Friday, May 26, 2006

The Beauty of the Rain

I looked at where all my many readers are coming from and saw one from England. which means Sarah might be reading this. If so, hi Sarah! Ah, good old England. I still occasionally miss England. And wonder what happened with all the drama that was going on before I left. I tried to get in touch with one of my housemates, but alas. He ignored me... (Literally. I emailed him twice, imed him twice, then gave up.)

I have declared this week to be the week of crap. First, one of my best friends breaks up with her boyfriend. For perfectly good reasons and she knows I completely support her, but it's hard to see her go through this again. At least this time, though, her ex is not some complete jerk who tempts me to fly back to Indiana for the sole purpose of ensuring that he can't have kids. Then Spyboy gets quasi-sick, which of course gets me sick. I screw up a bit at work and one guy gets snarky on me. When I'm sick, I'm emotional, so Spyboy and I had low-level fighting. Then I find out that my rent is going up. Not by the $15-$20 that I had been preparing myself for. No. By $50 freaking dollars. I have no money. I already can't pay for a good portion of my food, or my cell phone, or my car insurance. But I can't really find any place cheaper unless I move in with someone. Moving in with someone I don't know (because there aren't really any options among people I know) would make me stressed. Stress makes all of my physical problems act up worse. Which means more trips to the doctor, which means more money spent on healthcare, negating the savings of moving in with someone. Plus I'd want to find a place where I could have a cat. I've decided that once I have enough money, I will get a cat. It'd be good for my mental health.

And now, it's off home for a long weekend. I was thinking about coming in Monday, but, pleasantly enough, I don't think that I need to. Whee!! Of course, it'd be more pleasant if the rain right now would stop so I can get to the metro...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you tried negotiating rent? I’m only asking, because most people don’t seem to think this is possible. It is! If you haven’t tried already, I strongly recommend it. I managed to get no increase last year and half of the increase they wanted this year.

Keep in mind that it costs the landlord a lot to prep and show an apartment. Not to mention that they might loose a month of rent in-between the time you move out and a new tenant moves in. I like to figure out how long it will take my landlord to recap a month of lost rent at the increased rate. (An example with easy numbers: current rent is $1000, increase is $50, 1000/50 = 20 months to make up for one lost month of rent.)

Rebecca said...

I thought about that. But how exactly do you negotiate rent?

Anonymous said...

Hey, my roomate and I did that when we moved in! But our landlord is really cool, and simply knocked off 50 bucks because we are girls, and girls are cleaner! Trust me the boys upstairs are GROSS!

Have you thought about using roomatefinder.com. It's a roomate searching serivce, where you can like get to know roomates and find someone who you can handle their quirks. That way it's not a COMPLETE stranger!