Thursday, September 10, 2009

The Convent

Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?
- Hamlet in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Act I Scene iii

So I moved into a new apartment recently, it's called Coventry Apartments. But the joke went around pretty quickly amongst the roomies, even before we moved in, of calling it "The Convent" since nobody could seem to keep the name of it straight and Coventry and Convent aren't too far off. I'm starting to realize this place may very well live up to its nickname quite well.

The whole moving process got off to a really rocky start. First, we had a terrible time getting up with the manager to move in on our scheduled day. Thankfully, on the day before our move-in he finally gave me a call back. Of course this was where the bad news began. Now I suppose I should preface this with the fact that I wasn't overly impressed with this place when we visited. I thought it felt a bit small and seemed a bit rundown. Of course me and what's left of the 203 boys were hoping to stay together and it was hard to find a 4 man apartment this late, so I reluctantly signed on with the rest. Well as I spoke with the manager on the phone he informed me that somebody was told by the original manager that they could stay in our apartment until 2 days after our move-in date. This presented an obvious problem so he asked if we could switch apartments. I didn't see any large problems with this so I agreed.

Then came the time for the actual move-in. As I walked into the apartment I was reminded quickly just how tiny the place was. Also, this particular apartment looked absolutely trashed. It had been cleaned mostly, but the walls were just a mess and the carpet was lousy. Also, it became very apparent just how tiny the kitchen area really was (I didn't pay too close attention the first time) and the lack of a full sized fridge and stove. Needless to say, I wasn't too happy. I was given another rude awakening when I found out that they were shared bedrooms because one of my roommates claimed it was single bedrooms. I proclaimed to Psycho T and Nancy Drew "Who do I need to kick in the junk for this?" I was definitely not happy and I wanted somebody to experience my pain and wrath.

Luckily we informed the manager that this apartment was not up to par for us and we would like to move into our originally planned apartment. He was fine with that, just I had to live out of my suitcase for another couple of days before we moved across the way. I can't even tell you how much the difference was like night and day. The walls were painted and the carpet seemed like it had been replaced sometime in the new millennium. Almost everything was in better shape and just looked nicer in general. This was at least livable.

Of course I think the real problem of why I may very well be doomed to an eternally celibate lifestyle by this apartment is the fact that it still is rather dumpy and small. It definitely is not a good way to impress girls to invite them over to your crummy little apartment. Oh well, not like my dating life has had much of anything to it for quite some time anyway.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, if you have taken vows of poverty (check), chastity (check), and dedication to religious life (check, last time I noticed) you officially qualify! Enjoy the monastic life.

squirrelyearl said...

There's reasons why the vow of poverty could be called into question, even with my meager wages. Just ask Jefe :)

squirrelyearl said...

Oh and as a followup to this post. I did write the BYU Housing Office complaining about a lot of the circumstances (obviously the one's that could be helped) and they took the initiative to try to call my management. Except I'm pretty sure the number they have is outdated so that didn't work out so well.