The 10 Commandments of Apartment Review Sites

So part of the moving process is figuring out the whole apartment hunting thing. My new job was awesome enough to give us transitional housing on campus, but as the space we're currently occupying is very small, we're hoping to get out of it and into a permanent place sooner, rather than later.

Searching for apartments is a little frustrating. I've only done it one other time in my life, and that's when I was entering grad school, and my parents helped, so I don't really remember much of the process. Aside from that, I've had on-campus positions where you don't really chose anything, except for maybe the color of the paint on your walls - they do all the choosing for you. So this has been a new experience for me, and even though Will has had more experience than me with it, it's been a few years since he's had to apartment hunt as well.

Looking at online review sites is incredibly frustrating since it seems like the only people who post on them tend to be the ones who are PISSED OFF at their current place.

1. If you write your review in all caps, I will ignore it completely.
2. Same if you don't capitalize at all. I understand it's a stylistic choice, but an apartment review website is not the place for it.
   
3. If you give someone 1 star based solely on your apartment tour, I will ignore you.
4. If you're complaining about it costing too much, and you knew how much it cost when you signed on, you're being a bit ridiculous.
   
5. I have spent the past 5 years dealing with students who complain about things being broken and not getting fixed who didn't tell anyone that they were broken. Don't do the same, and then whine about it in a review site.
   
6. If their policies are clearly posted about late rent, and you turn in your rent late, don't complain about that either.
7. Same with any other policies, including trash, cleaning up dog poo, and loud parties.
   
8. If you score your place with 5 stars, I'm going to look at it with a keen eye. It looks very suspicious if everyone else hates it and you're the only 5. I won't discount your opinion entirely, but I will take it with a grain of salt.
9. If you're racist or bigoted in any way, I will discount your opinion as invalid.
10. If you write about animal sacrifices, hooded figures, and ghost midgets, I will mock you openly.
    

In San Antonio!

We made it! The road trip was fun, and I'd tell you I was going to go back and recap it, but I still haven't finished recapping our trip to Thailand and Singapore last summer, so don't hold your breath. This way, if I do it, you'll be pleasantly surprised, rather than just being sad and disappointed when I don't.

So far we're finding San Antonio nice, but hot. In some ways, it's really weird to be back, because it seems like we never left, but in other ways it's weird and foreign because San Antonio has stayed the same, but we've changed. I suppose all that is normal, though.

So now it's just the adjusting, the apartment hunting, the settling in, and on Monday, the work starting! I'm nervous, but also excited about all of the above - hopefully the excited will be more warranted than the nervous!

Anniversary

So yesterday was Will's and my 3rd wedding anniversary. On our 3 month wedding anniversary, as well as our 1st and 2nd, we went to BOA Steakhouse in Santa Monica and stuffed ourselves with steak and seafood. This year, knowing that it was going to be our last in LA, we went to their Hollywood location to mix it up a bit. It was a little fancier than the Santa Monica location, but we still stuffed ourselves with steak and seafood and had a grand old time. And, in a very LA moment, about halfway through dinner Tyler Perry was seated next to us! He was eating alone and a handful of times people stopped to talk to him. I'd think that'd get really annoying really quick, but he was very gracious about the whole thing.

In other news, packing is going well, and I am so incredibly grateful for my husband. I hate packing and moving, and he's really jumped on it all, so that I'm mainly just doing the stuff that is specifically mine, and my office. He's made about a billion trips back and forth from the storage unit and Goodwill, and to drop off items we're selling on Craigslist and everything else you need to do when you move, and I don't know how this would have happened without his amazingness.

3 conversations I fully expect to have in the next few months

Me: Ugh. *comment about how transitioning to middle management is hard*
Briana: TOLD YOU SO

Me: Ugh. *comment about the weather*
Marci: TOLD YOU SO

Me: Ugh. *comment about politics*
Sara: TOLD YOU SO

Packing

We got a packet from our moving company, and it has this whole list of things that you need to do when you're moving. Will and I were flipping through it, and saw that it starts with "6 weeks before you move." We kind of chuckled and kept going through "4-5 weeks before you move," and past "3 weeks before you move," settling at "2 weeks before you move." Though, really, we're at 10 days before we move.

Oops?

Moving

So I've accepted a position at a university in Texas, and our time LA is quickly coming to a close. It's been a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, because I've made amazing friends here and have grown and learned so much over the past 3 years. Even though I know that the decision to move is the right one for personal reasons, and that professionally, this new position is going to be a great step, I kind of wish we could just stay here. But everything changes, so I guess you have to change with it.

The timeline is pretty quick - my last day of work is on the 23rd, the moving company comes on the 26th, and we drive out on the 27th. At some point in that we have to start packing, finish packing, move everything from our storage unit, close out all my work stuff, and figure out our drive from LA to Texas. Oh, and maybe squeeze in a goodbye party if we can make that work as well.

Here goes nothing!

Memorial Day Road Trip

Friday was my last day of work until the middle of July, and in order to celebrate, I decided we ought to go on a road trip. However, we didn't really feel like doing much planning, so we decided to just get in the car and drive. We had a general idea of where we were going (East, and visiting the Saltan Sea at some point) but aside from that, we were really open.

Will sent an email to our parents detailing the trip, so rather than re-creating the wheel, I'll just quote the email. He included links and everything!

The trip was really fun. We ended up having Mexican food in Palm Springs, looping around the Salton Sea, staying overnight in an almost-border-town called Brawley, and then driving back through Anzo Borrego state park.

The Salton Sea area is a very strange place... there are tons of abandoned towns and houses, ruined beaches, and dead fish line the shore. Nearby Slab City is an abandoned military base inhabited by drifters, with one man's painted mountain becoming a lifelong obsession. Brawley was a tiny farm town with a surprisingly nice Best Western and a great diner in the middle of nowhere called Brownies. On our way back we drove through a surprising desert town called Borrego Springs, which is what people say Palm Springs was like 30 years ago. It was designated as California's first International Dark-Sky Community so it is really popular with astronomers. Then we ascended a pretty steep mountain that reminded us a lot of the Northern coast of CA and also driving up Haleakala volcano in Maui (so we were well prepared). We passed by picturesque Lake Henshaw on our way back to southern LA, and then we finished off the trip in Irvine at a microbrewery!

Here's a map of the trip, in case one of your Strengths is input, and you need to know more.

Some of the things we saw included:

Lots of palm trees in Palm Springs, and then palm tree nurseries in the middle of the desert as we kept going east.


Salvation Mountain, also in the middle of the desert.


A diner with some surprisingly awesome chicken fried steak.


And some pretty great views.

All in all, a really fun Memorial Day Weekend!

My Sister, JD

So this past weekend we took a quick trip back to Texas to see my AMAZING sister graduate from law school. I left Texas and moved out to LA right before she started law school, so in some ways it's weird for me to think that she's all done, since for the most part, the only real glimpses I saw of the process were via phone conversations, tweets, and facebook updates. But nonetheless she's done! Now she just gets to study for the bar, which I hear is a blast!




A hundred years ago, UT decided that their graduates should start wearing regalia, but no one invited the Law School to the meeting where they made that decision. So, in protest, the law school decided that they wouldn't wear any, and instead just wear white suits, and upon crossing the stage be pinned with a sunflower. They call this the Sunflower Ceremony. This makes my sister rather grumpy, because she wanted regalia, gosh darn it! But she didn't get any, so instead pretend like she's wearing poofy Doctoral gown and a velvet tam. And a purple hood! Sometimes, I think I should go to law school just because they get purple hoods, and my hood is just light blue. But enough about me. MY BABY SISTER IS A LAWYER!

So proud.

May the Fourth Be With You!

I'm a nerd. If you're reading this, you probably knew that, but just in case there was any doubt, here's confirmation. Totally a nerd.

One of my nerdier loves is Star Wars. I grew up watching it, and when my dad (also a nerd) got surround sound for our living room, he'd always show it off by playing the Endor speeder chase scene to anyone who came to visit. It definitely highlighted the awesomeness that was our surround sound, and increased both my sister's and my love for the trilogy.

So today, the most awesome of days, is May 4, also known as "May the fourth be with you" also known as "Star Wars Day." For the past 2 years I've hosted a May the Fourth be with you party in my apartment where we watch one of the movies and eat Star Wars themed food. Today is no exception, though I've gone significantly less elaborate with the food choices this year, since I'm on duty and can't spend a lot of time preparing. Nonetheless I'm excited - this year is Return of the Jedi which is totally my favorite (partially because it has the speeder chase scene that was a crucial part of my fanboy formation.)

For those of you who aren't able to make it to my party, but still want to celebrate, I leave you with the original trilogy in 2 1/2 minutes, with legos. It's kind of awesome.




Happy Star Wars Day!

Cleaning out our storage space, or: Carmen is a pack rat

So this weekend Will really wanted to start going through our storage space to see if we could downsize it. He brought me along because I have, like, 4+ boxes that I brought from Texas that haven't been touched. I went through it, and decided that I definitely have a packrat problem.

I found, among other things, a bunch of notes from grad school, my RA training binder from my senior year, a script from a Star Wars fanfilm that my friends in Australia made in 2002, the notebooks that Will and I got at Engaged Encounter, RA training schedules from Trinity in 2005 and 2006, forms for room changes at Texas State in 2004, unopened statements from ING (what? I track online!), and lots and lots of books.

Some of it I tossed, some of it I didn't. In the end, we decided to toss a box, sell a box, donate a bag, and take a bag home.


I'd say it was a very productive day.