Packing for Arizona

Hooray, Spring Break is here! Today was a really busy day, largely because of housing stuff. Jon & I almost got ourselves into quite the situation with the apartment — we almost signed the lease before asking about the lease dates. Oops. Had we signed on the dotted line for that one we both would’ve been homeless for at least a week before we could’ve moved in, given when our leases are up. Fortunately we realized it though, and fortunately there was also another apartment in Mt Nittany (another corner apartment, thank goodness) available, except this one’s on first floor instead of third, oh well. But we got the lease signed and the deposit paid and everything, so it is indeed official that we’ll be living in Mt Nittany Apartments starting August 1st. The one annoying thing was that when we were filling out the lease agreement stuff, they needed to have us take a form to have our parents cosign on the lease. Talk about ridiculous! I can understand that for an undergrad, but for Pete’s sake, we’re grad students here, with a steady income! But the rules are the rules, and since we’re technically not being paid for 40 hrs/wk of work, they require a cosigner. Jon’s even 27, and they still made him have his parents cosign. ARGH. This is definitely a landlord’s market, and as Petters put it so eloquently, “they’ve got us by the balls;” they can do whatever they want and charge whatever they want. But at least that’s done and we don’t have to worry about it anymore over break or after break. Yay!
The ice hung around on the trees basically all day today, making for a beautiful day around campus and around town, since it was partly sunny all day too. This picture here was from the morning at my apartment complex.
Went to Sports Cafe tonight to do trivia, there were still quite a few of us to participate. We came in second tonight, but that’s not too bad I guess. It was definitely a good send-off from State College heading into Spring Break.
I’ve been trying to get some stuff packed tonight, or at the very least set out so that I can quick throw it all together in the morning. Daniel & I are planning on getting an early start, driving out at 6:30am to head to the Pittsburgh airport (3 hours away), where he’ll go down to Mobile to visit Katie for the week, and I’ll make the trip to the desert southwest. At least both he and my parents will be able to fly tomorrow to their respective destinations, seeing as how Northwest Airlines reached a tentative deal with the pilots earlier today. That’s quite a relief. But now the tentative plans my parents & I had made for our week in Arizona are a bit in limbo, because my Dad’s cousin Judy, who we were gonna be staying with much of the time, is in the hospital and might need emergency surgery tomorrow. So who knows how that’s all gonna affect our plans throughout the week, but I’m sure we’ll still figure somethin out and make it work. If I get a chance I’ll try to post somethin while I’m in Arizona. Peace out, time for me to try and get 3-4 hours of sleep.