Not Quite Looking Yet
No, I didn't follow through on my plan to go look at apartments today. But the main reason for that is that my plan's changed.
My boss, JP, recommended that I use a service called Bay Area Rentals, which thrice-weekly by e-mail sends regular listings of apartments for rent within certain criteria defined by the subscriber. JP says he used it back before he bought his house, and that his brother was using it. I checked out their Web site, and saw that it costs a $98 flat fee for three months - longer than I expect to use the service. Nonetheless, it seemed attractive. It's probably a clue that the service is priced correctly if I can't decide whether or not to use it.
I contacted the guy from Cendant Mobility who coordinated my relocation to California earlier this year, and asked him if he knew about BAR, and he said that they use them all the time. In fact, I think I would have been set up with them if I hadn't taken my current apartment. I also asked my Mom and Dad what they thought of the service, and they seemed to think that I could afford it, and that it would save me some effort.
The main effort it would save me, of course, is a bunch of time on the phone and potentially some driving around. It's seemingly common out here for most apartments not to allow pets, and I of course have two cats. Also, few rental ads give the location of the property, other than the city. But the listings from BAR would apparently display both the pet factor and the street and nearby cross-street of the apartment. So it seems pretty handy.
So I figure that either tonight or tomorrow morning I will sign up with them. And hopefully it will work out.
Yes, I am still dragging my feet on this matter. I have mild telephone-phobia; I don't like using the phone to conduct business, and the prospect of calling a bunch of people to ask about apartments, and probably hanging up as soon as I ask about cats in many cases, is daunting to me. (Yes, I'm the sort of person who will drive across town to look for a book rather than calling stores to find out if they have it. Good thing I enjoy shopping!)
But, hopefully a more targeted approach will remove the worst of the intimidation of apartment-hunting, for me.
Yesterday I went up to CJ and David's and we spent pretty much the whole day playing Starcraft, mostly the three of us against the computer. It took us a while to really handle the computer; it was pretty annoying for a while. The computer is really very, very good at the basic strategies that work well early in the game, but if you survive the early part then the computer plateaus and you can eventually take it out without much problem. But it was fun anyway.
We had also hoped to go hiking, but CJ wasn't feeling so good and bowed out.
Today was mostly a 'chores' day. I paid bills, balanced my checkbook, cleaned up a bunch of comic books sitting around waiting to be organized, bought some Raid to vanquish the ants I mentioned finding on Friday, did a whole bunch of laundry, and gave the cats a bunch of petting. I also went and worked out in the late afternoon; boy, the fitness center was pretty much empty. It was a good workout; I pushed myself a little harder by adding a third set to a few exercises, which felt good. I'm doing 3 sets on most of my exercises now, and may soon be ready to start adding weight to them.
Spoilers follow...
This first episode, "War Zone", was pretty mediocre, and Straczynski says he thinks it's probably the weakest of the lot. It's mostly direct follow-up to the TV-movie "A Call to Arms", which was itself not the greatest thing since sliced bread, and this episode serves mainly to introduce the character of Captain Matthew Gideon, and paint a few of the supporting cast in around him.
The worst parts of the episode, though, are the wooden acting, and the script. The acting is on a par with the worst episode of the first season of B5, although Gary Cole and Gideon and Peter Woodward as Galen are fine. But neither of them is as good as B5's two best actors (Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas), or even Jerry Doyle. And almost all of the rest seem to be mumbling their lines from a teleprompter.
And the script... aargh. A fine example of all the JMS cliches: The continuing overuse of the phrase "Not a problem", the cardboard heroics of a supporting character (Trace), and the insertion of various character monologues for "color", such as Eilerson's commentary on archaeology, and the overlong explanation of how we don't want Earth to end up a dead world like Mars. While some of this could reasonably be laid at the feet of TNT, who apparently interfered greatly with this particular script, a lot of it is a fairly reasonable progression from the growing stiltedness of Straczynski's scripts in seasons 4 and 5 of B5. As I've said before, this guy can really, really use an editor sometimes. And it's becoming "often" rather than "sometimes".
And, with the series already cancelled, it's hard to stay enthused by the promise of the future story arc, as I did in the first season of B5. Apparently the series will end just before the arc really starts moving. The show does have promise, but...
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