I knew I hated September 1, but I forgot just how much.
Luckily, for the past few years, I’ve been able to avoid all the chaos of moving day. But today it seems like it’s everywhere.
All down my street there are moving trucks and trash piles on the sidewalk.
People are packing up and leaving my building (and few people are moving in, it seems). And worse, I actually had to go into the belly of the beast, into Allston, where my new landlord‘s office is. Continue reading
To paraphrase the oft-quoted line from The Godfather: Part III, “Just when I thought I was moving out, they pull me back in.”
Or, as Effie White sings in Dreamgirls, “And I am telling you, I’m not going.”
I could keep quoting movie lines, but the fact remains: I’m not moving. At least not yet.
Today I reached an agreement with my new landlord to stay in my current apartment until at least the end of March. They wouldn’t let me go month-to-month or sign a six-month lease.
So, my condo search is on hold for a while. Continue reading
Everyone has their favorite way of marking when seasons change. For example, does summer end on Labor Day? On September 1? On September 21? On Rosh Hashannah? When baseball season ends? When the Red Sox’ season ends? When football season begins? When the new TV season begins? Well, if you look around, you may see signs that summer is coming to a close are all around.
One of the biggest is that the gate to the parking lot at the Allston Shaw’s on Comm Ave. is now closed and you need to get a ticket before entering. When the college kids leave town, Shaw’s opens the gate permanently and laxes the restrictions on parking in the lot. But the gate going down means the students are returning. And sure enough, there were plenty of them all over Shaw’s Sunday night. Ugh. It means do your grocery shopping earlier (by all means, before 4pm on Sundays). It means the streets and the T are going to get more crowded. It means … summer is ending soon.
Another is my annual excursion with Dave and Scott (and their families) to Rye Playland and T.G.I. Friday’s. We started doing it back in 1992 before we (and five other friends) left for college, and we’ve made it a tradition to go sometime in August every year. This past Saturday we rode the Dragon Coaster and all the other rides for the 16th straight year. (Sixteen!) Amazing, I thought, that we’ve been going there that long and the park is basically exactly the same as it was when we first started going. It means people still enjoy an old-fashioned good time. It means Dave, Scott, and I are all still in touch. And it also means … summer is ending soon.
And then there’s the whole moving thing. My apartment building is emptying out. It’s largely because of the excessive increase in rent, and I’ve heard that come September 1, the place will only be about half full. That’s crazy. My across-the-hall neighbor is gone (bummer). My next-door neighbor (the loud one I don’t like) is gone (woo hoo!). Who knows who’s moving in (or when I’ll be moving out as well), but it means the place is going to be quieter for a little while. It means I have a better chance of doing my laundry whenever I want (for at least a couple weeks). It means soon there may be new people moving in — here and in other buildings all across the city. It means … summer is ending soon.
But living in Boston, I choose to go with the Head of the Charles as my marker for the end of summer. After all, the season starts late so it should end late too, and while the temperatures do get cooler in late September and early October, there’s always at least one weekend where we get a last gasp of warm weather. It means there’s still plenty to look forward to. It means there’s no need to worry. It means … summer isn’t ending just yet.
Well that didn’t take too long, did it?
Just a little more than a month into my Great Big Buying Real Estate Adventure and I’m already frustrated and getting tired of the whole thing. And it’s not some Gemini, easily-distracted, novelty-is-over thing. It’s that after a few weeks of going to open houses, and two weeks of one of my brokers flaking out on me, and attending a disappointing first-time home buyer seminar, and just the general unappealing inventory of apartments I’ve seen, the prospect of buying a condo seems less exciting to me than it did a few weeks back. Alright, maybe that’s not entirely true. I do still sorta enjoy going from apartment to apartment on Sundays, seeing other people’s places, and soaking in the whole “real estate porn” aspect of it all. But when all you see are nice places that are too small, or big places that aren’t very nice, well, it gets a bit tiresome.
The way I see it, and I know this isn’t a unique P.O.V., is if I’m going to buy a place — make the investment, put down roots, call a place “mine,” etc. — then I figure I should, at the very least, upgrade from what I have now. And I have a pretty nice place now. Sure, it’s lacking in kitchen counter space, but it’s got plenty of sunlight, a ton of closet space, a built-in air conditioning unit, a super location, and enough living space that I never really get stir crazy hanging out here. So you can see why I’ve stayed for five and a half years. Places I’ve seen so far, a handful have had nice kitchens (something I want), but were basement units or were too small. Others were spacious, but really old. (One I saw on Sunday had, among other undesirable features, an a/c unit from the 50s, and what looked like formica cabinets in the kitchen. I like the prospect of a fixer-upper, but that was a little much.) Basically, each week I feel like I’m just seeing more of the same.
And the first-time home buyer seminar that I attended last week didn’t really help me to focus my search. Sure, I learned some stuff, but I didn’t love the sales pitchiness of it all. And I haven’t appreciated that one of the brokers I’ve been working with has now, for two weeks straight, told me he was going to show me apartments and then couldn’t get access to a single one. I thought people were desperate to sell? And then there’s the whole thing, as reported in yesterday’s Boston Globe, where apparently, it’s becoming a landlord’s market again and higher rents are becoming the norm (as is the case in my own building). Makes me increasingly want to own rather than continue to rent.
So these are just some of the reasons I find myself drawn to places like this one in Watertown. Do I want to live way out there? Not really. Do I want to get to work by taking a bus to a bus, or a bus to the commuter rail to the subway? Not at all. Do I want an almost-complete lifestyle change? No. Heck, I don’t even like that side of the river. But do I want a nicer apartment? Yes. And can I see myself being happy there? Yes, I think so. Would living in a place like this mature me a little? Possibly. Can I grow into it? Yes. And most importantly, can I afford this? Probably. So it sort of worries me that I am as drawn to these apartments as I am, seeing how I really do want to live in an area like Coolidge Corner where there are places to walk and people to see and things to do. I’m an edge-of-the-city kind of guy; I need to be close to where the action is. But looking for an apartment will change your thinking sometimes, I guess, and to get what you want, you have to make choices. Argh.
So, I keep looking and hoping that I’ll find something with a desirable location that has what I want. I’m in no rush, despite the rent increase, and I don’t want to settle. Hell, it takes me weeks sometimes just to buy a shirt or a pair of pants.
And that’s the state of the search. Knowing me, this will all change a week or two from now. Or maybe it won’t. Either way, it’s a process, an adventure, and a project. Stay tuned.
It’s been a long time since I’ve moved apartments — five and a half years to be exact — and I can’t say I missed the process. Sure, I still haven’t decided if I’m going to move or not, and that changes almost daily, but after making a few inquiries Thursday with some agents, I’m definitely erring on the not moving side.
Why is it that speaking with a real estate agent makes me feel like I’m 23, stuck in the herd, and just a quick buck? Probably because for at least two of those things, it’s true. Continue reading
Forget that Garbage song “I’m Only Happy When It Rains.” Today I identify more with the Carpenters, who sang, “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.”
And when it’s a rainy Monday, that’s even worse — especially after a good weekend. So in that spirit, here’s a list of some of the things on my hate list right now: Continue reading
And then, at 4:32 pm, my car rolled out of its parking spot.
I know I shouldn’t make such a big deal about digging my car out — or in this case, de-icing it — especially in light of the fact that we’re due to get another 2-4 inches of snow on Sunday, and because doing so only serves as a jinx and will guarantee I’ll be stuck again come tomorrow morning, but I don’t know … getting my car out of its spot today felt like a major accomplishment.
After clearing all the snow off my car, crushing the ice and packed snow around my tires, and rocking the car back and forth by shifting into Drive and Reverse over and over, I still hadn’t gotten very far. A neighbor came over and volunteered to put the car in reverse for me while I pushed, and that didn’t do much. Nor did it help when two other neighbors came over to help me push. And we all kept looking to see why I couldn’t move, but there was seemingly no good reason because all the wheels were clear and the mound of snow behind my car was low enough. It had to be something else.
And then, all of a sudden, without any help, after people had gone their own separate ways, my car just, uh, moved. Backwards. All the way over the ice and snow and onto the black pavement. And I could finally see what was holding it in place all that time. And the answer, plain and simple, seemed to be ice. But not just any ice — this must have been super powered ice from another world, whose grip on my car knew no limits. It was determined to not let me go to the Atrium, or Best Buy, or any of the other places I had to go today.
And yet, I can say that my patience paid off and I was able to go to those places and more (despite the late start to my day, mainly because I was waiting for the air and ground to warm up above freezing). Now we’ll see what happens in the morning when I go to move my car again. Still, today I feel a great deal of accomplishment.
To be honest, it wasn’t really a fair fight.
Even though I didn’t have anywhere to go, I decided to be smart for a change and go defrost my car tonight before the iced-up snow got any thicker. And at first I thought I was actually going to do a good job; the heat was up way high, circulating all over the car, I was able to push and release huge chunks of snow and lift them up with my hands, then foist them on the pavement and watch as they broke into multiple pieces, and everything was going well. A few times I actually stood there and laughed. “Winter won’t beat me this time. Look how I can lift the heavy snow off my car. This almost too easy.”
And yes, I spoke too soon, because not five minutes after I started, my ice scraper, my Extender Ice Scraper, which had served me well in the past, broke. In half. The brush and scraper came right off and I was left with that and a pole. So I tried to run the pole over the snow and create blocks that I could remove, but alas, this snow was too firmly attached to my windshield and I didn’t want to risk breaking the glass.
Eventually I got enough off so I could see clear across my windshield, and I thought now it would be time for me to at least try to get out of my parking spot. Well, if I moved two inches, that was a lot. And when I started to smell the foul smell of rubber burning, I knew it was time to give up and go inside.
So, winter, you may have beaten me this time … but it’s a long season and I’m not giving up yet. I’ll be back, with a better, stronger scraper and a better plan, and oh yes, I will beat you. Be ready.
[Full disclosure: that picture is not from this week. It’s from after a storm a couple years ago.]
I really like how every day I spend cleaning my apartment is like a day I’ve gone shopping. Last week, after going through my clothes closet, I had all kinds of “new” sweaters and shirts to wear. Tonight, after spending a few hours finally cleaning off my kitchen table, it’s like I have a brand new piece of furniture to eat dinner on.
There was stuff on my table from as far back as February 2005, which had been piled underneath bills, direct mailings, magazines, birthday cards, Rosh Hashannah cards, Hanukkah cards, birth announcements, more bills, 401k statements, magazine subscription renewals … you name it. Suffice it to say, all that old stuff has been thrown away. And sure, I could probably have just lifted it up and thrown it all away in one fell swoop, but I did go through each and every thing that was on the table, just to make sure I didn’t need some of it and to make sure it was safe to put in the trash. I double bagged the garbage bags and everything.
And for good measure, I also went through the stack of mail that I had put in my bedroom (under my bed) last year to make room for my Super Bowl party and hadn’t gone through since. Alls I know is that it’s a good thing companies send “reminders” when you haven’t paid your bills, or else I’d be severely in debt right now. Despite the number of and age of the bills I found today, nearly all of them had been paid already.
So now, after cleaning up my dresser, my two closets, my kitchen table, and my DVD/VHS tape collection, I suppose the next step is to hire a cleaning company. That’ll be this week’s project. I’m looking at MaidPro. Does anyone know anything about them? Of course, before they can come, I need to get the stacks of CDs off the top of my bookshelves and entertainment unit, and the books off my floor. I also want to clean up a little bit under my bed and get rid of some of the pictures and posters that have been there since I moved into my apartment four years ago.
Point is, for a change, I’m actually sticking with something and seeing it through instead of dropping the ball midway. I’m walking the walk, instead of just talking the talk. This bodes well for the rest of the year.
Nothing says “Happy New Year” quite like the sound of your building’s super loudly shoveling snow off the walkway outside your window before 8 a.m.
In second place, nothing says “Happy New Year” quite like your neighbor’s radio alarm going off, playing Backstreet Boys and Linkin Park (among other chestnuts) … and she’s not even home to turn it off.
Happy New Year, indeed. (grumble, grumble, grumble)
Martin's Musings 