The Virginia Blogs: The Top Ten Reasons Tom and Jenn are Moving!

10. The Hot Spot Card

There's nothing quite like receiving a "Hot Spot" card once a week, slipped under your door. What's a Hot Spot card? Why, its a prepaid card that you fill out annonymously and send to the police about the illegal activities, such as drug dealing, you have seen. Oh, yeah.

9. 50 Cent at 2:50 a.m.

There's nothing quite like being treated to a form of music you don't really enjoy loudly at 3 a.m. with the bass up so loud you're getting heart palpitations while you sit there and try to ignore it. I don't begrudge you your kicker or your rap, but I will call the cops on you at 3 a.m. for waking my butt out of a dead sleep.

8. Neighbors who don't have keys

BANG BANG BANG goes the door at 12:30 a.m.*

7. The Shower you can't shower in.

For the first two weeks we lived here we couldn't shower** because we couldn't turn the water to the shower head. The maintenance guy came, squirted some lithium grease into the handle and walked away. Didn't work. Finally, I just grabbed it with both hands and yanked as hard as I could. Bonus on this one: There's no drain trap. It's just a hole that the water goes down and the bugs come up.

6. Swinging cabinets.

So, I walked into the kitchen one day to start making dinner. I open the cabinet to get the pot out, and out walks a cat. Great. Wash off the fuzz, and go get the rice to start it. Open the upper cabinet, out walks another cat. Bwah? I get the rice and close the cabinet. A moment later, I turn back to the cabinet to get something and BANG! nail my head on the corner of the door. Not for the life of me had I been able to keep the cabinet closed and consquently keep the cats out of my cabinets.*** Did I mention that they had to hack into the lip of them upper set to get the fridge under it?

5. Micro-Climates

Downstairs, it's a lovely, non-humid 73 degrees Farenheit. So cool that I usually have to wear long, light yoga pants. Upstairs, it's like a g-d damned sauna. On average, if it's 90 out, it's 80 in the bedroom. If it's 97, you're looking at wonderful 84 or 85* So hot and humid that the shower towels wouldn't dry!****

4. Rugs

... that give you athlete's foot because no one has bothered to clean them in who knows how long. Hell, why even vacuum before your new tenants move in?

3. Nothing really fits

You have to close the front door just so. The upstairs faucets are reversed*****, the railing on the stairs is loose and splintery. The closet doors either don't close, don't close correctly, hop the track and in one case, decide they don't want to be a door any more and completely leave the closet altogether. There's no sanding before painting, and there is painting over scotch tape. The toilet seats don't go up and down-- you have to peel them apart, and they never really close all the way. Nothing really fits.

2. Appliances that suck.

So, I decide that I'm going to make a turkey. Not really a problem, until I try to put it in the oven. The oven door doesn't open all the way. So I wrestle it a bit until I deem it necessary to call Tom in to help me with this. He walks in, and finds me standing there holding a 350 degree oven door in the middle of the kitchen. Yes, that's right folks, I managed to dislodge the oven door. They replaced the oven about three weeks later. But then there's also the dishwasher that doesn't wash glasses. Every time I put glasses in the dishwasher, I have to rewash them by hand. Silly person, it's a dishwasher right?

And,
1.



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*Yeah, apparently, no one around here can do these thing during normal, non-ridiculous hours.
** Don't worry. We both took sponge baths and regular baths for the time it took me to figure out how to turn on the water.
***Babies R Us to the rescue. Thank heavens for child proof clips.
****Solved by removing the AC vent, turning it around and having the air in the bathroom blow up and onto them as much as we could get it.
*****Let's not talk about how delightful it is to turn on the faucet you think is cold, and burn your hand on the water because some numbnuts reversed the feeds.