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).