As we are preparing to move into our new house, after all the work and changes we wanted, it is time to begin the migration of things like utilities. Monday, I called Comcast, our cable provider, and got a cheery person who assisted me. I explained that we were moving next week, and that we wanted to move our service, and to add a landline phone (at the Wife’s request). No problem, and in...
As we prepare to end our time in the apartments, I was looking for an icon of the life here. I have complained about the safety, the cleanliness, and even the character of the neighborhood. However … One picture wraps it up well. Here we have a piece of furniture that was dumped near the trash station over the weekend, a sign of a vacate and bail on the lease event. On Monday morning, as I...
This is a grab bag, but all things that really happened in our apartment complex. One day, pulling into the parking lot, a lady was standing in the middle of the driveway. Naturally, we stopped to avoid hitting her, but she just stood there. Apparently, she dropped a bag of McDonalds yum-yums, and was yelling at her friend to come pick it up. Instead of picking it up, she kicked it to the side...
As we have bought a house, and are having way too many trades people tweaking on it, it is time to plan our vacating of this apartment. This entails giving “notice” of our intent to vacate. Having read the fine print of the lease (I know, shocking) we know that breaking the lease early is going to cost us 2 months’ rent. A bit of a hardship, but not unexpected. Of course, we...
In case you have been living under a rock and not read my award winning blog posts (ha ha ha), we relocated to San Jose from Phoenix, and slipped into an apartment as a temporary landing spot. We have tried to make the best of it, and my prior posts have highlighted some of the challenges we have experienced. It isn’t all bad, but… Last night, around 8:15 PM, we suited up the boys in...
Among all the joys of apartment living, not much ranks up there with the friendly competition for the laundry units. At 9:00AM you can practically see the residents lining up to steal the machines as soon as the time locks on the doors open. Hoo BOY! Today though, we will talk about the machines themselves. The washers are all HE (high efficiency) units. That means that you really don’t...
Ah, the holiday season, where UPS and FedEx work overtime to deliver packages to people filled with joy and gifts. Alas, it is too tempting of a target for many people. I speak of the theft of parcels from front doors. I appreciate Amazon in their interest to not inconvenience people by demanding a signature, and to just deposit parcels on the stoop. I am sure this reduces the cost of their...
In the continuing saga that is apartment life in South San Jose, we are surrounded by neighbors who all have interesting stories, sometimes too interesting. We have always tried to be friendly with our neighbors, in the spirit of you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. But this can go too far. Our neighborhood is predominantly hispanic. Households of hard workers, lots of kids, and...
People tell me that California has been in a drought. Bullpuckey. It has rained constantly for almost three weeks. The ground is saturated, my car is waterlogged, and I am tired of getting soaked walking our dogs. At the risk of being heretical, I would like the rain to stop. Living in an apartment is not easy (I am unsure how people do it long term, I am hoping that we won't be here any...
In this episode, expanding upon the use of Swisher Sweets as wrappers for cannabis, we examine a couple of other items of detritus, and abuse of the provided facilities Item 1 – used hypodermic syringe While walking our dogs the other day, my wife stumbled across a discarded hypodermic syringe in the bushes at the edge of the apartment compound. Of course it could have been a...