A few words about the move and all that shit. (Originally posted on MySpace on Wednesday, May 17, 2006)

Well as many of you may know, Becca and I had been planning to more for about two months now. It all started when Jeff and Becca and I had a talk about the morale of the house back in November. What it all boiled down to was that basically it's hard to be a couple and live with a house mate. Becuase if there is an issue it will always be the couple vs. the housemate. And it really got me thinking that the only good solution would be if we moved out of the apartment and into our own place. Becca and I want to get married and start an "adult" life together and it's time to do that on our own. So that got me thinking about it...but not acting. Then we had a crisis with getting a second cat. All these damn adoption places want to do an FBI background check and have dinner with your fucking landlord before they let you adopt some poor cat who was left in a dumpster behind wienersnitzel. Anyway, as you may know, we can't have any cats in our apartment so I told becca to ask what wouldhappen if the apartment own found out about our cat. The response I got back was, "immediate eviction". Now if you get evicted. You are basically fucked. NO ONE will rent to you. So I was like, fuck that let's move. I didn't want to get rid of the cat and I was stressing over the housemate issue anyway. So I convicned Becca it was the right thing to do and we starte looking on line at apartments and getting excited about the move out.

The story gets convoluted...but I became really manic. I wanted to be moved out by June. I wanted May to be the last month I paid, and I wanted to avoid "double paying the rent". I started packing the place before we even stared looking. And I was ready for action. Anway the problem is that it doesn't really do me any good to look for apartments, cause ultimately if Becca didn't like it we weren't moving into one...so I left the apartment searching to her. She began to feel put upon as if I wasn't helping her and got mad at me. My reaction to that was to take her list of bookmarked houses and call them all on my day off (saturday) to set up appointments to view the places on Sunday (the day that Becca and I have off together). I set us up solid with appointments from 9:30 until 7PM. There was a break in between becuase Becca had to work the Montrose farmers market for her spa between noon and two. We went all day and it was highly stressful, All the places were using high pressure sales tactics and everyone wanted a check to do a credit check that day. It was really putting a strain on us and Becca and I were screaming at each other and crying by the end of the day.

In the end we narrowed the field down to three places we liked. Then we went to dinner and came home. When we got home Jeff and our manager Julie were stressing over what was to be done in the aftermath of our moving out. The owner wanted to file a new lease with jeff and run a credit report on him dispite the fact that he has lived here for more than two years and paid rent on time the whole time. We were all in the kitchen talking about it and it became pretty clear to me that Jeff and Julie would have preferred that Becca and I not move out. So I said, why don't you call up Fichera and say...they'll stay if they can have a cat. Julie said, you guys need to talk about it. So Becca and I had a three hour agonizing talk. The thing about me is that I make these rash hyper-rationalized decisions pretty quickly...where I go...well A equals B and B is more important than C so that's it let's do C. But Becca gets really excited and worked up over things and it isn't as eas for her to change course mid stream. So we talked very seriously about it for a long time.

We were both excited to move out and be on our own. We were both excited to start a new life in a new apartment together. But on the flip side...we weren't excited to DOUBLE our monthly rent payments. In all but one case the rent would be double and it wouldn't really be better than the place we're in now.

Also I felt that Jeff's attitude had changed since November. In November I felt like he was going to move out at any time and we better get prepared. Now I felt as if for the time being he'd prefer to stay put and endure the housemate stress.

The most compelling reason to stay is that Beccca and I concluded that it would be better to stay and apply that extra money we'd be spending on rent toward paying down credit cards and starting a significant joint savings account. Towards what? well hopefully a condo or something. In the end I think that Jeff, Becca, and I all feel like spending more on rent is a waste and we should take advantage of the situation to save for the future.

That is the long and short of it. It was a few long horrible days...but that's the outcome. I think that in the end Becca and I will end up moving out of LA all together. Probably to the pacific northwest. But I don't have a realistic time table. Becca's ready to go now...but I don't know what I'd do for a living up there...not starbucks...I'll tell you that much.