The Landlord's Game

House hunting is the biggest emotional roller coaster I have ever had in my life. Sure finding a job sucks, and dating is kind of hard, but I have never in my life been so up and down, excited as all get out one minute then completely depressed the next, as when trying to find a new place to live.

And we even have it easy this time. We're here. The last two times we've moved it's been from a different state. We rented the house we're in now from nearly 3,000 miles away, sight unseen. Before that we moved from Hell on earth Vernal to Washington. We found a house listed online, drove to Washington one weekend, took a short tour, signed the papers and moved in two weeks later.

Both times, and even before that when we moved to Vernal, finding a place was instrumental to huge life changes. If we didn't find a place to live we weren't moving and weren't taking new jobs. We would stay where we were. Now that isn't an option. We have to move. And nothing else is changing, our jobs will be the same, there are no giant life changes coming with this one.

Since we moved to New York in September we've been living in a fully-furnished lakeside vacation cottage. It's tiny but nice, but we knew when we moved in it would be temporary. Come June the amount we pay per month will rent this place for a weekend. We are grateful to have found it, but we are really looking forward to using our own dishes again, sleeping on our own bed again, sitting on our own couch again.

You never know what you're going to find when house hunting. This beautiful house is in Canaseraga and wasn't even the brightest one on the block. There was also a yellow one, a teal one and a baby-blue one. I couldn't not take a photo.

We have this nice two month window, from the first of April until the end of May, to move out of here. That is actually causing problems for my mental state. We find a place that would work but isn't perfect and torture ourselves trying to decide if we just go for it or wait to see if something better comes available.

In two weeks we've contacted dozens of people, through Craigslist, newspaper ads, from driving around looking at signs on lawns, and have found roughly 5 that will take our dogs. This is incredibly nerve-wracking, and makes it even more tempting to take a great house even if it is probably too far away. It makes it so I get incredibly excited every time the phone rings with a local number, even though it's usually just someone calling to say they don't take pets.

We're on several lists, which is always depressing to hear. If there are people ahead of us who don't have pets, they are more likely to get a place than we are. But then we get an email two weeks later letting us know that all the people ahead of us have fallen through and are we interested? And I'm ecstatic again, this place is close and nice, but it's more expensive than the great house that is far away.

I feel like I'm going insane.

So, Apparently God Is An Insecure, Vindicticve Asshole

Natural disasters are just that, natural. Hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and tornadoes happen because of plate tectonics or atmospheric conditions, not because god is pissed.

SENDAI, Japan (March 12, 2011) An SH-60B helicopter assigned to the Chargers of Helicopter Antisubmarine Squadron (HS) 14 from Naval Air Facility Atsugi flies over the city of Sendai to deliver more than 1,500 pounds of food to survivors of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and a tsunami. The citizens of Ebina City, Japan, donated the food, and HS-14 is supporting earthquake and tsunami relief operations in Japan as directed. (U.S. Navy photo/Released)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnavy/5523450134/

I get disgusted when I hear religious people spouting off that some horrible natural disaster that costs human life is all the result of sin. Just in recent memory I've heard sinners (often the gays, but sometimes sinners in general) are the cause of earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, Japan, New Zealand and China; tsunamis in Sri Lanka and Japan; Hurricanes in North and Central America and countless other natural disasters.

This bullshit abounds after every natural disaster from all corners, the televangelists, the cable news sociopaths, even Facebook has this inaccurate pile of crap floating around.

"Sept 11th (NewYork) Jan 11th (Haiti) and March 11th (Japan)........Luke 21:10-11 Then Jesus said to his disciples : "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes', famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven. 'Jesus says for behold I come quickly,' So ask yourself r u ready? Sad to say, many won't repost this message"

Assuming that all of these things occurred on the 11th day of a month (they didn't), they all occurred in different months and in different years, with no noticeable pattern, what does that have to do with the passage quoted? Luke isn't the 11th book of the Bible, it's the third in the New Testament. It isn't the 11th chapter of Luke, it's the 21st. The only correlation is that the 11th verse references bad things. Grasping at straws much?

There are two things that piss me off so much about hearing this every time something bad happens. The first one is he basic principle of it. God is pissed off at one group of people, and instead of punishing those people, he kills innocents? Does he just have bad aim? Is he that petty? Every one of his attempts to "send a message" fails and the world hasn't ended yet. I thought god was supposed to love all of his children, why does he keep trying to kill them off?

The second is the insensitivity of it all. At the time these asinine statements come out, there are usually thousands of people dead and more homeless and without the basic necessities of life. Instead of worrying about ways to connect the people you hate with horrible disasters, you "love thy neighbor" which I'm told is a lesson from Jesus, and have some compassion and decency.