September 10, 2006: Desperate Apartment Hunting

Today is desperate apartment hunting day. We all slept in a little bit this morning but I was still up decently early. We are getting down to the wire for finding an apartment before our current lease runs out on October 1st so we need to do something right away.

We left North Brunswick at ten in the morning and drove straight out to Jersey City. We got a little lost as we drove through the city itself but we made okay time and made our first stop to look at an apartment in the Atlantic Building which is a part of the Newport properties (the world’s largest and most successful mixed use project of its kind.) The apartment was totally amazing. It might have the best view of Manhattan that I have ever seen and I have been to the top of the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building and neither compare to this. This was just amazing. A total, head on, huge, unobstructed view of downtown Manhattan, the village, the Hudson river and the harbour! It was totally unbelievable. You could peer down and see the “beach” just below the tower and see Brooklyn off in the distance and see the lower Jersey City Coast off to the side. Both the living room and the bedroom and the same amazing view. I mean this was really something. And the apartment itself was nice too. But, we decided, the price was just too high. But boy were we disappointed to not be able to take it. What a dream apartment!

We attempted to look at several more apartments but we did not have very good luck at it. We went to Avalon Cove and waiting there for twenty minutes just to have the person doing rentals come in and announce that they had no one or two bedroom units available. So that was a huge waste. Then we went down to Portside Towers (or something like that) and Hudson Point which were both owned by the same company. Their rental people just blew the day off and didn’t come to work. I called their national rental center to let them know that we were standing there and that their leasing agents at both properties hadn’t shown up to work that day and that the coneirge at the towers had been AWOL for quite some time so we didn’t even have anyone to ask about the leasing agent. They offerred to help us through the office in Arizone but we didn’t think that they had managed to make a good enough impression for us to want to spend our money there.

We tried one place in the Palisades that was far less expensive. But we quickly discovered why. The place was really scary and nasty and in a dangerous neighbourhood. So we quickly took our leave and tried to look at some places in Hoboken.

The first place that we tried in Hoboken didn’t even exist. That is a constant battle down here. Lots of places advertise buildings that aren’t even build yet. In this case there wasn’t even a marked plot for it yet. So it would be several years before an actual building would appear if they even decide to actually build it. So that scratched that off of our list pretty quickly. We did find one place in Hoboken that actually had their agent show up to work and actually existed and was actually helpful. Of course, all she could tell us was that they had no vacancies and didn’t really anticipate any. But at least she was nice and helpful.

We grabbed lunch at a cafe in Hoboken since we had a parking spot. Lunch was good and expensive. Another reason not to live in the area. I really don’t like Hoboken. Jersey City is like an extension of Manhattan and feels like part of “the city” and I think that people who live there are just Manhattanites looking for a better view, cleaner air and lower prices. In Hoboken I feel like you get the real “New Jersians” with the accents, attitudes and lack of taste. It is really disappointing. The difference is that in Jersey City people go into Manhattan for their entertainment. But in Hoboken, Manhattan is just a place to work and the people there “hang out” in Hoboken because they like it better. Ugh.

So we decided that we were not going to have any luck finding anything that we liked on the Hudson and we gave up the search and returned home.

I managed to win some D&D books on eBay that I needed. I got them new and managed to save almost 30% over having bought them in the store. That was awesome. D&D books really are not all that cheap so I was quite happy to discover that there is a number of items available on eBay. If you are into the older D&D stuff and don’t feel the need to play the very latest edition, which is 3.5, you can really get some bargains. Players of the classic AD&D 2nd Edition stuff will find that they can get almost everything dirt cheap. For new players that might be a really good way to go.

We got back and Dominica needed to do some more shopping for work clothes for her new job where they actually expect them to dress nicely. So she spent an hour and a half shopping at some place called Avenue down in East Brunswick. I went back to the apartment and spent the time with Oreo. It was a good thing that I did. He was feeling quite neglected and needed me to play with him the entire time. Then he and I drove down and picked Dominica up. We came home and she went over to the laundromat to take care of the laundry and I spent two hours playing with Oreo again. Boy was he in need of attention today. Between sleeping for the past several days and getting left alone this morning he had a lot of “play with me” stored up.

Dominica came back home and we had some simple dinner at home. I continued working on the assett tracking system from yesterday. I am making good headway on it.

Tonight is another “get to bed early” day. We actually went to bed before ten!

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