it to me not to even think of checking.

So I get the power on and the stupid alarm system is beeping and I have no idea how to turn it off. So I drive back to the office again. Then I have to go back to the apartment and wait for the maintainence guy to show me what to do. In the interim, I started punching buttons on the cursed thing and got it to stop beeping. Lucky guess that the default code would be 1234.

Meanwhile, while I'm doing the paperwork, I got a look at some potential neighbors. It was less than reassuring. One young woman walked in and wanted to get an apartment that hot minute because her abusive husband kicked her out of the house. More comforting was that they wouldn't do it. I also got a look at some of my building neighbors. It looks like an old lady on the first floor and my immediate next door neighbor is a really fat guy with a kid. There was another woman about my age who looked normal though. I think she's on the first floor.

Overall though, I'm happy enough with it. The apartments seem to be pretty well soundproofed. I love my deck. The windows work well and the water pressure looks good. The place wasn't at all hot even though it was a warm day and it's been closed up for a while. The maintainence guy is pretty cool and he installed my modem so I'll ready to rock when I move in on Sunday and even better, they're running some kind of special so I get six months of free internet access on top of my senior citizen discount on the rent.

Overall it's probably the least expensive move I've ever made even though the electric company made me leave a $300 deposit before they would give me an account. I'm actually looking forward to being there.