Some of you know where I went this weekend, and I'm sure those of you who didn't have been wondering the entire time where I was (ok, so probably most of you didn't even notice I was *gone*.)

For those of you who know where I went this weekend, I'll say right up front that I found a place, it rules, and I've signed a short term lease that will let me get settled and see if I really like the place and if I'm going to really be able to afford it (I'm sure I will be, but you never really know). I've got the option to re-up the lease when it ends if I want to stay.

Ok, so that's the only bit of real news you'll find in this post. The rest is just silly ramblings and reportings of "adventures" that most wouldn't consider too adventurous. If you care for that kind of stuff, read on. If not, go away.

This tale actually begins Thursday night, as I'm getting ready to go to bed. I finally get around to listening to my phone messages (I had actually already called for them earlier in the day, and had naively assumed that no-one had called and left any messages since then, which is why I didn't bother to listen to them right away when I got home) and was shocked to find three messages from Delta airlines at the end of the string of messages I'd already heard. They were informing me that my flight from Manchester to Atlanta had been cancelled, and they were re-routing me through Cincinati. They want me to call and confirm the changes. I hastily take down the number and try calling. I get the usual recorded menu options, but when I press "3" to get to domestic travel, I get a busy signal every time. It's getting late, I have to get up early the next day, and I'm getting increasingly irate at these busy signals. I try from 12:30AM until about 1:45, when I *finally* get through to a real human who can give me my new flight information. It turns out I'm leaving later from Manchester, but getting into Denver at about the same time. That would have worked out great if it hadn't already been so late that I really couldn't take much advantage of the extra time to sleep anyway.

I get what sleep I can at this point, and drive to the airport the next morning all bleary-eyed. The brand-new parking garage at the Manchester airport is full, so I have to go ram my car into a snowbank in the east-nowhere lot and take the bus in to the terminal. It cuts my parking costs in half, but increases my frustration level by an order of magnitude.

Once again I make the walk out to the ground level gates at the airport, and think once again that I'm going to have to get on one of those maniac lawnmowers. Fortunately, it turns out that we will be travelling by jet--although it also turns out that this "jet" has about as much room inside as the car I just left in the snowbank. But at least it's a *jet*. None of that really scary piston-powered propellor stuff on this flight.

I get into Cincinnati right on time, and spend two hours there on a layover. I'm not entirely sure how much *farther* Atlanta would have been out of my way, since I had a shorter layover in Atlanta originally but still ended up getting to Denver at about the same time.

So I spend two whole hours in the state of Ohio and don't see famous once. What a ripoff.

I get into Denver right on time and proceed to the rental car counter to see what type of car Mousie rented for me. I usually book a compact car whenever I have to get a rental car, but I always ask at the counter exactly what make and model they're going to give me, because some compact cars I can fit into and some I just can't. I can get into a Chevy Cavalier, but if they try to stick me in a Honda Civic, forget it. So I ask the guy this time, and it turns out they're giving me a Hyundai Sonata. I've never been in one of these, so I decide to chance it and go with the compact instead of upgrading.

Turns out to be a really nice car--V6 engine and everything, which is really rare in a "compact" car. I'd say this was actually a boderline mid-sized car--my only complaint is that I could never really find a comfortable position for the wheel--it was either sitting in my lap or jammed against the dashboard. I just couldn't find that happy medium. But other than that, great car--Mousie done good ;-)

Anyway, enough about the damn trip. I finally got to Boulder around 4:00, found my hotel, bought a map and a newspaper, and started calling places right away. I called about four places, left two messages and set up two appointments to view places that night. I really felt like I was getting somewhere already, because I really didn't think I'd be looking at places right away on Friday night.

The first place I went to was a two-bedroom condo in what I guess would be "North Boulder", although the city proper is really so small that you can drive from "North Boulder" to "South Boulder" in about five minutes if you hit the lights right.

I knocked on the door at the prescribed time and was shown in by the guy I'll call "phone mime." He was on the phone the entire time he was "showing" me the place. However, phone mime never actually spoke into the phone *once* while I was there. In fact, whenever I'd try to speak, he'd look concerned and motion for me to write my question down, and then he'd write out an answer. Tres weird. Anyway, phone mime managed to pull himself away from his engrossing conversation long enough to open the door to a few closets and let me peak in. It was a nice place, but it was kind of small and I didn't know if it was worth what he was asking for it. Plus, during one of our written conversations, I found out it wouldn't be available until at least February 15th, which was too late for me anyway.

So I left phone mime and moved on. My next stop was a two-bedroom duplex in "South-East" Boulder. And I couldn't find it. The guy just couldn't seem to give me very good directions, and whenever I called him on my rented cell-phone and told him where I was and had him try to direct me from there, he basically kept telling me the same thing over and over. Finally, after driving up and down his street about five times and calling three times, I managed to get him to give me an exact count of houses his was from the closest crossroads, and finally found the place.

Let me tell you, it wasn't worth the effort. This was a two bedrom duplex, and it was a dump. The thing was tiny, run down, and crazily laid out--the washing machine hookup was in the kitchen while the dryer hookups were in the second bedroom. Uh, ok. I left that place and immediately crossed it off my list. Then, I thoughtfully put after it "Emergency Possibility", thinking if I really really really *had* to get a place, I might be able to fight the roaches for that place, as there didn't seem to be too many enthusiastic takers for it.

After all that fumbling around, it was too late to call any other places, so I went to dinner then just drove around looking. Boulder is a really nice city, but I have two complaints already. First, I think those photo radar things that take your picture and send you the ticket automatically when you're speeding are facist, and are only slightly less evil than the ones that take your picture and send you a ticket when you run a red light, *both* of which Boulder has a lot of. I even think I was "caught" by one of those things when I "ran a redlight" that consisted of me being halfway through a yellow when it changed. Plus, if you're behind a driver who gets snagged by one of those things, the flash from the camera can be blinding at night. Really, really annoying, and not something I'm going to like about living there.

Second, I didn't think it'd be possible to find a place that was as lily-white as New Hampshire. There seemed to be a halfway decent sized population of hispanics and asians, but I think I saw six black people while I was there--which, admittedly, is probably more than we have total in the entire state of New Hampshire, but still nothing to write home about. I was hoping to increase my cultural diversity a little with this move, but it looks like I may not be doing that.

Anyway, back to the apartment hunting. Saturday morning I got up and started calling people at 8. It was a little early to call people on a Saturday morning, I know, but I needed to see as many places as I could and try to get moving on this. I set up two more appointments (one for Sunday morning), and had another from the night before set up. So I went to my first appointment at 10. This was for a two bedroom apartment in a rental complex in "South Boulder". The helpful woman showed me two different floor plan layouts for apartments, and gave me the info on a third that she didn't have currently available to actually show. I liked them, and they were all within my price range, so I took and application and went back to my hotel and filled it out before my next appointment. I carefully read their rental criteria, decided I'd just squeak by the credit check and previous rental history check, and put the application aside to bring back later.

I went to my second appointment at 1:15. That probably seems like a lot of wasted time between the first and second appointments, and well, it is. But I kept running into a lot of brick walls. I'd call people and there'd be noone there. I'd leave messages and nobody would call back. Or I'd call only to find out the property had already been rented, or was more expensive then the ad said, or wasn't actually in Boulder. It was getting really frustrating.

However, I decided my searching was over when I went to my 1:15 appointment. This was for a three-bedroom townhouse in "North East" Boulder. There were actually two women there looking at the place when I showed up (the property manager was behind in his appointments all weekend), so I checked out the upstairs while they checked out the downstairs. Upstairs was two good sized bedrooms and a bathroom. Downstairs was the master bedroom, the living room, dining room, kitchen, utility room where the washer-dryer was, and another bathroom. I fell in love instantly. I asked for an application and promised to have it back within a few hours. I asked a lot of questions about when I might know if I would be able to rent the place, to let the guy know I was really interested and on a pretty tight schedule. He sort of waffled back and forth a bit, but I felt pretty good about the situation when I left. I immediately went back to my hotel room and again got to work filling out an application. Here's where I ran into a little snag.

I probably shouldn't even been putting this up here, because for all I know the guy could be an avid RinkWorks fan without me even knowing it. But I guess I'll chance it. The truth is, I don't have stellar renting history. I mean, I've never been evicted or anything, but I have had a few (I don't even really know how many, honestly) late payments with my current landlord--and a lot of places really, really hate to see that on your record. Also, my credit rating isn't the best, either. The other place I'd filled out an application for had spelled out exactly how they rated prospective tenants. It was on a nifty little point system, and you got so many points for each type of offence. I figured out my probably score, and figured I'd be able to get in even with my less-than-stellar past. But this other place didn't have any such neat scale, and gave no indication of how they'd rate prospective candidates. I did know that the property manager prefered one or two people to occupy the place--he said he'd had seven women in there trying to rent the place together, and had to just send them away, because there's a law that says no more than three unrelated people can occupy the same apartment. So being just one person helped me in that respect. Also being a non smoker with no pets helped, too. But I didn't want to count on that carrying the day over some late rent payments and a checkered credit rating. But I really, really liked the place, so I didn't want to give up. I knew it was just my current landlord that would possibly complain about me--my two previous landlords would both give me great recommendations. Unfortunately, one of the guys was a drunk and probably wouldn't remember me anyway. But fortunately, my most recent ex-landlord was a really great guy, so I made sure to put his number down as a reference and a previous landlord. I even called him to make sure I had the number right and to let him know that someone might be calling him. But, of course, I also had to put down the name and number of my current landlord.

So I decided I'd go and turn in both applications. The first place had a $30 application fee, but didn't require me to put anything else down to hold a place, which was really fortunate for me because I was planning on using them only as a backup anyway.

I then went and turned in the application on my favored place, and again asked when I'd know. He told me he'd actually try to contact my references that night and call me back. My heart simultaneously leapt and sunk, if such a thing is possible. It leapt because it meant the guy was serious about renting to me (he also said that although he had a ton of people coming by to look at the place, I was the first person to actually turn in an application), but it sunk because that meant that he was definitely going to call my references and ask about me--some places I've rented from have never checked my references at all.

So I did the only thing I could, which was go back to my hotel room and wait. I went over to the Safeway next to my hotel and bought some 'party food' and started a little premature party by myself while I nervously waited.

He called me back a couple hours later with the news. And, as so often seems to happen to me, luck was on my side. It turns out that he called my current landlord and found out he's in Florida for the winter. And he either didn't think to ask anyone else who was there (who could probably look at the books very easily and answer any questions he had) about me, or didn't want to bother--so he went right to my most recent ex-landlord, who of course gave me a stellar recommendation! I was in! He said he'd contact me the next morning between 8am and 9am to set up a time to come over and sign the lease, pay the deposit, and give me the keys! Yay!

Unfortunately, that means I also had to call and cancel my Sunday appointment to see an apartment (which was only a 1 bedroom, so I didn't feel too bad about missing out on seeing that one) and also call and withdraw my application at the other place. I decided not to do that, however, until I'd actually signed the lease with this guy and gotten my keys.

So I got up on Sunday morning and waited. 8am came and went. So did 8:30. At 8:45, the cleaning people came, so I vacated the room, went downstairs and checked out, and sat in the lobby with my cell phone waiting for the call. At 9:30 I decided to go get some breakfast, and at 9:45 I decided to call the guy myself and see what was what. I called the rental agency who forwarded my call to the guys house--and I got him out of bed. Turns out he had slept through his alarm and I was doing him a favor by getting his but tout of bed. He promised to call me back, so I ate my breakfast and went and walked around the mall next door. He finally did call me at 10:30 and set up an appointment at 1:00pm to do all the paperwork. This was starting to cut it close, as I had to return the rental car by 3:00, but I wanted to get everything done and have the keys before I left, so I agreed to it. I killed time in Downtown Boulder, called my parents to let them know I'd found a place, and at 1:00 I pulled into the guys driveway. He wasn't home. His wife and his little daughter were, however, and so I got to hang out and watch TV with them for half an hour while I waited for him to get back from his 11:00 appointment with a property owner.

Finally, however, He got there, we got everythign signed, and I got the keys. So I now have a residence in both Northfield, NH, and Boulder, CO. And that's pretty cool. :-)

The trip home was reletively uneventful, so I won't bore you with a chronical of it, except to say that you get a lot of strange looks carrying around a copy of Mick Foley's book "Have a Nice Day." But it's a *great* book :-)

Oh, and the helpful people at the Manchester airport made sure to not remove the snowbank I had rammed my car into on Friday morning, so I had the pleasure of extracting my car from in Sunday night. How gracious of them.