Ok. I've been putting this off long enough. I've been putting it off because I think it's going to be a long post and I haven't had much patience with writing lately, but it's time to get the story online before it fades too far in the distance.

On November 2nd I moved from my shitty corporate apartment complex in Alameda to a little cottage about 10 minutes walk from work on the Emeryville/Oakland border.

I want to start with something positive, so there are certain things I will miss about Alameda and my apartment. I will miss walking the cats down the end of the street and watching the Sunset over San Francisco. I will miss my closet space - I had three rather large closets. I will miss the onsite gym and the pool although they stopped heating it when utility prices started to skyrocket. The thing I think I will miss the most is being able to pay my rent with WorldPerks credit card. That's about it.

Here's what I won't miss:

• The water would never drain in the tub no matter how much Liquid Plummer I would pour down there
• The electric stove
• The dishwasher that can't wash dust off a dish
• The pathetic management
• The driers on the second floor which would randomly decide not to dry your clothes
• The office which would close inexplicable when I would come home to pay the rent or pick up a package
• My house key which would not work on the front door
• Having my parking space given away to a new tenant
• Being addressed as Andrew Heche
• Being isolated in Alameda
• A zillion more things that I can't think of now that were making me miserable

For those of you who haven't been following or forgot the deal, I'll recap the basics of the story for you.

I moved into the Ballena Village Apartments in December of last year. Within a week I received a letter from management saying that as part of their ongoing efforts to improve the plumbing, contractors would need access to my apartment for 10 days (it turned out to be more like 14) at the end of January, which was odd since I asked about the plumbing before I moved in and was told it was fine. How much can you learn by turning on the taps? They worked when I was there. The water pressure was fine. I was deliberately deceived by the staffer who showed me around, Don Dunbar. After I signed my lease and moved in, the same Don Dunbar explained to me that he made a mistake when he told me that the cat deposit was for all pets. It was per pet. He was shaking me down for double deposit. I never paid it. In January when the contractors came into my place, they managed to seal one of my cats behind the drywall and moved a huge bookcase to get at the pipes in the kitchen sink and never moved it back. I complained to the corporate office. Heartless bastards offered me no compensation. Even the contractors felt some contrition and offered me a small check in compensation. The only thing Ballena would agree to was to terminate my lease and return my deposit in full (I doubt they will live up to the full deposit, but we'll see). I would have moved out sooner, but it's tough to find a good place and I didn't want to make the same mistake again. One day I came home from work, about 2 months ago, and there was a car parked in my spot. I went upstairs to call the office, but I realized I left my keys in the office. It's about a 30 minutes round trip from Alameda to my office, so I figured the car would be gone when I got back. It wasn't. I was standing behind it getting ready to call the office when I see these two women approaching. The older one looks at me and says, are the one who parked in my spot last night? I said if by your spot you mean my spot, then yes. This is my spot. She said it was her spot. I said it was my spot and rather than go on like that, I said, when did you move in. She says, two days ago. I say, that's interesting, because I moved here in December and have been parking in the same spot ever since. Can you move your car please. No. I was so fucking upset. I called the office. No one answered and I left a message. I called the late night security to have her towed, but all they would do is come down and put a note on her car. I saw the two of them getting into a Miata in the outside lot. I went up to them and asked again if she would move her car, just as a matter of courtesy since there was a mistake and it was my spot. She said. And then her younger friend with an annoying New York accident started tearing into me saying it wasn't her (meaning her friend's) problem. It was the complex's problem. She wasn't going to move. So much for civility. She was forced to move the next day when she was reassigned. I should have slashed her tires.

Anyway, for these reasons and many more, I wanted/needed to get the hell out of there. The problem is that there is a shortage of quality housing in the Bay Area. I could have moved immediately to some shitty place or an expensive place or even worse a shitty expensive place, but I have a lot of stuff and I didn't want to move and then have to move again. I wanted to find the right place and move once. I looked all over. In the city. In all the desirable parts of the East Bay and some of the not so desirable parts of the East Bay. I even upped the amount I was willing to pay to $1500 but I still didn't find anything worthwhile. Even worse, I would show up at these places that I thought were crap and there would be heaps of people looking it over and filling out applications. It was totally discouraging.

I didn't find anything until October 30 when I answered an ad for a detached cottage in Emeryville (It's really in Oakland, but it doesn't really matter). I didn't have high hopes. I didn't really want to live in Emeryville (or Oakland for that matter). I would have preferred North Berkeley or Rockridge, but at that point it was really time to extend my options. And I'm so glad I did.

I walked into this place I knew immediately that I could live here. I would say wanted to live there, but there was another cottage listed on Craigslist (with no contact number??) that I wanted to check out but never did get to see. The house in front is a Craftsman’s style and the cottage is to the to side, not in the back like most of them, so it has the sense of being a house on its own. Adding to this sense is the fact that it comes with a garage, which right now is full of my stuff but will soon house my Subaru. Next to the garage is a wood fence which leads to a set of stairs. The left is my wooden deck and to the right is the pistachio (not my favorite color, but what the hell) door. Inside, the house is long and narrow, maybe 18 feet wide and 50 feet deep. Off to the right, there's a working fireplace flanked by built in bookcases. If you hook a right u-turn you go up the stairs to the bedroom which is above the garage. You go straight through the living room to the kitchen and the bathroom. The whole place is floored with bamboo. There's central heat. A stacked washer/dryer in bathroom. The kitchen looks brand new like it came right out of a modern living brochure. It's all white, rimmed in cabinets with copper handles. The gas stove has a built in microwave. New fridge with the freezer on the bottom (keeps the cats from
sticking their nose inside and inventorying my fridge every time I open it). Pur water filter on the tap. A dishwasher that actually washes dishes. 15 minutes walk to the Ashby BART. 10 minute walk to work. It's my new oasis. I walk around it and I can't believe it's mine.

Moving there turned out to be a huge headache. I was going to call movers to do it for me, but one of my coworkers said, hey forget that, get a U-haul and I'll help you move. 11 hours or completer struggle later we managed to move all the heavy stuff from my third floor apartment to the cottage. We started at 5 right after work didn't finish unloading everything into the garage until after 4am. I knew I had a lot of stuff, but I didn't realize I could fill a 17' truck. I couldn't even get everything in there. I had to go back for some small stuff, the dishes, all the food in the fridge and the cats the next day. It was about 15 trips up and down the stairs because as a last Fuck You from Ballena to Andrew, the ancient elevator was busted on my last day in the apartment. Fucking shithole.

Anyway, that's done and I've been spending my time organizing my things, putting books in the cases, getting comfortable, waking up late, going home for lunch. It's great. Somehow I feel like it was meant to be and after almost a year of suffering I deserve to have a great place to come home to.

On top of all this, I can let the cats come and go from the cottage. I've kept them in the house so far, although they managed to sneak out the front door once or twice, because I want to make sure they know where home is. But I put their collars back on last night and made them new tags and will soon send them out to roam around the neighborhood, maybe as soon as this weekend, so expect some little cat lost stories coming shortly.