Signing the lease!

Yesterday Samil and I signed our lease for a new apartment! Some things about the apartment:

It's in the wonderful "Garden State" of New Jersey, but in the part more associated with the "Armpit of America." We'll be living in a house across from a University in an old awesome house, apparently once owned by some European royalty (or so say our landlords). Its about 10 minutes to work for both of us, and on a gigantic hill. When I mean gigantic, I'm not exaggerating. Its steep. Like, 'those guys that lay down on a piece of wood with wheels and roll down a hill at insane speeds' steep.

Now, the complicated part - due to samil's (and mine to a degree) fascination with a great 3 bedroom apartment on the top floor that wasn't ready until October, we will be living on the floor below for a month. This, of course, means we have to move twice in two months, set up Gas/Electric twice, deal with cable twice, and so on. Possible advantages include waiting to get some furniture and having two housewarming parties.

When we proposed this idea to our landlord, Christina, we were first dismissed immediately. Then later that night she called Samil and said she had talked it over with her husband and decided it was okay. Samil didn't want to pass up our chance at this apartment so told her he would put her on hold and confer with me. He then put his cell phone in the bottom part of his t-shirt, wrapped it around a few times, and then put his hand over it. After a few short exchanges, we agreed to take the place and he told Christina, who I'm sure heard our whole conversation anyway.

The worst of the entire process was when Samil had to call the owner of another place we were only tepidly interested in but wanted to keep our options open with. Samil had been in contact with her for those two weeks, and I have no idea what he said, but it did result in a voice mail from this woman's husband telling Samil that "we took advantage of her kindness, and were unfair, and it was wrong." Like I said, for all I know he agreed to take the place and just never told me. He spent the rest of the evening wondering if he should feel bad for how he handled it, or if he should just let it go (His words). I'd be slightly worried he'll be carrying the emotional scars of not living in that apartment for a long time, but the reality is that he'll probably forgot about it before the end of the night.