This piece came out after the Large Hadron Collider came online for the first time . . . and then blew a fuse and was offline again for a long time. Having visited the RHIC in Brookhaven recently, I thought it appropriate to revisit.
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Well, Armageddon seems to be at hand, but it wasn’t caused by the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, as predicted. Apparently, the Large Hadron Collider worked wonderfully for all of an hour before it blew up and became inoperable until next spring.
But fear not, end-of-days-junkies. We still have the largest collapse of a bank ever in the history of the United States (mine, as it happens), a firesale of another asset firm, and the inability of the nation’s top money minds to solve this whole mess. As the failed bank would say, Who-hoo!
As if all of that weren’t bad enough, I’ve just been through my own personal Seventh Circle of Hell: I just moved.
But fear not, end-of-days-junkies. We still have the largest collapse of a bank ever in the history of the United States (mine, as it happens), a firesale of another asset firm, and the inability of the nation’s top money minds to solve this whole mess. As the failed bank would say, Who-hoo!
As if all of that weren’t bad enough, I’ve just been through my own personal Seventh Circle of Hell: I just moved.
Have you ever heard the saying, “You don’t own stuff, stuff owns you?” No? Okay, then that’s probably something that my dad made up when I was a kid. He did that a lot. Actually, most of the major pop culture references of my day are things I thought my dad made up. The vast majority of Beatles' songs, for example, I thought were stolen from my Dad.
Made-up or not, though, the above statement is true. Except that stuff doesn’t so much own you as it enslaves you, beats all resistance out of you until you beg for mercy, and makes you vow to give up all of your possessions and live off of the land in a Canadian hut made of sticks and eat bugs for the rest of your life. This sounds like paradise after moving.
I can’t complain too much, however, because part of my involvement in this Seventh Circle was voluntary. It was, after all, my decision to move out of my current apartment. Of course, it wasn’t my decision to get thrown out of my previous apartment, a lovely basement studio that turned out to be spectacularly illegal. I didn’t know that; my landlord just must have forgotten to tell me that tiny little bit of information. You’d think it would’ve come up in the nearly three years I lived there, but no. Guess a good time just never presented itself.
So, imagine my surprise when I got a call saying that I had to move out of my apartment last April. In three days. While I wasn’t even in town that week. The call came from a friend who was watching the place for me while I was away. Though the chain of events is muddy, my understanding is that some disgruntled tenant called the Housing Authority and told them there was someone living illegally in a basement apartment. (That would be me.)
Scared that he would actually have to pay a fine for doing something spectacularly illegal and extremely unethical, my landlord, who we’ll just called “George,” told the friend watching my lovely basement apartment on a Wednesday that I had to get all of my stuff out of it before Saturday. I heard this news while sitting in a van on a rainy night in a parking lot somewhere in the middle of Nowhere, Michigan. I was nonplussed.
But all hope was not lost. No, no. In what he must have perceived to be his infinite generosity, “George” allowed me to move into the apartment across the hall that had recently been vacated (probably by the disgruntled tenant who alerted the Housing Authority in the first place). He would generously rent me this crappy 1-bedroom for only nearly twice what I was paying for my lovely basement studio. That meant a substantial rent increase for a crappy apartment I didn’t want, after being forced out of the apartment I did want and had lived in for nearly 3 years, with only 3 days notice.
Now, I know what some of you dear readers may be thinking at this juncture – Why the heck didn’t you take this “George” or whatever his real name is, to court? Good question. Well, for two reasons. One, I figured I would just get a new place within a month when I got back because dealing with housing court would be a big hassle, and two, I wasn’t in town at the time to deal with any of it, so that meant people would move my stuff for me.
Plus, I honestly kind of felt sorry for the guy. He was, after all, a pretty good landlord for the past 2 ½ years. Except for the part about the place being spectacularly illegal and all.
So, I let it slide. In a grand favor I have yet to figure out how to repay, the friend who was looking after the place in my absence and my fantastic boyfriend schlepped all of my crap from my lovely basement studio apartment across the hall to the new, kind of crappy 1-bedroom apartment. Not terribly fun, but somewhat manageable. To this day, I give thanks to my friend and my boyfriend for doing me what we all know is one HUGE heck of a favor. (You know who you are, and I still owe you big-time.)
Unfortunately, things did not go as planned upon my return. Long story short(er), it took forever to find a new place and I had trouble paying for the crappy 1-bedroom because of its sky-high rent. I even had to use part of my security deposit to pay for the last month of rent. This wasn’t so bad, because “George” happened to be in Greece for the summer, so all of the money was handled by someone else. Let’s call him “Nick, his son-in-law.”
Finally, after weeks of searching, I found a great place with a new roommate. I was so happy, until the owners of my new apartment said it wouldn’t be ready to occupy until the middle of the month. That posed a problem. I didn’t have enough money left to pay for an additional month’s rent for my crappy 1-bedroom, seeing as I had just paid for my share of the broker’s fee, security deposit, and first month’s rent on my new place, which totaled approximately six gajillion dollars.
So, I did what any reasonable person did. I rented the biggest storage unit I could afford at the time (approx. 2cm x 2cm x 2cm), located a few blocks away, and hauled as much of my crap in there as would fit. Then, realizing I still had about four million boxes leftover and no place to put them, I called “Nick.” I explained the situation and asked him if I could store my stuff in the crappy 1-bedroom until the middle of the month, when I could gain entry to my new place. Or possibly store stuff in my lovely old studio apartment, which was vacant aside from a fridge and now unrentable thanks to the threat of the Housing Authority.
After explaining this to "Nick," I got the reaction I expected, which was that he went completely ballisitic and yelled at me for a few minutes, saying how I had to be out and his father-in-law needs to rent out the new place, this puts him in a difficult position, and so forth. Some of it was even in Greek, and being yelled at in Greek is certainly an interesting experience. I imagined that's what Euripides sounded like when he constantly came in last place at the ancient drama festivals.
I let “Nick” rant for a while. Then I said, “Well, I understand that this may put you in a difficult position. But, seeing as ‘George’ rented me an illegal apartment without telling me, then kicked me out with three days notice while I was out of town, and then jacked up the rent on the new place to nearly twice what I had paid for my old place, I would think there would be some leeway here. I mean, unless we want to involve the courts.”
A brief pause on the other line. Then "Nick" started to speak again, this time slower and a little more reserved. While I can’t tell you exactly what was said during the rest of that conversation, I can tell you that when I hung up the phone, I had a place to keep my stuff for an extra few weeks and was nary a dollar poorer for it.
But I digress. This was supposed to be a piece about the Schlepping All Your Crap to Another Location. Click on this site next week for the exciting conclusion in The Joys of Moving – Part II. And who knows? Maybe I’ll even have started unpacking by then. But probably not.
Made-up or not, though, the above statement is true. Except that stuff doesn’t so much own you as it enslaves you, beats all resistance out of you until you beg for mercy, and makes you vow to give up all of your possessions and live off of the land in a Canadian hut made of sticks and eat bugs for the rest of your life. This sounds like paradise after moving.
I can’t complain too much, however, because part of my involvement in this Seventh Circle was voluntary. It was, after all, my decision to move out of my current apartment. Of course, it wasn’t my decision to get thrown out of my previous apartment, a lovely basement studio that turned out to be spectacularly illegal. I didn’t know that; my landlord just must have forgotten to tell me that tiny little bit of information. You’d think it would’ve come up in the nearly three years I lived there, but no. Guess a good time just never presented itself.
So, imagine my surprise when I got a call saying that I had to move out of my apartment last April. In three days. While I wasn’t even in town that week. The call came from a friend who was watching the place for me while I was away. Though the chain of events is muddy, my understanding is that some disgruntled tenant called the Housing Authority and told them there was someone living illegally in a basement apartment. (That would be me.)
Scared that he would actually have to pay a fine for doing something spectacularly illegal and extremely unethical, my landlord, who we’ll just called “George,” told the friend watching my lovely basement apartment on a Wednesday that I had to get all of my stuff out of it before Saturday. I heard this news while sitting in a van on a rainy night in a parking lot somewhere in the middle of Nowhere, Michigan. I was nonplussed.
But all hope was not lost. No, no. In what he must have perceived to be his infinite generosity, “George” allowed me to move into the apartment across the hall that had recently been vacated (probably by the disgruntled tenant who alerted the Housing Authority in the first place). He would generously rent me this crappy 1-bedroom for only nearly twice what I was paying for my lovely basement studio. That meant a substantial rent increase for a crappy apartment I didn’t want, after being forced out of the apartment I did want and had lived in for nearly 3 years, with only 3 days notice.
Now, I know what some of you dear readers may be thinking at this juncture – Why the heck didn’t you take this “George” or whatever his real name is, to court? Good question. Well, for two reasons. One, I figured I would just get a new place within a month when I got back because dealing with housing court would be a big hassle, and two, I wasn’t in town at the time to deal with any of it, so that meant people would move my stuff for me.
Plus, I honestly kind of felt sorry for the guy. He was, after all, a pretty good landlord for the past 2 ½ years. Except for the part about the place being spectacularly illegal and all.
So, I let it slide. In a grand favor I have yet to figure out how to repay, the friend who was looking after the place in my absence and my fantastic boyfriend schlepped all of my crap from my lovely basement studio apartment across the hall to the new, kind of crappy 1-bedroom apartment. Not terribly fun, but somewhat manageable. To this day, I give thanks to my friend and my boyfriend for doing me what we all know is one HUGE heck of a favor. (You know who you are, and I still owe you big-time.)
Unfortunately, things did not go as planned upon my return. Long story short(er), it took forever to find a new place and I had trouble paying for the crappy 1-bedroom because of its sky-high rent. I even had to use part of my security deposit to pay for the last month of rent. This wasn’t so bad, because “George” happened to be in Greece for the summer, so all of the money was handled by someone else. Let’s call him “Nick, his son-in-law.”
Finally, after weeks of searching, I found a great place with a new roommate. I was so happy, until the owners of my new apartment said it wouldn’t be ready to occupy until the middle of the month. That posed a problem. I didn’t have enough money left to pay for an additional month’s rent for my crappy 1-bedroom, seeing as I had just paid for my share of the broker’s fee, security deposit, and first month’s rent on my new place, which totaled approximately six gajillion dollars.
So, I did what any reasonable person did. I rented the biggest storage unit I could afford at the time (approx. 2cm x 2cm x 2cm), located a few blocks away, and hauled as much of my crap in there as would fit. Then, realizing I still had about four million boxes leftover and no place to put them, I called “Nick.” I explained the situation and asked him if I could store my stuff in the crappy 1-bedroom until the middle of the month, when I could gain entry to my new place. Or possibly store stuff in my lovely old studio apartment, which was vacant aside from a fridge and now unrentable thanks to the threat of the Housing Authority.
After explaining this to "Nick," I got the reaction I expected, which was that he went completely ballisitic and yelled at me for a few minutes, saying how I had to be out and his father-in-law needs to rent out the new place, this puts him in a difficult position, and so forth. Some of it was even in Greek, and being yelled at in Greek is certainly an interesting experience. I imagined that's what Euripides sounded like when he constantly came in last place at the ancient drama festivals.
I let “Nick” rant for a while. Then I said, “Well, I understand that this may put you in a difficult position. But, seeing as ‘George’ rented me an illegal apartment without telling me, then kicked me out with three days notice while I was out of town, and then jacked up the rent on the new place to nearly twice what I had paid for my old place, I would think there would be some leeway here. I mean, unless we want to involve the courts.”
A brief pause on the other line. Then "Nick" started to speak again, this time slower and a little more reserved. While I can’t tell you exactly what was said during the rest of that conversation, I can tell you that when I hung up the phone, I had a place to keep my stuff for an extra few weeks and was nary a dollar poorer for it.
But I digress. This was supposed to be a piece about the Schlepping All Your Crap to Another Location. Click on this site next week for the exciting conclusion in The Joys of Moving – Part II. And who knows? Maybe I’ll even have started unpacking by then. But probably not.
