Revisiting an Old Friend

Last week, before leaving for Seattle for ten days, I did what all people dread doing. I had to go back to my old apartment, which has callously gone on existing without me. In fact, I had to pick up some of my mail that the U.S. postal service somehow forgot to forward. Friends had told me “it’s so simple to forward mail online now,” but I was skeptical. When I moved into my place, I took over the lease from my sister who had lived happily in the Sedgewick Apartments for 7 years or so. When she moved out, she had her mail forwarded. Although, as most sisters do, we have different first names, all of my mail was still forwarded along to her new address. Luckily, she moved only 6 blocks away and we worked together so I wasn’t really inconvenienced.

In this case though, I really had no desire to go back and see how everything had changed. My rent-controlled family heirloom wasn’t mine anymore.

I waited outside my old building for someone to let me in and then sardined myself into the elevator with 2 other people and pressed the 5th floor button. In true form, between the 3rd and 4th floors, the elevator stopped.

“Omigod! Omigod!” A 20-something girl and (clearly) a new resident started to squeal to her dumbfounded boyfriend. Since she was standing right in front of the buttons, I scooted her out of the way, flipped a switch down and up (which momentarily rang the alarm and freaked the girl out more), pressed the 4 button and manually pulled the door open.

“Does that happen a lot?” She was wide-eyed and walking toward the stairwell to hike the remaining 4 floors.

When I got to my apartment I had to knock on the door. Everything in the kitchen and living room were the same. My roommate Harriet decided to move into my room (since it was slightly larger with eastern light) when I left so I was masochistically drawn down the hall to see the changes.

To say that Harriet and I have different styles would be a gross underestimation. My room had modular furniture, colorful paintings by Johanna and a giant green metal wall-hanging representing a bird holding the word LOVE. The O was, as you might expect, replaced with a flower. What wasn’t from Ikea was from ebay. Harriet’s room had a matching set of dark-wooded furniture. The headboard had an ornate flower and vine design and her floral, mauve Laura Ashley bedspread matched her dust ruffle, which matched her curtains. When we had our housewarming, my painfully hip, Icelandic-born friend walked into Harriet’s room and with a smirk said, “this is your room, right?”

I had taken great pains when decorating my room and went so far as to have a Feng Shui specialist give me some pointers. Well, that last part is a little misleading. The truth of the matter is that at my old job I had a crazy boss who had crazy side jobs. She was not only a part-time clown named Rose, but also a Feng Shui Specialist. At work, she insisted that we all put 7 dimes in the left-hand corner of our desks to help with sales: “it’s very important to have positive energy in your wealth and prosperity quadrant!” Boss usually worked from about 10:30 until 3:30, because before and after work she would be on calls, or getting a manicure or even at times a colonic. And if you’re wondering, I didn’t want to know about that last part either, but she told me anyway. On the rare occasion that she would stay later than I did, I would show up to work the next day and strange things would have transpired.

One time a little red elephant figurine appeared on my desk. Occasionally, I would return to my desk to find the elephant had moved or was facing a different direction than he had been. When I showed Boss letters that I planned to mail to potential advertisers, she would take out a crystal, close her eyes and move the gem back and forth over the freshly-printed pages. My friend Peapod used to work with me and he and Boss had an especially volatile relationship. He would turn to me around 11 some days and say, “I think Boss must have just stepped off the elevator. I can smell the patchouli from here.” Boss once told us about the power of seejuls (your guess on the spelling is as good as mine, but I’ve googled every variant and come up with nothing, so they may not even exist). During the seejul, you write what you want on a piece of paper and then burn it.

Peapod immediately burned a seejul for a new job. When he didn’t get so much as an interview within a couple of weeks, he was convinced that Boss knew about his aspirations and was burning anti-seejuls.

One day in August, Boss offered to come to Peapod’s and my apartment to make our rooms Feng Shui-friendly. It was a work day, so naturally Peapod and I agreed if only to get out of making cold calls or staring vacantly at our computer screens. Peapod’s apartment was first and I took the metro to Arlington at 10 to witness the freak show. Peapod has a reputation for being quite messy and so he had been tidying up for an hour or 2, but the place still looked recently tornadoed. Boss came, drew Peapod a diagram, told him to hang 6 crystals and then peeked under his bed.

“PEAPOD!” She was aghast. “It’s one thing that you don’t have a headboard, but how can you function with all of that junk under your bed?” She knelt down and started to pull things out.

“Oh I was looking for that,” he said, casually picking up a single brown shoe. Then a look of horror crept across his face. “Stop! Stop! You don’t have to do it! Now that I know, I’ll just do it later.”

It was evident to any normal person why Peapod wanted her to stop: he had something under his bed that he didn’t want her to find. Like most 24-year-old males that could really only be one very obvious thing. Boss didn’t notice the desperation in his voice however and went on, undaunted by the mess. Peapod managed to talk her down just in time. When we left, his floor was a mess from all of the junk under his bed and I could already envision him kicking everything back under the moment Boss left.

Afterwards, the three of us went to my apartment. Boss took one look at my roommate’s bedroom and stood horrified in front of her bed. Harriet had a famous poster above her headboard of workmen eating lunch on a half-built skyscraper. Ten or so men sit on a thin beam overlooking Manhattan, munching on sandwiches.

“She has men dangling over her while she sleeps! She must really get around!” Boss said. I told Boss that in fact the weekend before, Harriet had drunkenly invited a guy she knew home with her. He had taken one look at her bedspread and said, “hey! This looks like something my grandma has!” Harriet was not amused.

I took the appointment slightly more seriously than Peapod and actually listened to some of Boss’ suggestions. She informed me that my love and marriage quadrant was in my closet. This came as no surprise to me given my pathetic lack of indiscretions. She recommended hanging a few crystals and putting “pairs” of things near my love and marriage quadrant.

A week after boss Feng Shui-ed my sister’s room (in the very same apartment), Johanna met John. They were married a couple years later. So, I hopped on ebay, bought a tiny retro sculpture of a pair of owls and my coveted green LOVE sign. A week later I had a date with a Mexican lawyer, which thankfully didn’t pan out since his work visa had run out. The week after that the Scooby Snacks revealed his fondness for redheads and, more specifically, me. I guess you could say that Boss is better at Feng Shui than she was at being a boss.

After my meticulous hanging of ebay purchases, I wondered if it would be hard to look at a recently Harriet-ized room. It turns out that she had bought a pretty new bedspread with some funky curtains to match. Her furniture was smaller than mine, which made the room look huge. It looked so different, that it became just another D.C. apartment with hardwood floors, crown moldings and high ceilings.

It’s easy to forget about all of the things I hated about the place when I was so busy missing it. There was always dust everywhere; it was way too hot in the summer even with my noisy A/C unit; there was no disposal, no dishwasher. When I left with my mail in hand, I felt comforted. I remembered moments, mid-swiffer, when I wanted to move into a newer, nicer place. All in all though, I loved my endearing roommate, the hip location, the great view of heat lightning from my bedroom window. And now, when I pass the Sedgewick I look at it fondly and decisively like some people might reminisce about an ex-boyfriend: “I loved you once, despite all of your faults.”























So long old friend.

Another Reason I Might Move to Duluth Instead

Washington, DC's Police Chief, Charles Ramsey, declared a state of emergency for the city because we've had so many homicides this month. There have been something like 15 murders in 17 days, which is actually not much more than last year, but this year one of them happened in Georgetown. That compounded with the fact that female tourists have been getting mauled near the Washington Monument and well, people are a bit freaked out.

I wasn't freaked out though because I'm 24, so that means I'm invincible.

At least I thought I was . Then I heard about another homicide that took place ONE block from the Scooby Snack's apartment. Right in Adams Morgan a 24-year-old was stabbed to death after a drunken fight. I've seen full-on brawls in Adams Morgan and, while it's a bit disconcerting, I always thought "boys will be boys."

But this news almost made me feel like moving to New York would be safer. Until I found out what happened in my friendly, neighborhood subway station.

At the 110th station by my apartment, a man picked up a power saw (it seems there was construction and the saw was just lying around. Hmmmm...) and started chasing people around the platform with it, finally attacking a 64-year-old man. The 64-year-old is fine (although I don't know how fine you can be after surviving a power saw assault) and the attacker fled. The assailant's description was something along the lines of:
Short, bald, mid-30s, earrings in both ears, possibly carrying a teddy bear.

They caught the teddy-bear-toting, saw-wielding bad guy. Still, I feel like no place is safe. Well, no place except Duluth. So that's where I'm moving, and I'm going to officially change this blog's name to How to Survive Moving to Duluth.

Of course, I won't have anything to write about....










This is Duluth. Ain't she a byoot?

The Wonder of the NYC Broker

This is housing karma at its best. I found a roommate. A friend of a friend's friend is in my same program and she is actually IN New York looking for housing for us.

Of course little did I realize that finding a place isn't the biggest stress in the housing equation, but rather the exorbitant fees associated with finding an apartment. Most likely if I were to find something off the "apartments to share" section of Craig's List, then I'd have to pay first month's rent and a security deposit. Maybe even last month's rent if the person was especially anal. But since I'm trying to find a currently vacant 2-bedroom apartment, we have to go through a broker. This brokerage system is unlike anything I have ever witnessed. You, the apartment searcher, pay the broker 12%-15% of the entire year-long lease just to simply show you an apartment.

When the Scooby Snack (my boyfriend) was looking for a place, we just looked on Craig's List a bit and then wandered around a neighborhood he liked and wrote down phone numbers outside of apartment buildings. It was a delightful little activity that resulted in both a new apartment for him and an improved hangover for me (I swear, getting a little exercise really does the trick). The fact that I am forced to pay someone at least one month's rent to do this for me seems a little like robbery and a lot like a mosquito bite. It's so annoying to know that I'm throwing my money away.

But so it goes. My new roommate found a place. It was $50 above my price range, but she insists it's beautiful with new appliances, and it's a mere 8 blocks from class. I couldn't say no. The problem is that when the broker found her the place she said, "our broker fees range from 12%-15% but it's very negotiable."

However, once behind closed doors in her office, the broker changed her mind: "I can't go below 15%." I'm scrounging cash to pay for this broker fee, so the difference between paying $1800 and $1000 is huge for me right now. I told my new roomie that I couldn't do it. Lucky for us, right in the middle of the negotiation process, another broker who she's been working with called her, said he could show her the exact same apartment and would only charge her 12%.

These people are worse than used car salesmen.

Here is, more or less, how the conversation followed:
New Roomie: So, I don't think we're going to do it
Evil Broker: Why's that?
NR: Well I found another broker who will only charge me 12%.
EB: (Icy glare) YOU CAN'T DO THAT. I showed you the apartment. You can't go with another broker, because I'm the one that showed you the apartment. Did I mention that I showed you the apartment?
NR: Well. Um. Can't HE show me the apartment?
EB: NO! You are not understanding me. I could have made you sign a contract after I showed you the apartment that stated that you couldn't go through another broker to get the apartment. But I don't like to conduct business that way. I like to conduct business based on trust and good will.

(I swear to God, she actually said that last line with a straight face)

In the end EB's manager called her out of the meeting and when EB emerged, she dropped the broker's fee down to 12%. Victory is ours.

Elaboration on NYC Apartment Hunt

When I decided to move out of Mom and Dad's cushy pad and into D.C., it was fairly simple. I logged onto Craigslist.com and met Tom the Neocon, Andy the Hipster and Jenny the GW student who lived in a rat-infested hovel, before settling on Gretchers the couch potato. Actually her name was Gretchen, and she watched Charmed, Buffy and Angel religiously. We shared nothing in common except a rent-controlled, spacious apartment. It took about a week to find the perfect place only because I was in no rush. $700/month including utilities. It couldn't have been simpler.

I started looking for apartments on NYC's Craig's List a couple of months ago, but it became clear that it was one of those instantaneous things. If you want to move up there on July 1, then you should start looking only after June 20th or so. There are a ton of places, but those places move fast so you really have to be up there to check out the digs before making a committment. This is a problem because, well, I live and work in DC and will continue to live and work here until July 19 at which point I go to Seattle. By the time I get back, August 1st has suddenly appeared and (sweet fancy moses) I HAVE to be living in New York by August 17. So I planned a couple of weekend trips up there.

Finding an apartment on Craigs List is a bit like searching for the perfect pair of jeans at a flea market. I found one place that was very reasonable but the stipulation in the posting was such that the new roommate had to be Asian and submissive. I'm neither Asian nor submissive and even if I were I wouldn't want to live with someone whose sole requirement was such. I found another place that was free (cue red flashing WARNING sign) but it was an old widower who wanted to "live amongst beauty." Apparently he also wanted to live amongst naked beauty because he insisted that his new 20-something female roommates be nude all the time. The old man did however quell some fears by writing: "I don't want sex. Couldn't have any if I wanted to!" So of course I copied and pasted the ad, sent it to all of my friends and informed them that this would be my new home. Even if I don't find a place, CL has proved to be most entertaining.

Still, I had emailed a lot of normal-sounding, non-nudist potential roommates, who offered extremely cheap rents. Most of these (I thought) great finds were located in a little neighborhood known as Washington Heights. "Hey Neat!" I thought to myself, "it has Washington in the name, so it must be great." Then I emailed a friend who just moved up there a month ago to inquire about the area.

She relayed this information to me on behalf of her friend who's lived up there for a couple of years: "It's all Orthodox Jews and gangs."

Seriously? Another friend told me that it's "up-and-coming." That is a sure euphemism if I've ever heard one.

An Open Letter to the NYC Apartment-Hunting Process

Dear NYC Brokers,

I hate you.

Love always,
Stephanie

Love letter to DC

I generally write poetry when I'm feeling jaded, nostalgic or upset. I suppose I should celebrate the fact that I don't write poems much these days, right? Anyhoo, I wrote one for the motherland. Still needs editing, but you get the picture.


Parting Words

After dark on the breaking point
of summer, an ambulance flits
past my apartment, sirens swimming
through hushed humidity.

The man upstairs with the yellow fingernails
ambles from the sofa to the fridge,
the television sighing in the corner. My love
dozes next to me, barely clutching his novel.

The final moments of one vignette—
three years of window-shopping
and fist fights; whispered communiqué
and clever glances—
stumble to their close.

Worthwhile trysts crave volatility:
August in this city pants
smog on dry-cleaned clothing;
afternoon thunderstorms sob
on pedestrians like tears
I spilled when my first love left me
for good.

The girl across the alley dances
naked in front of her open window
and I stare at the green-framed photographs on my wall,
envision wrapping them in week-old newsprint
that affirm: I am leaving you.

At my most pathetic, I used to envision him
taking me back: rushing to my doorstep
in the midst of his mistake. He never did
return the way I’d imagined. But I know now
what truly warrants heartache and I want you
to take notice: you hold everyone worth
holding. You must know,
city of my misfortune, my regeneration,
I fell in love with you just in time
to give you up.

How Not to Apply for a Loan

There is something really disconcerting about moving to one of the most expensive cities in the world without an income. When I received all of my financial materials from Columbia, I noticed that I got no financial aid whatsoever. I guess I was better at sales than I ever realized.

Just to spice things us, when you apply for student housing, it turns out that certain people are ineligible. Namely those students who live within 250 miles of campus. In case you were wondering, my address in Washington, DC is 231.58 miles from Columbia. I can just imagine some housing minion stamping a big red DENIED* across my housing application. The footnote would read in tiny letters: *commuter. So now I need both money and a place to live. Of course money is the first priority given that there are a number of adorable locations in Central Park to set up shop out of a cardboard box. I hear that people do it all the time.

Contrary to popular belief, deciphering a 36-page Comprehensive Educational Financing Plan from Columbia University is easier said than done. Columbia sets up a list of potential costs including tuition, travel expenses, room & board and estimates that the ten months spent in New York will cost around $61,877.

Holy shit.

I'm not great with money. I spend a little more than I should, I don't have a 401k and the only reason I set up an IRA was so I wouldn't owe the government thousands of dollars in taxes (oops! W-2s confuse me). At the same time, I have never been in debt in my life. I always pay the bill for my sole credit card 2 weeks early and on the last day of the month I am already anally sending my rent check to Borger Management, even though I have until the 10th. For me, debt is up there with rattlesnakes, airplane turbulence and those giant light brown cockroaches that my sister(Johanna)'s dog likes to play with.

But Johanna sat me down and said, "listen. This isn't a big deal. So many people take out loans for grad school, so it's very commonplace and not that bad of a process."

So I sat down with my mother (she's a CFO, thanks be to God) and my Financial Plan book. It completely mystified me, which only enhanced my "why the h-e-double-hockeysticks did they accept me?" attitude. I read, reread and finally narrowed it down to two different loans that seemed comparable and hopped online to complete the loan application. Citibank or Accessgroup? I went onto the Accessgroup website and filled out all of my information and just when I hit submit, this big error message flashed across my screen. Weird. So I decided that instead of risking another error message after 25 minutes of typing and tabbing, I would just go to the Citibank website and fill out their form. I did. It went through without an error message, and all was right in the world. Daisies were blooming, a Tufted Tit-Mouse was chirping in the backyard, a rainbow stretched across the sky, and I was the pot of gold, curled up on the couch, serenely napping.

Four days later I got a letter in the mail from Citibank. I was rejected. They wrote that it wasn't a result of my credit score (phew) but rather when Citibank asked Columbia if I was going to be a student and therefore eligible for student loans, they said....NO!

I knew it! They realized their mistake and opted to rescind my acceptance letter. Maybe they found out that I'm no good with the Educational Financing Plan? Could they have intended my acceptance for a Tiffany Berry? Just a couple of the many reasons that occurred to me in the moment.

In the end, I talked to one person at Columbia who sent me to another person who sent me to yet another person who told me, but not in these words, that I'm an idiot. Apparently the Accessgroup loan had gone through despite the ERROR message. Columbia approved me for an Accessgroup loan, so when Citibank asked for approval, they were unable to give it, because I'm clearly not eligible for 2 loans of $60,000.

Lucky for me, because the thought of being $120,000 in debt makes me feel a bit faint.

The (Terrifying but) Great Escape

Washington, DC is a one-horse town. It's Hollywood for ugly people. Its residents have no style. It's an unfriendly and transient city. So here's the rub: I love it here. I was born here, raised here and scurried right back to this cold, style-impaired city right after I graduated from college. I have a large network of friends that revel in scatological humor; my parents live right across the river and feed me gourmet meals every Sunday night; my scooby snack of a boyfriend lives here along with my older brother and pregnant sister. And did I mention that my parents just bought a golden retriever puppy? So naturally, the thought of moving away from this area leaves me suffering from sporadic heart palpitations, night sweats, dry eyes, itchy palms, and halitosis. What's worse is that I'm leaving my cozy little comfort zone for the city that defines Bizarre on an hourly basis: New York.

But I have to go.

I want to be a writer. Specifically, I want to be a movie critic and feature writer. After 3 years of living in D.C. and hopping from sales job to sales job, I finally reached boiling point. Most people my age have no idea what they want to do with their lives. I know what my passion is, but I'm still sitting at a clutter-filled desk (at a newspaper. Oh, the irony!) making cold calls to human resources executives and convincing them to run their employment ads in my newspaper. What the hell am I doing here?

So in mid-December, my father (also a writer)(who is certain he knows exactly what to do with my life)(that is, to follow in his footsteps) gave me a call and said, "the deadline for Columbia's journalism school is the beginning of January." This is not the first time my dad has mentioned Columbia, but it was the first time I listened to the words that came out of his mouth, imagined them transmitting from his phone receiver to my ear, and actually processed what he was saying. I'm fairly certain that he assumed I would hang up the phone and get right back on gofugyourself.com, cursing my pathetic existence. Actually, he doesn't know that I'm a gofugyourself addict, but you get the picture. His wishful thinking became my new obsession and within the hour I had filled out an online application, contacted 3 accomplished recommendation-writers and scripted 4 humiliation-inducing drafts of a 750-word essay "about anything."

And then things got weird; they actually accepted me.

Needless to say, my father was thrilled. The conversation that followed:
Daddio: "what do you think it was that got you in?"
Shocked Daughter: "Ummm....my major in creative writing?"
D: "No..."
SD: "Newspaper experience in college?"
D: "No...."
SD: "Okay Dad, I give up. What was it?"
D: "I think it was your blog of movie reviews. It showed initiative while displaying your writing abilities."
SD: "Maybe you're right...."
D: "Wasn't it my idea for you to start that blog?"

Seriously. He's irrepressible....

...and I'm really going to miss the guy.