Apartment Blues (I)

There’s a certain flexibility that the unknown brings. It leaves you and your imagination the luxury of creating whatever you want out of certain stimuli. A little insight is all you need and the rest of the picture is filled in by the brain. Even the good Lord understood this fact and that was why he kept describing heaven to his disciples. A picture is worth a thousand words. He could have easily taken them there to see for themselves, and save Himself long-winded parables, but the hype is what makes you long for it more. Unfortunately though, unlike the wait for heaven, this “hype” is sometimes misleading.

A more canal example - a guy will prefer to see a lady in a low cut top and some tight jeans rather than the same lady running around buck-wild “umfufu” style. The latter denies their brain the opportunity to imagine, to create the best possible picture of what lies beneath. Because let’s face it, their imagination usually captures the idealistic sag-and-stretch-mark-free image which reality, more often than not, denies them. This weekend for me was a reminder that only heaven, well and LeBron James, might ever live up to and surpass their hype, all other things will fall varying levels below. One of those other things…My New Apartment.

The apartment I subleased during the summer was a big disappointment to say the least. The poor thing has been standing there for over a hundred years and no one seemed to have cared enough to do a renovation. Except of the plumbing system. Everything else looked like it was in its original condition. The bath tub had a huge window beside it, which if care was not taken, gave passers by unadulterated views of the female anatomy (soapified edition). Perhaps more suiting for a time when the pervert to normal human ratio was significantly lower. This same window was framed with wood. Any body with common sense will know that wood, water and heat produces nothing good. There was really no telling what member of the fungal world you will find growing on there every morning. We (my roommate and I) also happened to share the apartment with a family of mice, who despite all our efforts, felt they had as much right to the apartment as we did.

So you can imagine my joy when it finally came time to move out. I had passed by my new apartment daily all through out the summer because it was only a few blocks from mine. My friend (smart one) whom I was supposed to move in with had picked it out for us way before I even arrived in town. Unfortunately I never got a chance to check it out for myself. It looked like a modern apartment complex from the outside though. Nice security system, beautiful lights here and there. Modern, that was all I cared about.

I got the key from the Apartment Manager’s office somewhere on the other side of town. Unfortunately, this came with a forty minute lecture from a very sarcastic Ms. Manager. I usually appreciate sarcasm, except when it entails converting the 15 min break I sneaked off work to an hour long one. There goes my undercover operation. The key points of her lecture were

- The PROXIreader – Care and Uses: Turned out to be some card for building access that apparently could not be stored anywhere else but one’s wallet as the ever so fragile thingy could break if subjected to the strain of a key chain. She failed to mention if the user was responsible for replacing it if such damage occurred. But from the “it’s-for-your-own-good” look in her eye, I was sure there was a clause stating exactly that somewhere in the ten page lease.

- The Stress of Moving – Capturing it before it Captures you: Drink a lot of water, lift with your legs and not your back, blah blah blah. Since when did apartment management care so much about their tenants? They probably just wanted to make sure you were healthy enough to get back to work immediately after moving so there will be no excuses for a late rent payment. Sorry but I’m a bit cynical.

- Moving Heavy Furniture- Tips for working with an elevator of LIMITED capacity: Here she went on for about ten minutes about how it only made LOGICAL sense to carry furniture and other heavy things via the stairs and not the elevator. At this point I just nodded, all I wanted her to do was get done so I could get on my merry way. I could mentally see myself and some poor guy trying to haul a mattress and the boxed pieces of my life over five flights of stairs…not so logical Ms.Manager, not so logical. We’ll just have to see what exactly LIMITED really meant…