Getting Adjusted

About a month and a half ago, we moved into our new place. We found our new apartment on a rental site (you have to pay a premium and you gain access to all their listings. Landlords have to post their rentals.) It's a lot easier to navigate than Craigslist and short of just driving around neighborhoods, it helps give an idea of what's in an area (and then you can check it out and potentially find a place not listed). For us, since we have le grande pooch, this was a fairly easy way of finding a rental that would allow Gamby, was in our price range, showed photos, and also in the area we were interested in. Granted, I still had to make several phone calls in which number two question after "Is X still available?" was "What is your pet policy?"

Our new place is only a handful of miles away from our old place (4ish miles according to Google Maps)--and is located in Koreatown. It's so much larger than our old place- so much larger. Unlike our old place, our new apartment is 1 bedroom in a small building (only 8 units total) and has gated entry and parking! It feels more like a 1 story 1 bedroom townhouse than an apartment; at least that's how Cameron and I have been describing it. It has a front and back entrance and is large enough, we think, to be described as such. For instance, we have a formal dining room AND a laundry room (so grown up!). It's in a much more residential area-- it's a heavily populated area, but it's mostly family homes and apartments (Cameron said he felt like he was in a sardine can). Talk about a change of pace from Hollywood! We only really grapple with local traffic (so much more preferable than tourist or movie premiere traffic). Cameron's commute is way better (13ish miles for him = 30 minute commute regardless of time etc) than mine (9ish miles = 30 minutes in the AM and an hour in the PM).

Now, onto the "getting adjusted" part of this post. So, in the weeks we've been in our new apartment, we've had maintenance come to apartment practically every week- sometimes twice! It's nothing alarming, but rather just getting the kinks worked out. My co-workers suggested I blog about our breaking in stage since I always seem to have a new story about what's going on with our apartment.

Week 1: Request for shower light replacement, shower drain clogged, bathtub drip, shower faucet repair
Week 2: AC replacement
Week 3: Plastic removed from back door glass (later that week) water leak at washer hook ups
Week 4: Bathroom sink leak (that weekend) bathroom sink water backed up
Week 5: (pending) replacement burner caps for stove

Part of the reason for the high amount of requests, especially plumbing is we can't use Dran-o or any type of liquid plumbing due to our pipes being old and of a certain type. Having to ask for so many repair requests has made me very appreciative of our management company as our apartment manager is friendly and easy to get a hold of as are the people they contract for work. I just feel bad being "those tenants" that have a bajillion requests and has only been there for a month. But the more we're here, the less and less we've needed to contact them (for obvious reasons).

Another trial we have been facing is getting packages delivered to us. It seems that only USPS has a key to get into the building and so FedEx and UPS can't enter our building unless we're home. And they usually deliver in late morning/early afternoon and we're never home at those times. We can go the warehouse and pick up the packages, no problem. It just takes a hour out of our evening as we battle downtown traffic.

HOWEVER. This one time, a certain delivery company just left it, and I quote, "by the driveway in the bushes." What. By the time I got home said package was gone because it was pretty much on the sidewalk in a busy Los Angeles neighborhood for over five hours, and last I checked, bushes don't exactly have security systems. The delivery company was absolutely no help because the package didn't require a signature so it was the driver's discretion to leave it where he/she may... Luckily, the company I ordered from was willing to resend the package with a signature request so we can at least get it from the warehouse. Needless to say, there's now a note by our doorbell asking for packages not to be left on the doorstep.

One day we'll be all settled in. One day.

And, of course, some obligatory (but awful sad looking) photos of Gambit. I think he was pretty bummed about not getting his PetBox (which was the aforementioned lost/stolen package).

A Potential Apocalypse is Coming...

Sorry for the overdue absence in posts. I was actually in the middle of drafting a post about our current apartment and the trials and tribulations of getting settled into our new apartment and then last week happened.

Last week, a 93 year old 30" water main pipe off of Sunset Blvd ruptured and punctured a huge hole in the pavement and poured out between 8-10 million gallons of water... (for the record, we're in a serious drought for, I think, the 3rd year... I can't stress how not good this was in that respect) straight onto UCLA's campus. Here's the official report. So, the big problem was that the break was uphill and campus was downhill and all the water flowed into Drake Stadium, the athletic fields, Pauley Pavilion (where the basketball court is housed), into the athletics building, parts of some neighboring buildings, and worst of all, into the underground parking structures 4 & 7.

The big take aways from the water main break are:

1. Anyone parked in lots 4 or 7 essentially had to leave their vehicles in the lots unless they managed to get them out before the water rose too high.
2. Anyone parked in lots 4 or 7 on the lower level most likely lost their vehicle to water intrusion as water levels reached over 5 feet high on the bottom levels of the structures.
3. Almost 1000 vehicles were in lots 4 & 7.
4. Pauley Pavilion had 8-10" of water on the basketball court.

So, this happened last week. The weekend before (July 26/27), Venice Beach had a rare lightning storm that left 1 dead. What is happening in Los Angeles?! I joked with Cameron before we moved out here that moving to LA may be a bad idea because any time there's the end of the world coming in movies, they are always set in LA or NYC... maybe I jinxed us. So, hence, the title of this post.

There have been no more thunderstorms, and UCLA has been moving towards getting vehicles released and cleaning up the campus. My work is rather fluid, so when staffing issues arise, I'm fairly mobile. Since Thursday I've been helping out with the flooding relief efforts, which has only now started to die down. That means people are getting their cars back, which is the best news! Thank goodness my parking permit was changed at the beginning of the summer to a completely different structure closer to my office. I used to park in Lot 4 as a student and sometimes it was on the lower level. I drive a Mini Cooper, so it's fair to say my car probably would have floated away if it was on the bottom level, so I'm very grateful to have dodged that bullet!

On a happier note, here is Gambit with his new ball a friend gave me (I was actually visiting her when the lightning strike happened, very, very far away from the coast). This was actually her dog's, but the wrong size was purchased so her pooch was actually afraid of the ball. But it suits Gambit just fine! Good thing we live on the first floor because that thing is LOUD when we toss it around the apartment for him to chase. (That's right, we have space to through things for the doggie!)