The tricky quest for housing

So, when I got here, Chuck agreed to let me crash the floor of his room. Very kind of Chuck. Chuck sublets from a Chinese couple who are charging him a lot of money for someplace this far out of the way, but they were cool with me staying a few days, or so we thought. I even thanked them in Chinese and gave them a deck of playing cards from St.Louis as a welcoming gift.

So, monday night, I go out apartment hunting for a single bedroom, around 400 a month, sublease. Tricky proposition. Really nothing available so I widen my search to around 600 a month. More chances there.

Then, tuesday, Saori tells me she's coming out and I figure its better to get a place together and split the rent. But it makes it more complicated since the place I was going to go doesn't want two people in the same room.

So the search began anew. The problem was, we were pushing the day that I was supposed to be out of Chuck's apartment. Not so much a problem with Chuck as it was with his landlord who happens to live in the same house. Last night (thursday) Chuck went to talk to them, and they were unjustifiably ugly and insulting to him, accusing us, of other things, of being possible terrorists, coming and going in the night. We get home late after looking at properties.

Chuck and I, a couple of dangerous radical extremists. Right.

Anyway, after subjecting him to about twenty minutes of screaming abuse, they said I could stay for the rest of the week if I paid the sum of.... five dollars a day. Listening to the insane old chinese woman yell, you would think that she wanted fifty bucks a night, or that I could hit the road. Nope, all that fuss, and driving your paying tenant to regard you as a hostile insane old hag, for the princely sum of $35. Well done. You really showed us.

Anyway, it gave me the flexibility in time to find an apartment for two, and Saori also did a lot of legwork online, trolling craigslist. We finally settled on a place, even without seeing the interior, because the price was good, the owner was out of town, and the location is fantastic- good access to the trains and to the city. Its not ideal, but we're both exhausted from looking. I was spending two to three hours a night looking at apartments. At this point, I'm just ready to graduate from sleeping on the floor. Chuck has been a great host, but I would really like to sleep on a real bed or something approximating a bed.

There was a pretty funny moment- Saori showed me one of the craigslist ads she replied to, and I read it, and it sounded great. What we both missed, somehow, was the line "Clothing optional atmosphere," right in the middle of the ad. So Saori talked back and forth with the guy a bit, and around the third email, he said "so, since you responded to the ad, how do you feel about the clothing optional atmosphere? If you want, I can put on underwear and shirts if you want to have textiled guests over."

And Saori was like WAIT WHAT?

I got a bad case of the giggles at the office, mostly snickering over the term "textiled guests." I don't consider myself textiled, I consider myself clothed.

Anyway, the place we found we couldn't see because the roommie and the landlord can't show it until monday, so the original owner is coming from NYC to open it for us/give the keys/collect the rent. We'll see sunday night what we got ourselves into.

Anything's tolerable for one summer, right? Even textiled guests.