I don't know whether to be relieved or concerned

Was it Groucho Marx who talked about not wanting to belong to any club that would have him as a member? Yeah, that's how I feel right now.

As I mentioned a while back, my roommate Tommy is getting married in July. He's now all but moved out of our apartment, since the lease ends this month, and I shall be going as well -- I don't want to stay here, and our landlords don't want us to stay here. So I'm heading off.

Trebor and I found an apartment that would well suit the two of us -- it's about eighty dollars cheaper than this place, it looks nicer, the landlord doesn't appear to be flagrantly incompetent, and, praise Hetfield, it's downstairs. You really have no idea what that means to me. I've been living on the second floor my entire damn life. I am in love with the thought of not having to walk up and down stairs four or five times a day.

So we went in yesterday, saw the place, liked it, and filled out our applications. Which then has to be put through the acceptance process.

Hoo boy.

The background check involves calling one's place of employment, verifying that one does indeed have a job. No problem there, yeah? But then comes the credit check. Yeouch. And then calling one's currently landlord -- double yeouch. The landlords here could tell blood-chilling horror stories about this place -- lack of upkeep, late rent payments, and so on and so forth. I was extremely worried we'd get turned down. Which, of course, would leave me homeless.

But I called back today...and we're approved.

Huh.

What kind of low-ass standards does this place have? Jeez. I mean, if they'll let me in, who else might living there? And, even more frightening, who got rejected? I know it happens -- the downstairs apartment is available because the women who was going to take it didn't pass. What terrors has she perpetrated?

But, on the bright side, I won't be living under the overpass. Which means I should be able to finish both the new Revolver and Metallica's Musical Snapshot sometime next week, after the move is done. (Mercifully, every piece of furniture in this place, with the exception of the bed I'm throwing away, is Tommy's. Makes my move much easier.)

When we move, I'm dumping AOL -- Trebor's got DSL through Verizon, so we're going with that. This means a new e-mail address and probably a new AIM handle. Obviously, you'll hear about it when it happens.