Cherish has put up the August Scientiae! A lot of us are, apparently, in transition.
*****
Consider the city of Cold Utopia, where there are thousands of apartments. Of these, perhaps a few hundred meet conditions A-D. And of those, only fifty or so have pictures online, two-bedroom apartments (an even more necessary condition than before), and non-ghetto locations . If we are to buy a house, 3 years is the break-even point; therefore we need a 6-month lease, because postdoc fellowships are 3 years and Dr. S will know in about 6 months. We called all 50. Exactly TWO had apartments free and would give us a 6-month lease.
We send Apartment 1 an application two days after talking to them.
In between they rented the damn apartment.
Fine.
So we called Apartment 2. Wait for it... wait for it...
They want to meet us in person before renting. "There's just so much credit fraud now!" the woman said. "You never know. So we really just couldn't do it. Of course, if you come here..."
Right. I'm supposed to fly my pregnant, busy, stressed-out ass there on the off chance they'll maybe rent me an apartment. Or! Wait until we are physically there with a truck full of our worldly possessions. Because they are too moronic to a) run a credit check; b) call people we know here- or our bosses! or, hell, Payroll!- to verify that we are who we say we are and actually want to rent; c) accept pictures of us together, drivers' licenses, and a hefty check; or d) probably: use a computer. They can take a long jump off a short pier. I am not renting from crazy people who are apparently related to Ted Stevens.
On Monday Apartment 1 will tell us if they have another one available. If they don't, I guess we're not buying a house. Or something involving lease-breaking and unpleasantness. I cannot fucking believe this.
Also, I have 26 days to finish up One Last Experiment From Hell. Shoot me now.
