Apartment?

So, as of yesterday, Tirithien and I have an application in to a very nice apartment complex on the south side of Toledo. The grounds are beautifully landscaped with many oak trees, there's a swimming pool, and the place just has a very wholesome feel to it. The apartments themselves are lovely-- not incredibly fancy, but very nice. And each unit has its own washer and dryer!

Laundry has been one of the banes of my existence since I started living in apartments. Lugging the basket up and down so many stairs... and I really don't do all that well with stairs even when I'm not carrying anything. (I guess it comes of having not grown up with stairs; almost no houses in Florida have them.) And where I am now, I actually have to go outside to get to the door that leads to the laundry room. Which is definitely NOT fun in the deeps of January.

Plus each individual building has locked entry. No more strangers on my porch at 1 AM!

So, keep your fingers crossed that we will be approved!

Alleviating Boredom

Today I got this email from my Evil friend Joe:

"Hey! Update your blog. I'm bored. ;) "

So, now it's updated.

Enjoy. :-p

Morning Notes

Dear Durango Driver,

Any elementary school science student can tell you that two pieces of matter can not occupy the same space at the same time. Motor vehicles are mostly made of matter. Therefore, you really need to look AND signal before changing lanes. Your car is made of matter. My car is made of matter. So, since they are made of matter and can't occupy the same space, WHY the bloody hell did you attempt to change lanes on top of me? My car is bright red! How do you not see a bright red car? Oh, and flipping me off for your idiocy was just a brilliant touch of class.


Dear Explorer Driver,

Now, I don't know how they do things on your planet, but here, if there is no left turn signal and you're waiting to turn left, the drivers coming from the opposite direction who are going straight through get to go first. So it is, has been, and ever shall be, road without end, amen. Really, it's much safer for all of us if we all play that way.


Dear Executive Secretary,

Why are you driving so fast through the parking lot? Why the attempt to run down a poor soggy pedestrian? And that is NOT a parking space you park in every day! It has stripes on it! What makes you so special?


Dear umbrella,

As if turning inside out wasn't enough, you had to also develop a hole? *sigh*


Dear self,

Why did you get up this morning?

And the winner is...

Congratulations to the 2006 Stanley Cup winning Carolina Hurricanes! It was one heck of a series. And I have to say I'm glad the Oilers didn't win (even though they played amazingly well all playoffs long), seeing as how they beat the Red Wings. But I like Carolina on their own merit, too. They have a lot of ties to the Detroit area. The team owner, Peter Karmanos, is the owner of Compuware and also started the Karmanos Cancer Institute, which has done wonderful things. Players Aaron Ward and Ray Whitney are former Red Wings. Player Doug Weight is a native of the area. So it's sort of a vicarious win, but then again, it's sort of instinctive to root for the team in red jerseys. ;-)

Here is the Playoff MVP, recipient of the Conn Smythe Trophy, Hurricanes goalie Cam Ward. He's only 22 years old! And he's the first rookie to backstop a team to the Cup since Patrick Roy did so for the Montreal Canadiens. Not bad, not bad at all! I suppose with this I reveal myself as being NOT a hockey purist. You know, one of those folks who think only Northern cities deserve NHL teams? I say if there's a market for it, I've no problem with any particular city having a team! And clearly the Hurricanes have some rabid fans.

It was a well fought series, gentlemen. Enjoy the spoils of your victory. :-)

Separating from Now so I can get to Later

Everything is falling into place with an amazing amount of precision. Tirithien has been accepted to his Master’s degree program, and I’m approved for a student loan that not only will pay for the cost of an accredited course in medical transcription, but will provide me with extra money for living expenses for awhile. The job outlook is excellent. We’ve found an apartment we love (at least on the outside) and we’re going to make an appointment to see the inside and the apartment facilities sometime this week.

Basically, I’m clear to move to Ohio as soon as we have a place to go.

But this means I had to tell my friends from church that I would be leaving them soon.

And that was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

Given all my questions of faith, I thought it would be an easy enough thing to do. Well enough for me to take some time away from organized religion to sort things out on my own for awhile! But faith in the abstract is a very different thing from church friends in the concrete.

See, Grace Church is a tiny one. We had five people show up to sing for the choir on the last Sunday choir met before summer break, and the rest of the church is sized proportionately. So everyone is extremely close.

I told my choir friends first that day. It seemed okay enough. I explained how all my prospects were better just a little further south, and I would still be able to visit frequently, and all. But these ladies have been my “aunties” for going on three years now. They love me and I love them. We all got through the service okay, until the end.

There’s a little bit of a song of thanks we sing after every Communion, while the priest is straightening up all the altar tools and getting ready for the final blessing. For some reason this song carries all the weight of the emotions of the whole church—the last service by our old priest, many of us were crying too much to get through it. So during this song, I had the sudden thought of, “I won’t be wearing this choir robe again.” And then I happened to look to my left, to my friend Sharon, who apparently had a similar thought at the same time, and we both started to cry.

I hadn’t been expecting this. And then as I was leaving the sanctuary after service, the priest noticed my red eyes and asked what was wrong. And that set me off again.

I know I’m going on to wonderful things, but the process of cutting the ties so I can actually go is more painful than I’d expected.

Passing Through Nohio

Today after work, my apartment hunting begins! Not in any great detail yet, but I have a nice list of apartments for which I'm going to go look at and investigate the neighborhoods and such. The point of actually taking apartment tours and filling out applications will come later.

The scary part?

All the apartments on my list are in Ohio.

Aiiiieeee!

Clearly, something is wrong with me. ;-)

Oh, and by the way, there is a narrow strip of land between the "Welcome to Michigan" and "Welcome to Ohio" signs on I-75. To whom does this belong? It's not in any state! Is it the width of the border line painted on maps? Anyway, it has now been named "Nohio."

More Neighborhood Weirdness

So, aside from my now-released-from-jail neighbor who stands at his window and stares at me every time I am outside, and the drunk woman with the abusive boyfriend who keeps begging to use my cell phone, we can now welcome Slurring Late Night Wanderer to the neighborhood pantheon.

About 1:00 AM Monday morning, I heard banging on my door. (My door shares a common porch with three other apartments.) Very, very weird. So I got up and went to the door, thinking there was maybe an emergency. The following is a dramatic re-enactment of that night:

Me: Who's there?
Man: One of your nearby neighbors.
Me: I am not opening this door.
Man: Please, ma'am, I just need some change so I can catch the bus to go see my poor sick uncle.
Me: There is no bus service on this road. GO AWAY, or I am calling the police.
Man: Oh, okay, ma'am. Sorry to bother you.

I really need a new place to live.