My life as a yo-yo
Saturday: Am completely ecstatic. Have found dream apartment! Sign lease and celebrate.
Sunday: Basking in happiness about new apartment. Already planning fabulous housewarming party in head. Just waiting for landlord to sign lease and make it official. Think this is just a technicality. Realtor made it sound like a sure thing.
Monday: Have crap day at work. Grr. Come home to message from realtor who is suddenly concerned about the boy being a student and not having serious income. Grr. Try to reassure her that it's really no problem. Can get parents to be gaurantors. Feel like vomiting when she says that because it's such a hot property the landlord might not want to bother with it and might just go with some of else. Cry over awfulness of day. Call friends and family to vent. Mother promises to say extra prayers for the apartment.
Tuesday: Mother's prayers pay off! Realtor calls and say landlord stopped in and signed lease. Says landlord wasn't at all concerned about student situation. Promises to fax over copy of completed lease. Sort of feel like cursing realtor for getting me so worried for nothing, but mainly feel like dancing about in cube to celebrate. Officially have dream apartment! Hooray!
Wednesday: Life just keeps getting better! Boss has decided that schedule is crazy and agrees with suggestion that we should hire additional staff member and gets it approved right away. Again feel like dancing about in cube. Call realtor as I never received fax. Says she didn't get a chance to fax it, but she just scanned it in and e-mailed it to me. Do not receive e-mail. Decide realtor is just scatterbrain and plan to just pick up a copy at the office since I'm going to Hoboken any way that night to see the boy. Arrive at office and receptionist cannot find any copies of the lease that have been signed by the landlord. Suggests calling realtor. Leave message for realtor and try to suppress rising sense of panic. There's nothing to worry about, right? Realtor called and said landlord signed lease. Would not have told me that if it had not happened, right? Wrong! Realtor calls back and apologizes because, oopsie, she mixed us up with another girl who rented an apartment in Jersey City. She rented five apartments over the weekend, and it can just get so confusing. Gee, you must have been so excited yesterday, huh? Well, sorry, but your landlord still hasn't come in. Am back to sick feeling from Monday night, but instead of wanting to cry, I feel like punching something. Did not think it was possible for realtor to be this stupid. Had two separate conversations with her about the lease. And she was the one who called me to say it was signed. Argh.
Thursday: Get call from realtor. Apparently landlord has decided to rent apartment to his cousin or some other relative and avoid going through realtor at all. Feel surprisingly zen about not getting dream apartment. Must have used up emotions earlier in the week. And it least not getting the apartment had nothing to do with us. Realtor is pissed because she lost the listing completely and therefore will not be getting paid. Feel a bit like this sort of fair after how badly she messed up. Agree to go see two more apartments with realtor that night. Am convinced she's not so smart but hope she will feel guilty about how badly she screwed up and help us find good apartment. She flows through by making sure we get first dibs on the next apartment. Have trouble deciding between apartments. Rule out one apartment because it's on first floor next to bar. Say maybe to other apartment and think on it over night. It's spacious but doesn't have very many windows. Go back and forth about it a lot with the boy. Decide we are mainly opposed because it is not the dream apartment but is the same price as dream apartment.
Friday: Arrange to go back and see runner-up apartment one more time that night. Spend way to much time on public transportation going to work, back to city for interview with band, back to work and then to Hoboken. Mentally prepare self for saying no to apartment and starting search all over again. Call an arrange a few appointments to see other apartments the next day. Arrive at apartment exhausted. Take closer look and realize light is better than you remember and apartment had potential to be awesome. Boy agrees. Go to realtor's office and spend part of Friday night signing paperwork and figuring out way to give us the best shot for approval by landlord. (In other words, the boy will not be on lease, and my father will be co-signing for me instead.) Go to Mexican restaurant, eat greasy food and drink margarita to celebrate as much as possible in exhausted state.
Saturday, Sunday , Monday: Fax forms to parents and keep fingers crossed that this all works out.

The search is over!
I found the perfect apartment today, and it's mine, all mine! OK, I guess I'll share it with the boy. But all those poor suckers who showed up just a few minutes after 11 are out of luck. My old Midwestern habit of showing up early instead of fashionably late got us to the apartment five minutes before the group showing this morning. The realtor showed up a few minutes later and said it was first come, first serve, so if we liked it, it was ours. Score!

We went upstairs, and the second we walked in the door, I knew this was it. This was the apartment we'd been looking for. The front door opens into a spacious living room/dining room. The kitchen is just past that and has a huge sky light (did I mention the 12-foot ceilings?) and a washer/dryer. That's right, a washer/dryer in the apartment. There's a spacious bedroom at the back, a closet with some handy built-in shelves and a newly remodeled bathroom. And to top it all off, the apartment is right in our price range and is literally a two-minute walk to the PATH train. (If you're familiar with Hoboken, it's on Garden between Newark and Observer Highway.)

The only drawback is that it's a fifth floor walk-up. But I live in one now, so I don't care. And really, it's a small price to pay for such an awesome apartment. I'm just glad the stairs scared away the people who looked at it yesterday, so that we could get it. We did all the paperwork, passed the credit check and signed a lease by 3 o'clock. I can't wait until September!

Freedom tastes like a margarita
The countdown is over! The issue from hell has shipped! To celebrate I met up with a friend I hadn't seen since June for dinner and had a margarita. Being full of tasty Mexican food and tequila made me feel all warm and fuzzy and relaxed. And I didn't have to go home and work or wake up at 5 am to go in early. What else could a girl want? OK, maybe one thing. An impulse buy on the walk home always make a good day even better.

OK, so I have done a few things besides work (but only a few)
-I went to see Shakespeare in the Park two weeks ago. It was Liev Schreiber in MacBeth. It was OK, but after six summers of shows I think I'm getting a little picky. I liked Liev better in Henry V when the show was a little crazy. Meryl Streep and Christopher Walken are going to be in the next production this summer, and I'm pumped!
-The apartment hunt is shaping up to be a real pain in the ass. We've seen two really amazing places (one even had an upstairs!), but they were both snapped up by someone else the same day we went to see them. The other place we saw was a pit. Seriously, it felt like a serial killer should live there. It was a basement apartment that smelled like mold and cat poop and in the much-hyped private backyard was a creepy falling-down shack--perfect for storing the bodies.

The Lakehouse (and I don't mean the crappy Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock movie that just came out)
Ah, the Fourth of July. I just got back from celebrating this grand ol' holiday the only way it should be: with copious amounts of meat and alcohol and plenty of explosions. The boy and I went up to Maine to spend a long weekend at a lakehouse with a bunch of his college friends. It was beautiful, and we had kayaks and canoes and more fireworks than your average Midwestern town. And real civilization was about half an hour away. There were a few problems (like the four hour traffic jam we sat through in Connecticut and having to pitch a tent that the boy's roommate forgot to give us the poles to) and a few close calls (like when the harbor master stopped by while we were all drinking in canoes in the middle of the lake). But mainly, I got to spend three straight days siting on a dock in my bathing suit, drinking a beer and having someone cook me three meals a day on a grill. Mmm ... heaven. One of my new goals in life is to have my own lakehouse.

Computer, computer!
My new iMac arrived while I was gone. Score!

Countdown
Only 10 more work days until the issue from hell is done.