Down in the Dumps
I'm feeling pretty down this evening. I know that some of it is just letdown after a rather busy and exhausting week. I was pretty wiped out today and was plodding through my work fairly slowly. Plus I spent a chunk of the morning installing the new build of the software, which is enough to take the wind out of any day's sails.
A second reason is that I had thought I had plans to get together with some friends tonight, but it turns out not. There's one person in that group who for some reason says she once had a 'bad experience' with me and when she's the organizer of a Friday get-together - as she is tonight, apparently - she'd rather not have me there. I pretty much have no idea what 'bad experience' she's referring to - we actually don't know each other very well - and wonder if she's mixing me up with someone else (which she's done before). But it is a downer; I have yet to get to one of these Friday events, in large part because the few weeks I've been unambiguously free for them, they either haven't happened, or this woman has organized them. I had been looking forward to it tonight, and was more upset than I'd realized at first that it wasn't there for me.
And then the third reason is that I'm starting to wonder if I've chosen the wrong place to live out here.
A big reason for this is that I'm slowly realizing just how spread out everything is out here, and that pretty much everyone I know lives north of Apple, while I live south of Apple. And John lives a whole thirty miles away from here. I have not generally minded driving around to get places, but no one is really willing to reciprocate. (I find this a tad strange, actually, since I live seven miles from work and some of my friends live twenty miles from work.) I can't even easily invite the gaming folks over for a weekend gaming session, since one of the key Bridge people and one of the key gaming and Bridge people have serious allergies, and probably couldn't abide my cats.
But, I really did not know the area when I was looking for a place, and far and away the strongest piece of advice I received about apartment-hunting out here is that the housing market is so intense that I should take the first place I find that looks good to me. Which is basically what I did. And maybe that wasn't such a good piece of advice.
The other thing that's brought this worry to a head is that the folks in the apartment next to me told me that their car and one other on the property (which has 12 2-bedroom apartments) were broken into last night and their radios stolen. On the one hand I'm glad my strategy of having a relatively crummy car dissuaded the thieves from breaking into my car. On the other, this sort of news is never good to hear, and as the evening's worn on I've worried about it more and more. Especially since I'm always rather paranoid when I go away on vacation that someone will break into my home... and now I've got this worry.
When I scoped out this area it seemed like a pretty nice area: A nice apartment with good amenities, some condos (or else really nice apartments) going up across the street, next to a religious school, down the street from a park, and in a residential neighborhood not far from the town center, near some major roads. And driving around I haven't really seen signs that I'm living in a lower class neighborhood or any other reason to worry. (I don't think my neighborhood is much different from, say, John's, from what I've seen.)
Have I been completely wrong? Or is this just a fluke occurrence that any area could fall victim to?
I really don't want to move again, not so much because I'm not willing to spend the money, but because I really want to avoid putting in the time and energy and stress investment so soon after The Big Move. I'm still not even settled into the state or this place, and I'm not sure I'd be up to moving again. But, maybe it's something I should consider. Though I really, really don't want to.
I guess what I should do tomorrow is make sure that the folks who were victims of the robberies last night reported the crime to the police; that would make me feel a little better, that the cops know what happened and might watch out for it for a while. But other than that... there's not much I can do.
Sigh. No fun.
Well, writing this all out has helped me feel a little better about it. For now.
(Thanks to Laurel Krahn's Web Log for the links on this page.)
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