Life maintenance

At last I am moving. Some of my old small group are coming to help me, which is nice of them. I lured them out with pizza. ;) The carpet in the apartment is being replaced tomorrow, which is cutting it pretty close! But I'll be moving in the evening, so it shouldn't be a problem, assuming they actually get it done. The nice thing is that I was supposed to sign the lease tomorrow, but the landlord wasn't going to be around, so we did it today and I got the keys.

It's a studio and quite a bit smaller than the apartment I'm in now, but I'm kind of glad. I'm taking it as a challenge to get rid of all my excess junk, which I've actually been doing all year in anticipation of moving, even though I didn't know my space would be so restricted. I just wanted to have less to move. ;) The smallness of the apartment will give me an objective goal for weeding my possessions. If I can fit things comfortably into that space, then I've done enough for the time being. Since I have the keys, I'm going to go over later tonight and measure everything so I can plan my furniture arrangement better.

Dumbly, I waited till yesterday to get my phone service set up, so I won't have a phone line until next Wednesday (I don't have a cell phone) and Internet access till Thursday. But I don't use the phone much anyway, and I'll be closer to work, so I can easily pop over and use the Internet there or at the library, which will also be closer.

Also dumbly, it turns out that I could have stayed in my present apartment rather than moving, even though the complex had been converted to condominiums and I think it was explicitly stated that we'd have to move if we weren't buying. But now they're even taking new renters. I was able to stay a month past the end of my lease because they allow us to pay month to month, and apparently I could have stayed indefinitely that way. I also got a "renew your lease" notice after giving them my written notice that I was leaving. Somewhere there, communication wasn't happening. Anyway, by then it was too late; I had made up my mind. It's been nice living here the past three years, but I'm moving closer to all the things I do, and I'm looking forward to it.

On another note, I've been watching the original Battlestar Galactica online at Netflix the past couple of days. I remember seeing bits of episodes when I was little, but I never knew the plot until I read the general premise a couple of years ago, and even then it didn't really stick in my mind. Well, I ran out of things to watch yesterday, so I flipped through the Netflix instant watching list, spied it, and figured now was as good a time as any to inform myself. I had thought it was basically an sci fi action show. Boy was I ever wrong! Yes, it has action, but wow—it is weighty and epic. The issues it touches on are large. I felt emotions during the pilot I do not normally experience while watching TV. So I can see why it was so popular, and I'm looking forward to watching the remake. I don't have cable, so it'll all have to be on DVD.

The other sci fi series I remember watching but not understanding was Buck Rogers, which is also available for Netflix online viewing. See what you guys are missing? Join Netflix!

Version 1.0, 5-1-05

I could do without the real world. I am essentially a lazy person. And besides, the world of ideas is so much more fun. Unfortunately, in order to keep living and to do it conveniently, you have to expend a certain amount of energy. It probably takes less in the US than in a primitive, tribal society, but still it takes some. So here I will share with you some of the things I've found that have made my life a little easier to maintain. Because we all have better things to do.

Of course, many people make their living out of the things on this page. They actually enjoy doing things like managing finances or selling clothes or designing exercise plans. I consider such things to be necessary evils, and I take great pleasure in marginalizing these people's whole careers. I figure if they're going to enjoy making my life more complicated, I might as well retaliate by denigrating their chosen occupations.

This page will be dedicated to the good people who make these necessary evils more invisible. These people clean up the mess created by the overenthusiastic people of the last paragraph so that I don't have to deal with it. The less I have to think about, say, buying a car, the better. So if someone tells me exactly what I need to know to do that, they have just improved the world by holding back the evil that desires to encroach upon my life. And if no one is doing that, I'll just have to do it myself and save both myself and other people time in the future. Hence you'll find a few of my own stress-saving creations here too.

When my mom told me to get my head out of the clouds when I was growing up, I don't think she quite meant this ...

Life Maintenance Introduction

Life Maintenance links

This online rent payment service my apartment offers has messed up again. Last time, the payment was made, but apparently the apartment office didn't get the e-mail to inform them. This time the payment wasn't even made. My e-mail was down last week because of my missing domain, so I didn't get the e-mail I should have gotten to confirm my rent payment, and last night I remembered that I needed to check the site to make sure everything was all right. It wasn't. The last payment was for last month's rent, and for some reason the automatic payment option I had turned on was now turned off. I, of course, was infuriated. Inconveniences that threaten my life maintenance like that are one of the few things that make me really angry. But there was nothing I could do to resolve it until the office opened, and that wouldn't happen until the morning, or if they were closed on Labor Day (which they are, it turns out), Tuesday morning. So I watched another episode of DS9 to calm myself down and went to bed. I feel better now. Hopefully they will understand that this was another technological mess up and won't hold it against me. I'm relying on God to make that happen. But one thing is certain--I'll be hand delivering my rent from now on.

Yesterday I came home to a folded piece of paper wedged between the doorknob and the door frame. It was written in legalese, so it took me a minute to figure out what it was. It was an overdue rent notice. I was immediately enraged. I paid my rent online! Six days ago! Just to make sure I wasn't crazy, I dashed to my computer, looked through my old e-mails, and found the receipt they sent me. It was an automatic payment. I have it set to pay my rent on the last day of every month just so I can make sure nothing goes wrong before the rent is due on the first. It seemed to work, but then I got this nice little note, so obviously the system is messed up. I calmed down a little, printed out the receipt, and marched over to the office to inform them of their incompetence. Nicely and politely, of course.

I told the lady at the desk that I had just gotten this overdue rent notice but that I had paid my rent online. She was friendly and said that they must not have gotten the e-mail. She took the notice and my receipt printout and acted as if it would be a snap to take care of, so I thanked her and left. I guess I should check back in a day or two to make sure they got it fixed.

On the mailbox where we leave our rent checks, there's a sign that says, "Save time! Pay online!" It doesn't save time if I have to go to the office anyway to fix mistakes! There's also a $2 convenience fee. Plus a heart attack when they get things wrong.

Anyway, I felt better immediately after handing the problem off to the office. I just thought it would be a good blog story. :)

I bought some clothes online a couple of hours ago. It's something I've desperately needed to do for months, and I'm sure everyone at work will be relieved that they won't have to see me walking around with shirts that are fraying at the edges and pants with a hole in the back pocket. No one's said anything, but they'd have to be blind not to notice. Yes, I'm that kind of person. I don't care about stupid practical things like clothes, so I put off dealing with them until it becomes a dire necessity. But as part of my new program of ordering my life, I have dealt with them.

I thought buying clothes online would be easier than buying them from a store, since I wouldn't have to wander around futilely looking through messed up piles of dress pants for something my size. And it probably would have been easier if I had lots of money for clothes. But instead I spent two or three hours hunting through the random assortment of rejects that end up on discount shopping sites. It was educational, though. I learned some new words like twill and chino, and I found out the difference between fiber and fabric, which seems obvious now that I know, but I always thought of polyester and cotton as fabrics. I ended up ordering my pants from Blair and my shirts from Sears, both on sale. I had never even heard of Blair, but they seem to be a major retailer.

So now I don't have to think about that anymore, at least until next year. That sure has been weighing on my mind. It's such a relief, in fact, that it's completely cleared my mind. I can't think of what I have next on my list of boring practical things to do. Not that I'm motivated to try.