Tuesday, July 3, 2007, 10:55 - General
Yesterday Lewis got back to New York after a week up north visiting his old roommate. He brought down this awesome full-size van with a trailer full of stuff and met me at 23rd street to pick up his keys. He'd been planning on meeting me on Canal, but was turned away at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel as the trailer wasn't allowed. Thus he had to go up to the Lincoln Tunnel instead. It worked out though, cuz I got to go to the Citibank right there on 23rd and 8th to deposit my paycheck.I left work at 5 so that we could make it to the U-Haul before they closed at 7 to return the trailer and then head up to Ikea to get me a bed and some sort of divider to separate Lewis's and my rooms. He informed me this morning that I was also snoring last night heh. Anyway, we drove out on the Long Island Expressway about 30 miles to the Ikea and spent far too long there. I hate shopping, but it seemed that Lewis hated it even more than me so that contributed to my hating it too. As per usual, things didn't go exactly according to plan (is that contradictory?), and when I went down to pick up the cheap full bed frame it was discovered to only come in twin. Thus I audibled and bought a different frame which was of course more expensive. I don't event want to list how much the bookcases and bed cost me, but it was a lot. We also had to wait forever for some of the pieces to come out of the stock room, but while doing that I got the brilliant idea to buy a big bag of buttery movie theater popcorn to eat. It was delicious.
We pondered the possibility of going grocery shopping while we were out there because it would likely be cheaper than in the City but when we didn't see any supermarkets we decided it wasn't worth trying to find one and went home to start putting together stuff and organizing all the crap he'd brought down. However, the assembly didn't go very smoothly as 1. I was using a flat head screwdriver to try and force very tight philips screws into the wood and 2. I'd forgotten to grab the metal middle support beam which is necessary to hold up the wooden slats that support the mattress. Thus I just threw my mattress on the floor between the mostly-built frame and slept in disgust knowing that I'd have to go back there the next day. Ugh. I can't wait until things are situated, but I think I must sound like a broken record by now with respect to that.
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( 2.8 / 38 )Monday, July 2, 2007, 10:57 - General
Oh, and I got an 8.5 on my coding theory paper and Ronald suggested I try to publish it in the Theory of Computing Journal. Pretty cool.[ 1 comment ] ( 38 views ) | permalink |
( 2.8 / 36 )Monday, July 2, 2007, 10:13 - General
Sunday morning I gathered the remaining stuff I had over at Dupont St and biked as best I could with the full load (I'd stupidly forgotten to leave myself a backpack so I was carrying all the stuff including my blanket while on a bike) over to the new place. The ride, aside from the load, was pleasant and quick. I spent a little bit in the new place basking in its emptiness and then decided to go for a walk. My plan was to look out for street furniture on the way to the bike store to pick up some bike locks and a bike helmet, but I didn't get more than 5 houses down before I stumbled upon a huge pile of stuff some people who'd just moved had thrown out. The key piece was a big white hideaway bed couch which was in decent shape. It was way too heavy for me to move myself so I took the cushions to prevent anyone else from taking it and asked passersby whether they'd help me move it. One guy said he couldn't lift anything, and another guy laughed and said directly "I don't feel like doing that" which I thought was pretty cool. I mean, at least he didn't lie about it. Then this nice ex-Puerto Rican (lots of them in NY) helped me move it. His name is Chris and when I offered him a beer for his troubles (it was really heavy) he told me he couldn't drink as he was in the halfway house. We chatted a bit longer and he was quite nice, and then I went off toward the bike store. There I blew $100 on locks and a helmet (maybe the U.S. isn't as cheap as I thought?) and then picked up some food at the grocery store.I called the landlord about the 2-year lease and he said he'd come by in the next days with a 1-year lease for me which is good. Lewis called me after I sat down to work on my thesis for a while and told me that he wouldn't actually be arriving that day after all, as first he was worried about the weight in his van being too much for the shocks so had rented a trailer, and then after loading that up noticed that the wiring wasn't giving power to the trailer's lights. Thus he had to wait until Monday morning to have that fixed before he could leave, and thus I didn't have any microwave or pots or plates or silverware, so I was stuck eating bagels that night. Whatever, at least I had a couch to sleep on. I spent the evening talking to Qi-Qi on Skype and working on my thesis coding before going to bed early. This morning I was going to take a shower but couldn't get the shower to come on (only the bath spigot) so I didn't. I guess I'll bring that up to the landlord when he comes by with the new lease. I also biked over to the Graham L stop which took less than 10 minutes and was nice. However somehow the train was way more packed than it ever was when I caught it at the following stop during that last month so I couldn't read. Maybe it was just that I'd gotten there so early? When I arrived I sent off some letters including an overnight $3000 deposit to Associated Bank in MN. I'm no longer broke!
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( 3.1 / 37 )Sunday, July 1, 2007, 09:34 - General
Yesterday I finally went down to the broker's office to sign the lease and pay the security deposit + first month's rent. My first paycheck as well as my moving expenses reimbursement arrived (I guess it only takes 1 day to mail something between burroughs) so I was excited that maybe my financial woes were over. I got them around 2 and noticed that there was a Citibank branch on Manhattan Ave open until 3 on Saturdays, so my hope was that I could run down there, deposit the checks, and get them to write cashier's checks for me in the amount of the deposit and rent. However, that plan was foiled due to the branch having computer problems and I was instantly put into a bad mood. It was hot, I had to move all the stuff, and now I had this stupid check in my hand that was worthless to me since I had to pay like $2700 immediately. I decided the best way to deal with it was to write a check for the amount drawn on my Minnesota account and send the payroll check in for deposit via overnight mail on Monday morning. It's only $16 to get it there overnight, and that should be ample time to cover any potential overdrafting. What a headache though.So I got the keys but the broker said he'd made out the "wrong leases" for me and this pair of girls who were moving into another place. He told me the landlord would come by this evening to fill out the lease with me. It just gave me a bad feeling - the continued unprofessionalism of the broker kept giving me the feeling that he was somehow ripping me off, like he was going to take the money and run without ever actually giving me a lease. I swallowed that as best I could and walked back to Dupont St. (a half hour walk at least) and packed all the stuff and loaded it into Lewis's car. Finding a parking spot and maneuvering the one-way streets was a pain, but I did it. Once I arrived I noticed that the door to the back room in the apartment was 1) unlocked and 2) only locks via keys (there's no latch) and 3) none of the keys I had been given fit into it. Thus I had no way of securing my stuff, and as I don't have a bed there yet I really didn't want to have to stay there that night. I thus called the broker and waited there for over 2 hours bumming around on Lewis's laptop for something to do until the landlord showed up to both sign a lease (yay) and install a new lock. He did both, but now today I noticed that the lease is for a 2 year term! I was asked "we can give you up to two years, how long do you want" and I said "one year" and he said "ok". What the hell. Now I have to bother him again, cuz I'm expecting to move into the City next year. :)
I'm waiting today for Lewis to arrive from Pennsylvania with all his stuff. He was going to bring a couch for me to sleep on temporarily, but apparently he's worried about weight in his van so he's ditching that. I just hope he gets here soon enough that we can go to Ikea to buy a bed or I'm going to be sleeping on the floor for a couple days.
Oh, and I put up a few pics of the new place but they're not that good. Hopefully I'll get some more pics (with me in them :)) soon.
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( 2.6 / 67 )Friday, June 29, 2007, 18:39 - General
I got my social security card in the mail at Google the other day so I went to the DMV this morning to hand in my Wisconsin driver's license for a New York one. It only took an hour of waiting and photo taking and form filling and $45. The price was a bit steep compared to the Midwest, but then I guess I'm not in the Midwest anymore so that's fine with me.Matt came to Google today for lunch so that I could use my second visitor allotment (I get two per month). We ate upstairs, checked out the view from the terrace, played a couple games of guitar hero. Good times, though I don't think I like the game much. Games like that or DDR (which I admittedly never played) just don't appeal.
I got paid today! The check is en route in the mail which sucks, but whatever. Somewhere, there's money waiting for me in a little envelope and that's a Good Thing (tm).
I move tomorrow too. Lewis left his car (which I've been moving from side to side on the street to avoid tickets - they sure clean the streets often here) so I can even use that. Exciting. I won't have a bed there at first so I don't know what I'll do about sleeping until Lewis brings down the van and we can go to Ikea. There's one in Long Island which is equidistant (wrt time - equidurationary?) and avoids toll fees so we'll likely hit that up instead of the one in Newark. Too bad there aren't any disc golf courses on Long Island though.
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( 2.9 / 32 )Thursday, June 28, 2007, 14:40 - General
Petter just sent me this. Heh. Pretty much sums up how I feel about top 40 crap.[ 1 comment ] ( 34 views ) | permalink |
( 2.9 / 32 )Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 18:06 - Blurbs
I see rats almost every day running around on the subway tracks.[ 1 comment ] ( 34 views ) | permalink |
( 2.9 / 35 )Sunday, June 24, 2007, 17:05 - General
So for one, a bit more on my to-be apartment. I'm actually not sure Lewis knows this, but it's a railroad. We'd been avoiding these, but this place seemed nice enough, was really cheap, and I was just sick of looking. If I'd just realized earlier that rental agencies didn't want to hear about me being a student but didn't mind hearing about me working at Google, things would have gone a lot more smoothly I imagine. In any case, a railroad is an apartment where all the rooms are in one long line, and usually this means that the entrance comes into the living room whereas the two bedrooms are one after the other, forcing you to walk through one to get to the other. However, the rear bedroom in this place has a very convenient extra entrance door, so whatever. It will work for one year at least. We'll have to buy something to separate the living room from the first bedroom, but that shouldn't be too expensive. Might be a pain though. The neighborhood's really nice, still very Polish too. It's amazing just how Polish the area is actually, because I can't imagine there have been too many recent immigrants coming in so all the Polish signs and newspapers and street talk have to have been established for quite a while. Very cool.I walked to the place as taking the train one stop would still have meant at least a 15 minute walk and likely wouldn't have saved me any time. I thought it was great right away, so I asked what I had to do to secure it and he said I could put a deposit down right then if I wanted. However, I'd forgotten all the cash that Lewis had left for such purposes (I'm still flat broke, but more on that later) back at home so I made up that I had another appointment to attend to as I didn't want the guy to get the impression that I was broke. Thus I walked all the way back home again (maybe 30 minutes or so), got the money, and walked back. I didn't ride the bike Julie'd lent me cuz I still don't have any money to buy a helmet or a lock. Thus I put $50 down that we'd get back in case we weren't approved. By now it was 2:15, and I'd been doing nothing but apartment searching all day since 8:30 or so. I walked over to the Lorimer L stop and caught that to the end of the line, then switched to the A train to head up to the southwest corner of Central Park. It was the first time I'd been uptown, and the first time I'd been on a north-south train for any distance, and it was immediately a change from riding the L. The train was smaller and darker, and much more cramped. It really felt more urban just being on a different line. The highlight was a group of three young German girls gabbing away and me trying to follow along. I got out at Columbus Circle and then took a couple wrong turns before finding the building in which the rental agency was located. I took the elevator up to the 7th floor (with a nice doorman operating the lift for me) but when he mentioned how crazy it was up there I didn't realize how right he was. The office took up the whole floor and it was a madhouse of papers and people and phones and running and yelling. I had to fill out a form with details about my job and price range, etc., and I noticed that the broker's fee was 15% of the year's rent or about $3000. I knew right away that I wasn't going to take anything with these guys, cuz that kind of fee is just not worth it for me at this stage. If I was going to get something really nice and long-term, maybe. But not now. I however thought it was kind of interesting to be there so I filled it out anyway and met with this woman Patti who wondered audibly why Lewis and I were shooting for such a cheap place when our amazing Google-driven income qualified us for at least a $3000/mo apartment. I made up some story about us wanting to pay off our student loans, and we went along with her trying to pitch too-expensive apartments to me which were way up in Harlem. After a little while, I told her to call me on Monday and was off...
...toward the next appointment. I walked up Central Park West (my first sight of Central Park and it looked amazing) to West 72nd street where the next rental agency was located. This one was similar in style to the other, just on a lower scale. I was told about the apartment which was on E 109th (apparently Spanish Harlem is a part of the Upper East Side, or I wouldn't have come there in the first place) and this new guy took me via the subway up to the place. It was my first glimpse of Harlem, and it looked pretty ok. Definitely nicer than the areas of central Brooklyn I'd seen last week. The guy did go on about how I'd need to buy window guards to prevent break-ins (yay) and told me both about this sketchy tunnel separating the 4,5,6 trains from the apartment and the housing project right near there. I just wasn't sold on the place after those things. Again, maybe I'm a small-towner. I dunno.
I parted ways with the guy and took the subways over to 21st street in Long Island City (Queens) from where I walked the mile over the Pulaski bridge back home. I was exhausted and it had been really hot all day long. I was hoping to do some work on my thesis, but I just couldn't muster the energy for it. Then I got a phone call from the guy about the first place - I alone had been approved for the whole place, even without Lewis! I mean, what the hell was the other place's problem which rejected the pair of us for me being "financially unstable" when I can get a whole place for the same price myself a few blocks away? Ugh. Whatever, I was like "we'll take it" and he told me to be at the office with the security deposit in 45 minutes. I pulled out Lewis's wad and counted it and realized - we were $60 short. Fuck. What was I to do? I called Lewis but he didn't pick up his phone (he was in Boston this weekend at an ultimate Frisbee tournament). I called my parents who are in Monterey on vacation and asked them what they could do for me but there wasn't much they could do either. I have a checkbook, but it's with a Midwest-local bank and so I have no way of putting money into it without their help but they're not there. So I called my sister and asked her whether she could float me $50 or so for a week but she wasn't too keen on that idea. It's just so frustrating because I'm getting like a bazillion dollar check mailed to me on Friday but until then I have to suffer through all the nuisances of being a broke bastard. I decided I'd go down there with all the cash and write a check for the $60 difference. I'll likely just overdraft my account, but hopefully I can come up with some way to wire my sister money so that she can put it into the account. God, does it have to be this complicated? I drove down in Lewis's beat up Ford Probe along McGuinness and was talking to my sis while I drove and it felt pretty cool. I admit that I love driving, but I still don't especially want a car. The guy was a bit freaked out by all the cash and locked the door while we counted it out, and I made sure to get receipts, but basically we just need to come in on Monday and provide the proof of employment (I think) and sign the lease and that's that. So glad to be done with that.
After that I went out and bought a huge pizza and a beer and watched Eraserhead for the first time. It was pretty cool, but not my favorite Lynch ever. That baby thing is really creepy.
Just need to make it through this week. When my check comes, that should signal the last time in my life I'll ever be flat broke again! At least, that's my hope. Being a student does have its downsides. I mean I'm 26.
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