Life Updates in Life in General

Soooooooo lots of things have been going on since the last time I’ve written. I’m just super bad about keeping this updated because I honestly forget about this website from time to time. I have it bookmarked on my browser now so I’m hoping that will help me!

New Apartment

So, first things first.... we are in a new place as of about 7 weeks back. Our old place really sucked a lot of butt honestly. It was really really close to the campus which was nice for Jessica (she could walk to class pretty easily if she missed the bus or anything). But honestly, that was the only redeeming quality about the place.

The place was clearly built back in the 60s or so and they just kind of threw in some cheap ikea crap and called it “renovated”. The cabinets had this cheap plastic covering that wasn’t even glued in place properly, so it was all bubbly and peeling off. There were NO ceiling fans in the apartment.... freaking weird right? Like, this is Central Texas we’re talking about.... 100+F summer days are pretty common. I remember one summer that it was over 100F every day for over 2 months straight. I went straight to Lowe’s and bought ceiling fans. I still remember when Jessica came home the first day after I installed the fans. No joke, she nearly cried from joy haha.

Anyway, I can forgive all of the garbage looking amenities and stuff like that, but the biggest problem with the place? The air conditioning situation SUCKED. Let me explain....

Remember how I mentioned that the place was built back in the 60s? Well the air conditioning technology has not changed. They use a chiller system, which is still used today in really large buildings but not really in apartments anymore. Back in the day, split systems (what virtually every apartment uses now) were really inefficient and expensive, so it was better to just have one very large air conditioner and then share it among all the residents. They cool down water and then pipe the water through the complex to cool everyone down. It does work well, but the issue is that you don’t get to choose if you have cooling or heating, they choose for you. Imagine a thermostat where you can set the temperature, but the “heat/cool” option is missing. In Texas (idk about other states), there are several weeks each spring and fall where it’s hot outside during the day and cold at night. So, if it gets cold at night, they just leave it on heat all the time. So there were days where it would get to about 85F inside my home because they didn’t want to cycle the chiller on during the day and then turn it back to heat at night.... either they were too cheap or too lazy to do it. I finally caved and bought a window unit for like $600 to use during those days so we could stay comfortable. Lord… I am so glad I bought that because it got way worse.

So several times each summer, the AC would go out. I mean it’s an old apartment, I expect that things break. But they would clearly just band aid the problem because it would go out again maybe a couple months later. And Texas has some really long summers, so that means that it would go out a few times each hot season. Horrible living conditions.

Well the most recent time it went out, it was actually unforgivable that they allowed it to happen. This time, I noticed on a Tuesday that the AC wasn’t working very well. The inside temps would slowly creep up during the day and then take forever to lower down at night. I told them on Wednesday morning what I noticed and they said they’d investigate.

Thursday, I went to the office in person to check on the status, and they said they hadn’t checked yet but they were sending someone out.

Friday morning, I do the same, they still haven’t sent anyone out. They tell me they’re going to send someone out.... okay… sure. Finally, around 5pm on Friday I noticed the AC wasn’t working at all, it was completely gone now. I call emergency maintenance and they say “oh yeah so we came out at 4pm and we noticed the compressor has been leaking oil this whole time. Wish we had caught it sooner” and I’m like ‘FUCDCCCCCCKKK UUUU PEOPLE” like god damn how did no one check this for 3 days?!?!

Want to know the worst part? It was right before a 3 day weekend, so no one could look at it until Tuesday. So we are committed to no AC for at least 3 days. Well, my little portable AC until works really well, but it can’t cool an entire apartment. So Jessica and I close all the other doors in the place and just camp out in the living room. Weirdly enough, it was really nice because sometimes we just get into these habits of doing our own thing, I play my computer games and she watches her trashy tv shows. We love each other a lot, but we are also independent. Well this was a way of forcing us to spend more time together and it was actually really nice! But just because we made the best of a bad situation doesn’t mean it wasn’t bullshit that it happened in the first place.

The living room campout

AWWWWWWWWW so slip

Well anyway, so Tuesday comes around right? No change in the AC. I call in and they say they had to order special parts in order to fix the AC. Fine… I just assume they know it’s super important and they will overnight them and tomorrow it will be fixed. NOPE, Wednesday, Thursday… no change. Friday, they tell us they got it working at half capacity, but it went out literally within 20 minutes. Turns out all they did was attach garden hoses to the condenser coils (this technique is called swamp cooling and barely works in Texas due to the high humidity here). So this officially marks one week without AC. Still waiting on the parts apparently. They must have chosen the slowest ground shipping or something, because I know for important things like this, you can get literally anything overnighted from around the world.

Saturday comes around and some code inspection dude comes by and asks Jessica’s mom (who was visiting) about the AC situation and Jessica’s mom is very opinionated and let’s him have it (obviously not his fault but she was frustrated). Apparently someone called Austin 311 and complained about the AC still being out (I’m surprised they lasted that long, because without my own personal AC unit I would have basically abandoned that place and got a hotel or something). Well the apartment gets struck with a code violation and they have to fix it quickly or they will get hit with a HUGE fine… like 40 thousand or something.

So this next part pissed me off beyond belief..... these bitches rent out a chiller unit to avoid the penalty. Something they could have done FOREVER ago when they knew the parts would take a while to arrive. So the new chiller comes in on a trailer, they hook it up, and within minutes things are cooling down. I swear, this place will do ANYTHING to avoid spending money on the comfort of their residents.....

So Jessica and I decided to nope the hell out of there. (I’m getting pissed just reliving this in my head, sorry for the swears hehe). We had two months left in our lease but like, that place was fucking unlivable. We started doing some research nearby and I remembered that a buddy of mine who lived about 20 minutes north of us had a realllllly nice apartment. We looked into about like 10 places or so, but ultimately that apartment complex of his just stood out as the nicest place. Get this… same price. 400 square feet larger, an actual kitchen (our old apartment kitchen was so tiny… only one drawer.. ONE), and sooooo much storage. Like insane amounts of storage. They do garbage pickup 6 days a week (so you just set the garbage outside and some grabs it for you every evening) and the pool here looks like it belongs in a beach resort or something. Super fancy living. Same heckin price.... just because it’s not right next to campus. That old place was basically extortion. Hilariously enough, the exact unit we leased was next door to my buddy (unbeknownst to us at the time!)

So okay, we have the new place, now we need to try and get out of this old lease right? Well I don’t want to go into too much detail, but these fuckers are completely heartless. As shitty as the living situation was, they wouldn’t budge on the lease. Okay, so we’re gonna have to pay some penalties, okay.... that sucks dick but I expected it. But what I didn’t expect...........

These fuckers expected us to stay one month past our least ending. why?

Because apparently, unlike most apartment complexes, they require a 90 day notice of moving out. Not 30/60 days like EVERY other apartment building in the world..... what the actual fuck. Guess when our 90 day notice would have come up? March.....aka covid outbreak city. shit was getting locked down, no one knew what was going on at the time. How can they expect me to know I am going to be moving out during that time? I was really hoping to appeal to their good nature and explain “hey this was peak covid panic, I can’t be expected to give a 90 day notice at that time?” Did they care… nope. In fact, they won’t speak to you over the phone at all, you have to email corporate for lease stuff like that. Do they answer in a timely manner? Well, only if you consider 1-2 week response time timely. No fucking joke, it would take 10+ days to get a response from these people. So something that could have been handled over a quick phone call took a month, and ultimately the end result was “nope, we sent out a notice so you’re fucked, you have to pay the month to month rate (which is double the normal rent.... aka 3500 dollars) for a month before you can leave.

We spoke to some legal counsel provided by Jessica’s school and ultimately they said “well they probably wouldn’t come after you legally, and instead send it to collections. But ultimately, they have you by the balls here and there isn’t much you can do to get out of it. Renters rights in Texas suck. So you can risk just having it sent to collections if you want, but we advice that you just settle up and move on”

Fuck this...... I mean we had to pay the money but it was so much hecking money and now we’re like reallllllly broke. Luckily Jessica and I have a strong parental support system but it just super sucks that right around the time that covid pushes a lot of my work til later (and simultaneously, my income) that this all has to happen.

Well we considered just giving them the keys, and paying the penalties (which means paying 90 percent of what is owed).... but I thought to myself…you know, fuck that. I’m just gonna keep this place as long as I possibly can because then they can’t just take our money and rent it out to some new incoming students. If I hold onto it until the lease is up, then they are screwed and won’t be able to rent it out as easily to incoming students. So that’s exactly what we did… we literally just turned in the keys the other day even though it was cleaned out and ready to go for a long time haha. Good luck renting it out to someone now idiots.

Anyway, we are in the new place now and it’s seriously seriously so freaking nice. Pardon the trash and boxes in some of the photos, this was when we first were unpacking.

new kitchen!

new living room!

new dining area!

Anyway, this entry is far too long already so I’m going to wait until the next one before updating on how the trip to Virginia went to shoot the wedding of fellow DE’r angelofrock (holla!). Until next time!

Last updated August 11, 2020