Thanks, all! I guess this means I will need to think of an ever better title for the TR...
The last week has been absolutely crazy, and not just the normal crazy that is life as a freelancer in an artistic field in New York, but way crazier than we ever could have expected! This is going to be more of a life update, and in the next post I'll post Disney updates.
We were originally supposed to move in to the new place on October 15 with the lease officially beginning November 1. We would still have our old place until October 31 which would allow us to move the big stuff on the 15th and take our time moving the less essential stuff. We also wanted to sell some things and this way we'd have had a place (the old apartment) to make such transactions. We would have begun mail forwarding on the 15th but had a couple extra weeks to check for any mail that didn't get forwarded somehow. It was such a great plan!
But as the 15th approached all the communication from the realtor was "don't make any plans yet..." as they waited for inspections and whatnot. On the 16th we received an email invitation to the ribbon cutting ceremony for later that week. A good sign! We'd lose a week of overlap time, but we'd still have enough to be comfortable.
But the ceremony was cancelled by the city because the building still had to pass some inspections. We asked about just moving some of our belongings in since we couldn't legally live there yet, but that request was denied. As the end of the month grew closer our anxiety levels grew higher and higher. Meanwhile the new landlord of the old building was adamant that we be out on October 31. We figured if nothing else we would load everything in the UHaul on the 31st, stay at a hotel for one night, and move in on November 1 since that's when the lease started.
The morning of the 31st, just minutes before we were going to pick up the truck, the realtor emailed us and said the building had to pass one more inspection and there were "confident" it would be ready on or before November 13.
November. 13.
THIRTEENTH.
They offered a $300 credit off the first month's rent for the "inconvenience." If you know anything about NYC area rents and hotel rates you know that is laughable at best, insulting and bullsh*tty at worst. We spoke with the realtor on the phone and told her as much and she said she is working on getting something better than that. She said to send her an angry email she can pass on. We certainly hope it doesn't escalate to us needed to take legal action, but if the landlord doesn't take AT LEAST half the rent off the first month we'll do what we have to do.
In the meantime, it was October 31 and we still had to get all our stuff-and ourselves!-out of the old apartment. Luckily (is anything in this story really lucky? More like less unluckily) Uhaul was having a special for a free month of storage with all truck rentals. So at least we didn't have THAT extra expense.
M updated her coworkers on the situation and a bunch of them offered us a place to stay. The first night we ended up just staying at a hotel near the UHaul location so we could finish loading the truck's contents into storage the next morning. You may remember from my
California TR that we bought one special bottle of wine at Grgich Hills Estate for a special occasion. We were hoping we'd be moved in before our 3 year wedding anniversary and we'd get to drink it then. Well that didn't happen, so we had it that first night in the hotel. The conditions were far from ideal, but that wine was DELICIOUS!!!
The next morning we loaded the rest of our stuff into storage and returned the truck. We were quite sore from the move. M's boss told her not to come in but we didn't have anywhere else to go so she went in for a half day and I hung out at her work too for a bit. Then I had to teach and go to rehearsal, because the show must go on!
One of the professors M works with, who lived super close to the college, let us stay with her because her husband was out of town she she had extra room. The next night (Thursday night) we stayed in a hotel near M's job. During all this we were keeping the few items we'd kept out of storage (bare minimum clothes/shoes/work stuff) at M's desk.
Then M's boss was able to secure some temporary university housing for us for about two weeks at a very low rate. On Friday M got the keys and brought our stuff to the temporary apartment. I had an audition in New York Friday (the show must go on!) and another out of town on Saturday (the show must go oooooooon!!!) so after the Friday audition I got to see the apartment for about ten minutes as I changed into train clothes and we packed to go out of town. We stayed in a hotel two nights and got back to New York yesterday afternoon. Then I had another rehearsal (the show must go oooooooooooooooon!!!!!), and we slept at the temp apartment last night.
And here we are today! We still don't have absolutely confirmation for when we can move into our place. All our stuff is in storage. We can only stay at this place until 11/14. AND my brother is visiting from 11/14-11/19 and was planning to stay with us. We've made a backup hotel reservation for all of us (because if he doesn't have a place to stay it means we don't have a place to stay) just in case. And then we are supposed to leave for Disney on 11/20!
I'll post later about the Disney plans. That's still happening regardless of the housing situation here!
