Monthly Archives: August 2001

My sister is using my Texas DL to buy liquor in Victoria now. She just called up here “jilllllllllll…I don’t know what to paaaaaaack!!”

I’m in Seattle today, spending one last day with Mike before the craziness of the weekend starts up.

That, and I have a house to clean and some HTML projects to mark.

Mike’s still recovering from eight days in Calgary…which is like being in Dallas…but worse! In Dallas, the city’s pretty ugly and sprawling, and you can’t get decent seafood, Chinese, or even (by my standards) good pizza.

Calgary was even UGLIER than Dallas because you don’t see it for the snow most of the year. And you couldn’t even get the saving graces of Texan cuisine there: bbq and tex-mex. And Calgary is 1/6th the size and 10x more boring than Dallas.

So what did they do to entertain themselves?

They drank and drank and drank and drank and drank and drank some more!

Mike calls home: “oh my GOD, you never TOLD me Canadians party so much!”

So he’s still recovering. And then this weekend, there’s going to be MORE partying as we have ms moog and her husband Mr. Moog and Neil the Yak all coming to visit. Woohoo!! It’s going to be a great way to end the summer 🙂

1) I put down the deposit and signed for the house in Vancouver, the crap one, but it’s a roof, and it could be sooooo much worse. It could be E-COMPTON!!

2) Our Kirkland landlord called and said she’s going to replace our dishwasher. It only took a year there.

3) I talked my way out of a speeding ticket from a (really cute) state patrolman, and i didn’t even have to flash him the goods!

4) For bitching at Clipper, I received a complimentary roundtrip ticket to Victoria, good until August of 2002.

I’m almost sorry it’s past midnight and my day is over. 😦

Dilemma over…checked out the nicer house, and the girl there (my age) who was managing it informed me that (a) it was her family home (b) no noise, because the neighbors would call her (c) tenants had to keep the gardens in good shape (d) they expected to be able to check up every month or two, and would give 24 hours notice before they came over and inspected the house.

I couldn’t even have that happen NOW. No way in hell. And it was too damn expensive…for $3k/month, they can HIRE a damn gardener.

So I’m trying to track down the rep for the more shady house, and deliver a deposit to her. I’m just going to hope she’s legit. Tonight, I’ll e-mail the housemate candidates and annouce the results.

I need y’all’s call on this…I just looked at a smaller house. Has yard. And insects. And the carpet is shite. And the flooring is scuffed, the appliances ancient, and I saw a huge tick in the kitchen. $2KCDN/month, mid-Kits. Two good bedrooms upstairs, two-three worse ones downstairs. Did I mention the carpet was shite?

Pluses: backyard, nice living room/common area.

I’m to look at another house in 45 minutes, more expensive, but definitely in better shape, and on a transit route. So I’m torn…if *you* were sharing a house with me, would you rather pay $350 for a dark, basement bedroom with worn-down carpet in a pretty scuffed up house, or $500 for a bedroom in a house closer to the bus and with more space?

I’m going to head down to Benny’s now, read the paper, eat a bagel, drink a lot of coffee.

I’ve been turned down for three totally awesome rentals in the past two days because I’m not married with kids. Look, people, would you rather have kids drawing on the walls with crayons, or five mature, older students?

I’ve showed up to look at houses in nice clothes even (knee length skirt, sleeveless mockneck, pantyhose and sandals)…given the responsible adult spiel…given the number for the Brentdale in Dallas and my current landlord in Kirkland…it’s harsh out there. Looking at another house in a good neighborhood today (house is pretty run down, but what do you expect for $2K and four bedrooms, maybe even five?) and another, also in good ‘hood, with 5 bedrooms, $3K, which means I’d have to squash an sixth person in there to get it down to $500/month, which is the limit.

I’m also starting to feel like I’m an MTV producer setting up a Real World house, with all the different applicants I’ve gotten. I should find out their screening criteria.

I’m at my sister’s house now.

We had dinner at Red Robin.

I looked at a house today, but likely won’t get it…there’s a lot of competition among applicants. I look at another one tomorrow. Today, there were about five other people willing to put down a deposit right there.

Vancouver’s housing market is just BRUTAL right now…less than 1%. This is NOT easy at ALL.
Oh, how I long for Texas…good old, 8% vacancy rate Dallas, ugly though it is. (Looking at Vancouver today – clear sky, seeing the rings of Tolkeinesque mountains around the city, the water, boats, rows of neat houses in Kits and North Van, trees, trees, TREES…it’s easy to see why you can’t find housing here, or in Vancouver’s American counterpart, San Francisco)

Went for Dutch pannelkoeks with ginamoog and her husnamd today. She said the nicest thing about me in her journal 🙂 The pancakes were totally awesome…but you could tell they were way fattening.

Anyways, going to go get some sleep. And happy birthday to lizvang, whose entries I greatly enjoy since adding her to my friends list.

Saw Jay & Silent Bob strike back today. It kicked ASS!!!

“Don’t you recognize me! I’m the pie fucker!”
–jason biggs

Yeah. Cool cameos by everyone. Totally awesome. Go see it, if you liked Wayne’s World and/or any other Kevin Smith movies. I’m biased though…Mallrats is one of my fave flicks. So’s Clerks and Dogma…I’m not the biggest fan of Chasing Amy. KS has inspiration from Degrassi, which is why Canadians love him.

DO NOT go see it if you can be easily offended.