Goodbye Apartment

I'm sad. We've moved, and our inner city, ghetto, subsidised housing apartment is now just a page in the history books. There were so many things that annoyed me about that place that I can't really understand why I'm sad to leave. Let me re-cap all of the things that went wrong in Broadway. Maybe that will help me feel better about our new place.

1. We were initially told the wrong monthly rental price. The actual rental price turned out to be $100 more than what we were told originally. We didn't find this out until about a week before move-in.
2. We were told that we would get two parking permits that would allow us to park our car in the apartment complex's garage. We only ever got one. In October, they told me I'd get the second one in November, in November, they told me January. In January, they told me February. Then I gave up.
3. A pipe burst in the bathroom the first week we were there. It flooded our bathroom and got the carpet in the living room soaking wet. I had to physically plug the leak with my hand while Emily called emergency maintenance.
4. The emergency maintenance number in the Welcome book we had was wrong. Emily somehow managed to find the right number, and maintenance eventually did come.
5. Emily had a package of contacts delivered to our apartment. We never got a notice in our mailbox saying something like "You have a package. Please come to the leasing office to pick it up." We never got a phone call, no email, nothing! They had the package for over two weeks! Had Emily not called to ask, she probably would have never gotten them. Utterly ridiculous! When she mentioned this to management, they reply was "We don't really like holding packages for people. We prefer that our residents have them delivered elsewhere."
6. Everytime someone came into the main lobby, a gush of wind was generated by the door, which caused our door to rattle. Believe it or not, this happened about every 10 minutes.
7. Everytime someone held the door open for more than 5 seconds, an alarm would sound (something like "whoop..........whoop..........whoop..........whoop." After about 5 more seconds, the alarm's urgency would pick up to something like "whoop...whoop...whoop...whoop...whoop." Keep in mind that this alarm was approximately as loud as sitting front row at a Metallica concert (though, I must admit the alarm was probably more musically gifted than Metallica ).
8. Sometime during the first few weeks of living in this apartment, the closet door in the bathroom popped off of its hinges.
9. The air conditioning unit leaked and semi-flooded our laundry room (on more than one occassion).
10. The children in our neighorbood were, for some reason, obsessed with our apartment (probably because of our "elegant double wooden doors). They would randomly (at any hour) knock on our door and ask to see our apartment. Emily make the mistake of letting them in once. They started looking through our photots, sat down on the couch, and asked questions about everything for approximately 2 hours. We could not get them to leave.
11. We stopped letting them in our apartment, but they didn't stop the knocking. They knew when we were home, and they would knock incessantly on the door (for like 10 minutes) trying to get us to open up. We didn't.
12. The children were like vultures when we tried to get into our complex. They would all huddle around the door, and when I'd swipe my swipe card they would all rush in in front of me. No "excuse me", no "thank you", just a bunch of rude children pushing and shoving their way past me.
13. There were (what Emily believes were rats or mice) living in our bedroom walls. Personally, I think it was a muscrat because the scratching sounds they kept us awake at night were WAY to loud to have come from any mouse.
14. The people who lived above us had elephant feet, which I know is a common problem for apartment dwellers with people living above them, but these people took it to a whole new level. Plus, their kitchen was right above our bedroom, so everytime they moved a chair (which turned out to be about every 10 mintues between the hours of 10pm and 5am) we heard it.
15. The punks up on the 4th floor were trouble-makers. They had their friend living with them, who would park in our apartment garage without a permit (and never got towed I might add). And one night around 3am, they pulled the fire alarm in our building and we all had to evacuate. I did not enjoy that.

So that's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure there is more. You'd think all of this re-capping would make me feel just great about leaving. But it doesn't.

Maybe it's because it was our first place together, and I know we can never get that back. Maybe it's because the apartment design (while completly impracticaly) was just really cool. Maybe it's becuase we had a laundry room right in our apartment that was very convenient (not in a dungeon like our new place). I dunno... I'm glad to be getting away from all of the annoyances, but I'm still going to miss that place. We can't walk to Church anymore. That's a bummer.

Well I've done nothing but complain up to this point, so maybe I should end on a positive note about our new place. It has a deck. This is a good thing. A deck means we can buy a charcoal grill, and this is a very

So hopefully, before long, I'll have some new recipes for everyone. And if all goes well, perhaps I'll have some good grilling recipes. Expect a steep learning curve though. Grilling, from what I understand, is not that easy right off that bat.

Comments welcome.