New digs
So I moved. You might be wondering just what I think of the new place. I know that I am.
The location blows. I knew that going in, but I’m still getting used to all the quirks of the locale and learning where everything is. So far, in true awful yuppie style, the thing I miss most is the Whole Foods. There’s one about ten miles away in one of those ridiculous new cities in north Fulton, and that’s a lot farther than a quick huff and puff up the Sandy Springs death hill. There’s a Fresh Market just down the street, but it’s a pretty poor substitute. I can’t go there for my local, organic milk delicately extracted from the teats of happy cows, or my hemp-based hippie soap, or that scratchy butt wipe tissue made from recycled sawdust collected from the shop floor of a crying Indian carpenter or whatever. I can go there for the satisfaction of paying more for groceries, but that’s about it. On the other hand, there’s a Publix within walking distance for all of my normal food purchases, whereas in the Springs the WF was the nearest market of any sort. And the Publix-brand recyled paper asswipe is actually pleasant and way cheaper. So I guess that’s a toss-up.
I do like the new kitchen layout. Square footage-wise it’s probably smaller than the Calibre, but it’s not all walled in. The kitchen consists of a wall on one side with the stove and the fridge and all that, and the sink is on an island sort of thing, leaving the other sides open. Maybe it’s just some trick of the layout, but the counterspace feels wonderfully open and vast compared to other apartment kitchens I’ve used. Even though I still haven’t figured out where everything goes, leaving a lot of glass strewn about everywhere, I haven’t broken a single thing yet. I would be drinking out of old vitamin water bottles and eating straight out of the pan by now if I had tried this at Calibre, but I still have glasses and dishes and all kinds of fragile cookware to get civilized with instead; it’s pretty sweet. The sink probably has a lot to do with it. I have a double-sink now, instead of the unisink, which means I was finally able to throw out that nasty dishrack and get a proper one that fits in the spare sink part. One the one hand, it’s really nice to have the rinse half and the little sprayer nozzle thing and all the things that a kitchen sink is supposed to have, but on the other hand I do miss being able to fit a baking pan all the way into the dishwater. But only a little bit; winner: new place.
I don’t know yet what to think of the electric range. I was worried at first that it wouldn’t put out the same volume of heat as the old gas range, which would have annoyed me terribly whenever I try to make coffee or spaghetti or tea, but it seems like this one goes up to 11 and actually boils water faster than the gas at Calibre, so that’s pretty neat. It can’t make the quick shifts in power that I’m used to, but it is a lot easier to set an electric burner on low without having to worry about the flame going out. Also, the first month’s electric bill was almost half of my usual electric+gas charge. I don’t know if all electric will end up bugging me or not.
Everything turns the wrong way. The door lock turns the other way since the bolt just happens to be on the other side, and the mailbox key turns the other way for no good reason at all. I guess I’ll get used to it eventually.
Everything has too many wires. The first challenge was the dryer. The old apartment had a three-prong 240V outlet for the dryer, but apparently new buildings have fancy things like ground wires, so that was an extra little expense. The thermostat was a lot more fun. I like to replace the cheap analog mercury switch thing with my fancy programmable digital thermostat, and I had always figured that there’s a whole mess of holes on the digital one, therefore it ought to work with anything I encounter. Well, this was the first time I had encountered two-stage heat. I could figure out what to do with four of the wires, but there was an extra wire for the extra heat that I didn’t have anywhere to attach, plus two more added on just to mess with me. I got a new thermostat and I hope I never have to do that again. This thing is finally futuristic enough to figure out whether to make the apartment hotter or colder based on whether it’s currently cold or hot without having to flip a dumb switch, and it even comes with a little radio-transmitter remote so I can adjust the temperature from the next room. Woo, the future.
I’ve decided that I need to get a laptop. At Calibre I was finally able to move past that old dorm habit of falling asleep to the sound of whirring computer fans by putting the computer in another room. The most logical place there to put a desk was in that sunroom off the living room, but in new place the most logical spot is in an alcove off the bedroom. For a while I was getting in the habit of turning the computer off at night, but then I got back into dowloading quasi-illegal video files off the bittorrentz (dear whoever owns the rights to that old Batman TV show: I’d totally buy the DVDs if you’d just make them already), and I noticed that it was super annoying when this dumb rickety thing doesn’t turn back on again, which is pretty frequently. I’d like to pitch this old and busted hoopty, get a new hotness laptop that I can just leave out on the couch at night and use the space where the keyboard and monitor now is for a writing desk or something. Eventually. That sounds like it’ll be expensive.
I picked a really sucky time to move. I got sucked up into busyness at work and busyness with holidays and woke up after New Years with an apartment in complete disarray. I still haven’t completely dug myself out, but I’m getting there. One motivator for a while was the bike. One of the reasons I moved to this place was so I can start biking again, but I have a bit of work to do before that. My back brakes are completely gone, all the cables need some fiddling and tuning, and the whole thing’s just all around filthy. I started to take the bike apart in order to putter around for a bit and put it all back together again, but I quickly found that I had no freaking clue where any of my tools were. I started cleaning and organizing and going through the piles of casually deposited crap, and I’ve found everything I need with one exception.
The bike chain and everything that touches the chain is caked in gunk, so I wanted to take the chain off so I can clean everything right. The tricky part about that is that I use a Shimano chain, and one of the fancy little things that Shimano does is make chain pins with flared ends so that there’s a little bit of extra strenghth between the links. That also means removing or installing a pin will break the flared end, so they make replacement pins that have one normal end and one extra-long end that you snap off after it’s through, leaving flattened broken metal bits to fill the stead of the usual bits. It’s a pretty neat little bit of engineering, but the little fuckers cost like five bucks for a package of two, and I know I have one or two around here somewhere. I just don’t have a clue where. But I did find the chain wear checking tool, and it looks like my chain is almost due to be replaced anyhow. I guess I’ll just go ahead and buy a new one. I’ll probably get back on the bike within another week or two, and that should be interesting.
The Calibre move-out has been going smoother than I expected so far. A lot of people moved out in early December, and I remember that one of the apartments near mine had a sign up for a couple of days warning of the deadly ozone that was within. I googled it, and it turns out that Calibre charges $100 to run one a Sharper Image fan or something for a couple of days if they think your place stinks. This wouldn’t normally be a concern, but in the days leading up to my move whatever they were doing in the apartment downstairs started wafting upstairs, starting with a strong scent of paint fumes and ending with something that smelled like dead rat. The lady who did my walkthrough didn’t mention anything, so I guess the ten bucks worth of Glade plugins did the trick. In fact, she complimented me on having cleaned at all, which makes me glad that I don’t manage apartments for a living. I don’t have the check yet, but they did mail an official looking initial estimate that basically says I didn’t leave any obvious chargeable problems, so unless the more thorough touch-up phase finds that gouge I left in the wall, or the place where the sticky hangers took off the paint, or that I broke the thermostat cover putting it back, I should get my whole deposit back. But it also reminded me that the deposit was small enough that I don’t really care either way. It would help buy that new chain, but it won’t offer much toward that laptop.