Apartments and moving

[rowyn]

For four months, two thirds of my apartment has not had a functioning thermostat, which annoys me greatly. I asked Lut to call the building owner (as opposed to the building manager, who has, after all, been blowing us off for four months) and complain to him. I suppose when that doesn't accomplish anything, I'll send letters to the health department and the Better Business Bureau.

But as inconvenient as the issue with the thermostat is, it's not what's really bugging me about the apartment situation. We use the room with a functioning thermostat most of the time, and for most of the summer, we've been able to get comfortable by opening windows, and having them switch the semi-permanent setting around. It's been off for the last couple of weeks, which has been fine. And I know how to turn it back on, if I do risk electrocution in doing so, and if Lut doesn't want me to because he thinks it might give the building manager an exuse to blame the troubles on us.

Anyway, what's bugging me today is that a couple of weeks ago, the office received a package for us and didn't tell us. Normally they leave a note on our mailbox. This time, Lut only found out because he happened to check the site he'd ordered it from, and they said it had arrived. The office had had it for more than 24 hours without notifying us, before Lut picked it up.

We rarely get packages. But it's been eating at me, this morning, that if the office hangs onto my packages, I have no way of finding out short of marching in there and asking them periodically. I don't know if their failure to notify us was malice or incompetence. I don't know if they're going to graduate to outright stealing packages; I don't know what would possess them to do so, but, quite frankly, I have zero faith in them. They've been lying to me for months about the thermostat issue. Why should I assume they wouldn't lie about other things?

The logical thing to do is move and escape these creeps. The thing is ... I don't want to move. I hate moving. I hate spending money and I hate everything else that attends moving. And if I'm going to go to all the trouble of moving, I want to move somewhere I can spend the rest of my life, because I don't want to ever have to move again. And I don't know where I want to spend the rest of my life.

Maybe I should buy a motorhome and live in it. Then if I wanted to move, I could just start the engine and drive there.

Sure would be a lot easier than packing and unpacking.

Comments

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Ah, motorhomes have their own hassles. For one thing, they exert a mysterious attraction on tornados in the midwest, I hear tell. ;)

Well, of course, you could always move down to Orlando! Sure, it'd be hotter in the summer, but it's generally a given that everyone MUST have a working A/C.

(It's fair to mention, though, that I had problems with the A/C in my apartment down here, but it wasn't for lack of attention from maintenance: they'd always get in the same day or the next day after I would report a problem, and it would work a while. The trouble was that it just kept breaking down. =P Hmm. Okay, so that's not the best sales pitch, eh?)

If I were to pick a spot to move to, with all the accompanying hassles, I think that my first choice would be back to Asheville, North Carolina. Boy, I had a great deal when I had an apartment there! It was $400 a month, and that included water. The owner would check by on occasion to make sure everything was working just fine - and it always was. The apartment wasn't especially big, but it was well laid-out, and the kitchen was wider than the one I have now. (I could actually do big cooking projects in it.) The back yard had a hiking trail that went into the woods and all the way around the mountain. The front yard had a great view into the valley. It was just a short hop from the main highway that would take me anywhere worth getting to in the area. (10 minute drive, during rush hour, to and from work in the downtown area.)

(Sob!) I miss that place. Only real drawback (aside from, well, that it was small compared to what I've got now) was that you'd be out of luck if you had a banged up old vehicle that didn't have enough "oomph" to get up the steep roads leading up the side of the mountain to get there.

Fortunately, I never had any problems with it, except when my truck blew up and caught on fire trying to get up the hill. And that only happened once. And it was a death trap hunk of junk anyway.

[rowyn]

I know. I wouldn't want to live in a motorhome in the midwest. But there's something really appealing about the notion of never having to pack up my stuff to move again. :D

And think -- I could go to get groceries in it, and just unload everything directly into the kitchen. No more carrying stuff upstairs for me!

I know, I know, I'm being silly. But a girl can dream, right?

Ideally, I'd like to retire to someplace cheap, near some small cluster of my friends, and write for living. But first, I ought to prove that I can write for a living, or at least for some small amount of income. :)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Well, I remember when I was a kid, I imagined that I'd never get a house. Instead, I'd have this oversized van that would have all these clever things that could fold out, including mounting brackets for a tent canopy to attach to the side, and I'd have the ultimate mobile home.

And then I got older and more boring. ;)

[rowyn]

Yeah. What the heck *are* we thinking, getting staid like this and giving up on all those cool childhood ideas, just when we're able to afford them? :D

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Afford? Suddenly, I recall just why it is I never do any of those crazy cool things....