When I was looking for an apartment, I was super-excited when I found mine. The main thing it was missing was a hookup for the icemaker in my fridge.

This is a ridiculous convenience, but one I’d gotten very, very used to. The ability to have a giant pile of ice just sitting there, awaiting my next drink? Quality.

I asked, if I get the kit for it to be installed, could you guys install it? “Sure, no problem!” was the answer I received from the building manager and her bosses at the leasing company.

As the weeks went by and the leaves…well, here in SoCal, they don’t fall. They just turn sort of a dark green color and look tired.

Anyway, a considerable amount of time passed, and after an enormous amount of hectoring from both the building manager (who’s been a fucking saint about all this) and myself, guys finally came and hooked up my icemaker earlier this week.

I’m so very excited. Just in time for my Oscar party, too. Martinis for all!

They painted the outside of my building in early January, and they took the numbers off the doors when they painted.

I’ve been without numbers for a couple weeks now, which was fun when I tried to order in and had to explain to order-takers where in my building my apartment is, only to have them repeatedly fail to relay this information to the drivers actually delivering my food.

I was happy to see numbers back on my building when I returned home Friday night, but something was a bit off when I got to my apartment:

I wasn’t alone. Almost everyone else with a 1 in their apartment number ended up with the same black one with their silver last number. Well, Apartment 11 just got two black ones, and then the folks next door to me got off easiest:

At least to the unobservant or colorblind, theirs look normal. Mine look like the numbers on a cheap motel in a bad horror movie.

They’re a sign that you should yell at the screen, admonishing the idiot characters not to enter, because there’s totally a guy with a hook inside waiting to disembowel them.

Fuckin’ kids.

I was sound asleep about an hour ago and was awoken by the cat yowling. This isn’t anything out of the ordinary, but I heard a police radio, so I figured the cops were busting up the guys who hang out in another part of the alley that runs behind my building, and rolled over to go back to sleep.

Then my phone rang. “Hi, Miss Shapiro, this is Officer [X] of the Santa Monica Police Department, I’m outside behind your apartment and it appears your vehicle has been broken into.”

Turns out someone on the alley heard someone smash my passenger-side window, looked out and saw the guys futzing around and called the cops. The cops scared off the thieves, who were apparently just some shithead kids.

They weren’t particularly smart kids, as the only thing they got was a $30 electricity inverter, and if they’d thought for about five seconds, they wouldn’t have even had to break the damn window to get into the car, as both the driver’s and passenger’s side windows were cracked.

I mean, I’m glad they didn’t get my stereo which I went to so much damn trouble to install, and there wasn’t really anything else of value in the car, so I suppose that’s good.

But I was speaking to my next door neighbors, one of whom has been living in the apartment for 17 years, and he said this was the first time someone had smashed a window in the parking lot that he could remember, though he noted that someone had let the air out of his wife’s tires this morning.

Nice to be the new guy in the neighborhood. Now I’m going back to bed, to get up even earlier to try and figure out how to clean up all this glass when I haven’t gotten around to purchasing a new broom or dustpan.

A brief comparison of my old and new apartments, and the neighborhoods containing them:

Time to Work
Old: 20-35 minutes, depending on traffic.
New: 10-15 minutes, depending on traffic.
Winner: New

Flooring
Old: Grody, easily stained and horrific to clean carpet.
New: Hardwood floors.
Winner: New

Kitchen
Old: Termite-infested cabinets, linoleum from the 70′s, barely enough room to turn around.
New: Brand new everything, marble floor, granite countertops, decent size.
Winner: New

Bathroom
Old: Tiny, with the sink and mirror in the hall for some reason.
New: Still fairly small, but self-contained. Marble tile on the floor and in the shower, brand new fixtures.
Winner: New.

Bedroom
Old: Large room, tiny closet.
New: Moderate size room, huge closet (which I’ve basically turned into a storage area.
Winner: Draw.

Owner/Management of Building
Old: Extremely sketchy company that is quite possibly a front for the Russian mob (How many legit property management companies do you know that operate out of a PO Box?).
New: Single owner that people have actually seen, using a property management company with actual offices.
Winner: New

Closest Fast Food Restaurant
Old: In-N-Out
New: KFC
Winner: Old.

Closest Store
Old: Costco
New: 99¢ Only
Winner: New

Closest School
Old: Massive public high school, right out my window.
New: Language magnet school four blocks away.
Winner: New

Distance From Beach
Old: 1.7 miles
New: 2.3 miles
Winner: Old

Cat Control
Old: Cat couldn’t get out of the building, could only see other cats in the building.
New: Cat keeps trying to run out the door into the neighborhood every time I leave the house, other cats come to the window and mock him until he starts yowling at them.
Winner: Old.

Tangent alert! I took Chaplin to get chipped this morning, and I found it odd to be putting a chip in him the week we aired an episode with a kid trying to cut a chip out.

Parking
Old: Gated and underground, but with a tendency for the gate to get stuck at inconvenient times.
New: Off street.
Winner: Old, but not by much.

Vertical Transportation
Old: Elevator, prone to breakdowns and squeaking like a crying child.
New: One flight of stairs.
Winner: Draw.

Bottom line, there are a few things about the old place that I’ll miss, but the new place is far, far ahead in all the areas I really give a shit about. And I probably shouldn’t live two blocks from an In-N-Out Burger anyway.

I’ve got a some photos of the new place up at Flickr, along with several photos of Chaplin helping me move. Enjoy!