St Paul bound...

I've been distant my blogger friends and I apologize! The past week has been crazy with trying to distribute my dissertation flyers, plan a trip to MN (not as easy as it sounds when petsitting and scheduling rental showings are involved!), and then actually going to MN for 3 days to find a place to live!!

Our Tuesday was ridiculous! We took a red-eye flight (not my best idea), got in at 7am and grabbed the rental car, then were at a loss for what to do until noon when our first rental showing was scheduled. We were exhausted and hungry, so we ate and then slept in the car (not fun!). The afternoon was filled with rental showings and true to our form, there were some *interesting* ones! The first one was in such a bad neighborhood that we didn't even look at it, just turned around. The next was a cute little place, but the realtor told us that the people right before us filled out an application, damn! The next one didn't exist...seriously, the road just stopped even though GPS was telling us to continue into the trees, weird. The  next one we liked (and eventually decided to take) but I will get to that.

The final one we looked at on Tuesday was the craziest one of all! When I talked to the lady on the phone, one of the first things that she said was that she was "adamant about meeting dogs first." I politely told her thanks but no thanks since our dogs would be in Seattle, but she stated that she maybe would make an exception (sounds promising, right). We decided to look at it anyways since that was the point of the trip. There were people living in the house and she asked them to leave when we got there (apparently they had no warning) and then showed us around the house. When we got to the yard she started asking about the dogs again, then she said that she was "very strict about poop."...ok, I asked her to clarify and it came out that she did not allow dogs to poop in the back yard! What?! I was confused so I asked if she meant that she wanted it picked up every day, but no, she meant what she said, no pooping in the yard...at all! She also mentioned that she would drop by periodically (no warning) and if she saw any poop or if she saw them pooping, we would be evicted on the spot! We decided to leave at this point, but on the way out she blessed us with a little more of her crazy. Apparently she needed a $700 (per pet?) non-refundable deposit, she wouldn't show the lease at all until the full deposit was received (illegal!), and she made it sound like she was always lurking in the bushes waiting for you to do something wrong. Um, nope!! Plus, she kept mentioning that the neighborhood was the "gay area" and that we would not like any other neighborhood, and oh we should go to this bar or that restaurant. I hate when people assume they know everything about you based on one little fact, like that we are a lesbian couple! Anyways, we left, that was too much crazy at 7pm after 36 hours without real sleep!

We looked at a few other places on Wednesday, but the neighborhood had been hit by a tornado and was completely uprooted (literally), plus one had lost the fence and garage, which were our main selling points. So, we picked the place we loved on Tuesday :) It is beautiful and cozy,  has a front porch, is in a nice quiet neighborhood, and the landlords are awesome! Yay, I can't wait to move in and get settled!

Somehow we always end up looking at some crazy places (remember these gems?!), does anyone else go through all of this before finally finding a place?!