two dolla

oh the places i’ve lived

The General and I have talked a lot about when/where we want to move. We love Northeast Minneapolis a lot. Truthfully, we love our duplex a lot. We just know that we’d prefer something on the first floor and something with a shower (because ours only has a bathtub). In-unit laundry is also on our list of demands for our next humble abode.

I’ve lived in Minneapolis for just over 8 years. In those eight years, I’ve lived in seven places. I’d say I’m fickle, but I don’t think it’s me. Let’s examine, shall we?

1. St. Paul. I was moving from Sedalia to Minnesota. While I’d visited plenty of times before, I’d never taken the time to look at any rental property, so I left it completely up to someone else who ended up finding a house for rent and signed a lease. Because it was pink. Months later, someone broken in and stole my Nintendo 64 and my chocolate chip Eggo waffles. Not a joke.
2. Eden Prairie. Super nice apartment. Super nice location to the two jobs I was working at the time, but holy large-SUV driving, soccer mom filled, pretentious snob filled suburb. Absolutely not me.
3. Roseville. We lived in a four bedroom, ranch-style house with five people, one of which owned the house. The owner was on house arrest much of the time I lived there and couldn’t mow the whole backyard, because he got too far from the house and his ankle bracelet did weird things. And his girlfriend stole a bottle of vodka from my bedroom.
4. Burnsville. Nice setup, but I fell in love with this dog named Riley and needed my own place. Plus, I’d fallen in love with Minneapolis and Burnsville to Minneapolis was a heck of a drive.
5. Eagan. Decent apartment, decent rent, decent location. But again, it was kinda far from Minneapolis. And the new management company was turning into a pile of turds that let children skateboard in the halls. Not cool.
6. Minneapolis #1. Loved the apartment. Got tired of Uptown. The General came with a 12 year old and I only had one bedroom.

I’d consider buying a house somewhere, but then I wouldn’t have all these awesome stories about roommates and neighbors and slumlandlords!

here’s the plan

Hypothetically speaking, say you have a really nice neighbor that lives downstairs. You’ve talked to him a few times and realized that he’s a really pleasant dude. You know he smokes weed every now and again, but you don’t really care, because he does it outside and it doesn’t bother anyone. But then all of a sudden, you come up and there’s a note on the front door that you share with said downstairs neighbor. The note says something along the lines of:

First Name:

You better have my money, [expletive]. I’ll be back at 7:30 to get it.

And then a few days later, the note-writer appears at the front door knocking for a good half hour, despite being told that your downstairs neighbor wasn’t at home.

Now you’re torn between the following options: call some rental trucks to haul his stuff out without him knowing it, call the cops next time the note-writing, door-knocking money-collecting guy comes to visit, call the landlord and just give him a heads up, or just confront the guy.

But first, you write a blog post about it, because you want some advice on what the most appropriate thing is to do. Any ideas? Suggestions? Experience yelling at neighbors that don’t pay their drug dealers?

hey, i was washing that

There once was a lovely couple that lived in Northeast Minneapolis. They were in love with their quaint little duplex, because it was basically perfect for their family of three plus an assortment of pets. And then all of a sudden the landlord turned into a little bit of a d-bag. For a while, he was incredibly hands off and that was okay, because all was well in the duplex. Then, once this winter rolled around and the lovely couple had lived there for a year, it became apparent the landlord was one of those guys who started things and never finished them. Like the two holes in the front stairwell that were drilled in November of ’08 as an attempt to get rid of some squirrels that were living inside the house. It’s classy.

The lovely couple signed a lease in Jan ’09, making it up for expiration this month, and there’s been no talk or notice from the landlord about extending it. They haven’t quite decided if that’s a good thing or a bad thing yet. And while they have no desire to go through the whole moving process again for a very long time, they might not hesitate to start lining up some moving help if things continue the way they have this past week.

Earlier this week, the landlord showed up to install some storm windows because the City of Minneapolis told him he had to after a recent inspection. He didn’t tell the lovely couple he was coming, so there were dogs running rampant and an ungrateful and giant jerk-wad of a house guest (don’t worry, that’s another post) that he found himself in the middle of. Today, the dark-haired half of the lovely couple decided to do some laundry. The first load went through the washer and into the dryer without too much of a hiccup. Upon going down to switch the second load from the washer to the dryer, she noticed something rather odd. The washing machine was unplugged, in the middle of the basement, and half taken apart, with a basket of wet clothes sitting on top of the dryer. Um, what? Makes things a little difficult to catch up on the week’s laundry with no way to wash clothes. Wouldn’t be that big of a deal except for whole no notice thing.

The lovely couple is in no mood to negotiate any kind of a new lease with the current landlord or spend anytime looking for somewhere new to live, so an email was fired off asking if he had any clue when that might be fixed. If the landlord decides to write back, a new lease is going to be discussed then, because that’s just going to make everyone happier.

In the meantime, if anyone has a nice three bedroom house in Minneapolis they’d like to just hand over to this lovely couple, rest assured, the lovely couple would be very grateful and totally have you over for dinner all the time.

sticking around for a while

We moved into our current abode about a year ago. We haven’t received any type of notification to renew our lease, but I guess I’m not really complaining. We’d sign another lease in a heartbeat, but I guess it’s not really our responsibility to remind our landlord that we need a new lease, is it? Besides, the idea of looking at apartments or duplexes or whatever is enough to make me go kind of crazy and not in a good way.

Our landlord now is extremely hands off. I haven’t seen him or heard from him since we moved in (except for last month) unless I’ve contacted him first. It’s kind of nice, but I’m thinking a lot of it has to do with the fact that we have awesome neighbors in the downstairs area of the house. And mainly, it’s one guy that’s lived there for a while and just been able to somehow land awesome roommates. From experience, I know that’s not necessarily an easy task!

Right now, the idea of contacting five billion apartments to see if they’d be willing to take two 80 pound dogs does not sound at all enjoyable. By no surprise, when you have gigantic dogs, it’s not at all easy to find a place that will take them. It wasn’t even that easy when I only had Riley. One place even asked to meet him. And if you’ve met Riley, you know it went over extremely well. It was just funny, because the landlord kept asking if he was always that calm. Uh, yeah, dude, pretty much. Unless you have a handful of cheese and then I can’t help you out at all on that one.

Back to our current living situation — I can’t imagine going back to an actual apartment after living in a duplex for a year. It may not sound like that big of a deal, but when you only have to deal with one neighbor as opposed to 10 others, it sure does make a whole lot of difference. And in an extremely good way.

i’ll never be frugal

Looking into ’10 and after being on a salary freeze for all of ’09, I’m gonna buckle down and focus on finances. I’ve needed to for quite some time, but I’ve always managed to sneak by with some type of disposable income. My disposable income of years gone by has been, well, disposed of in many ways — none, mind you, that I regret! It’s just required learning to live in a little different lifestyle, one which I’m still trying to get used to.

MSN has a list of radical ways to save money and it makes me happy to realize we’ve done every single one of those in one aspect or the other. I take that back. We haven’t gotten rid of the car, but when I have a four mile round trip commute a day, I feel pretty good about that. I bus regularly, but considering it’s $4.50 round trip for the bus, I think it’s probably costing me more to use public transportation! Roommates aren’t an option, but The General’s stopped smoking, we’re regulars at the thrift store, and I’d definitely consider ourselves homebodies. Check, check, check and check!

I’ve been trying to look at other ways to lessen the blow of monthly bills. We’re on the lowest cell phone plan we can find. Right now, there are no car payments (that’s likely to change soon) and we watch the electricity as much as we can. Everyone says to shop around for different car insurance options, but I can’t really find a place that’s cheaper than my current one. The once accident left on my record should drop off in 2011, so I’m hoping for a drop then!

I’m still trying to convince The General that we should clip coupons. I say we, but I know I won’t do it by myself. We don’t want to pay for the local newspaper (mainly because it’s CRAP), so we’re left cruising online venues for ways to save money. I’ve been reading a ton of blogs from people (including people I actually know!) that save ridiculous amounts of money at the store every week. Sure, it requires a ton of prep work and countless hours scouring local coupon inserts, and while I know I don’t have the patience for that, I’m going to see what else we can come with. Besides a Costco membership, because we already have one of those.

canal alto consumo

When we moved into this duplex in February, we were immediately worried we’d be the loud neighbors. We’re not small, The Kid walks around like an elephant, and we have two 80 pound dogs. I think we’re a recipe for annoying upstairs neighbors. Add random dogs coming in and out like it’s a halfway house for canines and that just increases the potential for a barking, growling, howling, stampeding disaster.

The only time we hear the downstairs neighbors is when their dog has to go out or they’re watching some type of sporting event. And then the Bald One, who leaves a Bible and a book called “Help me Understand the Bible” on the dash of his Jeep Cherokee, fell in love with perhaps a hyena – one that happens to drive a red car that’s always in my parking spot. She may also be part howler monkey. Or a cat in heat. You get the picture.

The other downstairs roommate, who we can call Pauly Shore thanks to his daily weed smoking habit, can’t stand The Howler Monkey. You can only imagine Pauly’s amount of pleasure when the Bald One announced he’d be marrying The Howler Monkey. Since then, the betrothed couple rarely spend the night here, leaving Pauly to take care of the dog — the dog that belongs to the Bald One.

Recently, The Howler Monkey has been given a key to the downstairs. Since I’m guessing she normally lives in a barn, she can’t seem to enter the house without a grand entrance involving laughing (whether or not she’s by herself or with the Bald One) or smashing her face into all the walls. Or at least that’s what it sounds like.

So I don’t feel too bad taking Spanish lessons via Google translator at this time of night. Especially when I’ve learned how to say the following (out loud, of course):

• street whore
• white dog
• big brown dog
• Mexican street whore dog
• my name is honey bunny
• sweet bunny needs roses
• Cum Slut canal alto consumo (because the English part is way, way dirty)

I’m totally putting bilingual on my resume now.

thousands of dollars in small appliances

Now I know we don’t own our current residence, which prohibits anything past just thinking about it, but two of my favorite co-workers have either bought a house or just had an offer accepted on a house (as of today), and looking at pictures of new kitchens is something I’m currently obsessed with. Nope, I don’t do a lot of cooking at all. And really, macaroni and cheese or bacon can all be done over just about any heat-producing thing. But there’s just something about a kitchen with an island in it or brand new countertops that I really love a lot.

So if we actually had a place to live that would allow something like a gigantic kitchen makeover, I’d be all over any contest that was giving away a $32,000 Dream Kitchen, especially knowing that second place is a brand new ‘fridge. Even better? It’s stocked with chicken and I love chicken a lot. I don’t know how to make it, but I suppose I could cook it on the George Foreman for the next three weeks before I got completely tired of it. See, again with the not so fancy kitchen appliances… I can’t even imagine what a fat 32K could bring into the kitchen.

I’d probably buy five George Foremans (because I really hate cleaning them!), a toaster that cooks bagels, a pub-style table, and a really awesome hot dog cooker. I don’t really know what else a person would need to be quite honest.

i’m gonna need a big box

Jenni brought a contest/challenge type thing to my attention last week and I couldn’t really say no to it: 5 A Day to Keep the Clutter Away. Here are the guidelines straight from the website:

• Find 5 things a day that you can get rid of. Size doesn’t matter. It could be a spoonrest or an entire wardrobe.
• Put them in a box/bag/bin in an out of the way area (your garage, laundry room, a closet)
• At the end of each week or the month depending on your storage space, trash, give away or donate all the items
• If you find something that indeed is sale-worthy you have the month to sell it. If by the end of August it’s still in your box, it goes, and you get a nice tax write-off.

Five things a day is a lot, considering I do’nt throw anything away ever. Just ask my friends who’ve had to help me move multiple times in the past five years. And, really, I didn’t need the seven shirts, two pair of shoes, and small black fan that found its way out the door today.

In other breaking news, some Mormon dude is harassing me on Twitter because I made a comment via Twitter yesterday about carrying a Book of Mormon in my back pocket as a defense for the two Mormon boys that were riding up and down the street, following little old ladies that were just trying to take a walk. The dude’s just lucky I didn’t try throwing the Book of Mormon at the kids as they rode past my car window. That was The General’s idea. Not mine.

complete hot mess

Over the last two weeks, I’ve been reminded that I hate to sweat. A lot. We reside on the second floor of a duplex that was built… a long time ago. In the winter, we were rarely cold, because a) hot air rises and b) we have this ridiculous furnace that could probably heat all of Northeast Minneapolis. It was nice. And then summer got here.

I don’t know what the deal is, but we cannot get our apartment to cool off. It probably doesn’t help that fact that a couple of weeks ago, something happened with our hot water heater that involved standing water in the basement. That situation finally got taken care of last night at some point, I think. Maybe Friday night. I can’t remember. But since the whole hot water heater fiasco materialized, it’s felt like a fucking sauna up in Unit #2.

The humidity in our entire house has felt like something from Missouri. And you Missouri folk know that stuff is not pleasant. Lately, it’s been 63 degrees at night, but we’ve been sweating like whores at church on Sunday when we try to watch such class programs as She’s Got the Look and 147 and Counting, or whatever that Duggar show is called.

Right now, on our back porch, it’s like a lovely Minnesota summer morning. But I can guarantee you that come noon if I were sitting on the couch watching Judge Judy, my clothes would be sticking to me in places that were not meant for clothes to be sticking. My hair would look like I’d just showered, except I can promise you I wouldn’t smell like it.

We’ve gotta get this whole humididty, sweating off 8 pounds a day thing under control. It doesn’t help matters that the wiring in the house only allows us to plug in one of our air conditioners at a time without blowing the electricity for the entire second floor… with the exception of the bathroom, of course.

I don’t mind being warm all the time, but when Mama wakes up in a pile of her own sweat, Mama’s not happy.

hi again it’s me

We just dropped off our foster dog to her new home. Happy Mother’s Day to Peeka’s new mom!

Our Mother’s Day was spent trying to get a foreign object out of the toilet. The General’s been working on that for the past three days, but one final day of jamming an auger up and down both sides of the toilet have proven to be unsuccessful. We cut our losses and bought a new toilet at Menard’s. Yeah, we’re renting, but neither of us wanted to call the landlord and explain this little mild disaster. Especially because we need to call him tomorrow and tell him one of the electrical outlets in our kitchen stopped working.

I’m toying with changing themes on ye ol’ blog, mainly because I figured that might be something to get me to post more often. Probably a futile attempt, but I didn’t see any harm in trying. Of course, it takes me forever to find something I like.

Lastly, I’m completely in love with Facebook. I have been for a long time. But today took the cake. This boy I used to play basketball with at the park daily during the summer (we’ll call him Rayson Jeno) is on there. I most certainly never had a crush on him (right), but more of a “Dammit, you ass, I’m going to beat you at streetball if it’s the last thing I do” type feeling towards him. Of course, I never did, but Angie and I sure as hell were the only girls that could give him a run for his money… And now, I kind of want to go back to Vermont Park in Sedalia, shoot three pointers to decide who plays on what team, and listen to the basketball clank through the metal nets one afternoon.