listings still suck.

still no ruling.

still stuck in time.

i did finish september early this morning, and crashed quite promptly.

the smoke was worse yesterday than it's been in a while - although still localized to the hole in the floor - and i think it's had an effect on my energy level.

i'm very tired, right now.

august, 2014 is done.

still no listings.

still no order.

*shrug*.

i was thinking august 1st would be a good moving date because it would help me get in before the influx of students, over the summer - and i was fully aware from the start that i'd be competing with students for spots. that's why i picked this date....i didn't want to deal with the problems around september 1st...

what i'm learning is that there's a lot of people that have set up basement apartments, explicitly hoping for students. a lot of them are overcharging.

what i'm learning is that there's a lot of furnished rooms available in badly cut-up housing, and these people are explicitly looking for students, as well. these people are overcharging.

& what i'm also learning is that even people with normal apartments are prioritizing students over non-students. & these people are overcharging, too.

it's easy to understand why, after a moment's thought: renting to students means they're going to move out in ten months, and you can jack the rent up for next year. or, at least, that's what people are thinking..

yet, it's abundantly clear to me that these people are getting greedy, and the fact that they're overcharging in the presence of an oversupply of student housing is just going to leave them with empty units.

i want to avoid the professionals...these people are scum bags...

but, given that the whole city wants to rent to students, to the point they don't call non-students back, it seems like october might be the better choice than august.

that's what i'm learning.

i guess we'll see.

but, i'm going to wait until the end of august before i started pitching to mom in the suburbs about renting that basement suite unfurnished.

for me, what it means is that i might be looking at a lot of units that are opening up for what is essentially the same reason as this one, and that i need to be extra cautious about the potential of just moving in parallel.

it seems like renting to a pothead creates a deadzone in the units around it that can only be sustainably filled by other potheads.

so, what i would suspect you'll see begin to happen is that these units will begin to form blocks, and expand to take over entire buildings.

the conclusion is undeniably that a single pothead can irreversibly ruin an entire building very quickly.

but, a pattern may be developing: all the empty rental units in what is currently a tight market are in close proximity to marijuana users, it seems.

it makes it seem like everybody smokes pot.

but, we know that's not true...

when this unit opens up, it will fit that pattern.

maybe, the truth is that nobody wants to live near dirty potheads.

is this quitting smoking thing worth it?

i dunno.

but, i'm hardly going to go back to it, now.

yeah. that unit was basically the same thing as this one. slightly smaller bedroom, slightly bigger kitchen, but the same floor space.

same old flooring that doesn't keep anything out...

and, i could smell the pothead below me, walking by the door.

the only substantive difference is that it is $50 more expensive....

i asked the tenant if he could smell the smoke, and at first he said "sometimes", but then backtracked immediately.

listen...

if you're a property manager, or a tenant, and somebody asks you about smoke, please be honest. if you tell me there's no smoke, and there is, i'm going to sue the fuck out of you. it's not sneaky. it's not smart. it's not a save. it's false advertising, and i'll make you pay for it.

non-smokers do not want to live with smokers.

deal with it.

i took an application, but i'm viewing it as a last resort, and expect it to actually be gone fairly quickly - if i was a smoker, i'd be all over it. but, then again, if i smoked, i wouldn't need to move in the first place...

i'm really not apprehensive about calling myself middle-aged at all.

i've been keenly aware for my whole life that i have noting in common with my own age group. and, i think i've demonstrated clearly enough that putting me in close proximity with young people is just going to lead to conflict.

i'd love to move to a seniors home, if they'd have me.

again: i am not a young person looking for a wild atmosphere.

i am a middle-aged transwoman looking for a clean, safe & healthy environment.

july's done.

i'll wait until tonight before i get a start on august.

i've got a few showings in the next few days, but i'm not really excited about any of them. i expect the building i'm going to see this afternoon to be full of drugs, for example. but at least i'll be able to cross it off...

i've been completely straight edge (except coffee.) since memorial day, fwiw - which is not particularly unusual for me, even if it's not reflective of recent habits. i have a history of staying sober for months at a time. so, have i officially grown out of intoxicants? i guess we'll see. probably not. but, i plan on staying completely smoke & alcohol free until i move, at least.

that should make it easier to identify smoky apartments, i hope.

i'm going to be extremely picky. i have to be. i don't want to do this again. but, if i end up in the same situation, i will do it again, too.

yeah.

so, i think what i'm learning here is that evicting the tenant below me would not have been sufficient to solve the problem.

i do think she's gone. and it is way better. no question, but, it's not good enough.

and, that's kind of what i reasoned. well, what i decided was that she'd likely be replaced by something as bad, or worse. i mean, at least she works. what if she was down there all day? egads.

i may be stuck here another month, but i'm confident i made the right choice in getting out.

so, that gets me through june....

july may be a little slower, but nothing's coming up in the listings, so i'd might as well be industrious.

can i get this done before the sun comes up?

can i stay awake that long?

i'm due for a long day...

still raining.

market still sucks.

no response from the adjudicator.

hopefully, i can get through most of june by midnight. and, hopefully, the rest of the week is as productive, if i'm stuck here for another month - as it is increasingly appearing as though i am.

if you think i'm too crazy to start a band with, then you're too conservative to jam with me.

...& that was a quick movement through may.

as the air has legitimately cleared out, i've been able to stay awake a little longer over the last few days - although i say that as something is wafting in, i think from a different unit, perhaps a few floors down.

i've picked up a nasty smokers' cough, though, i'm not exaggerating. it's that tightening in your chest, and that constant inability to be able to cough out the obstruction. i thought i'd gotten rid of that...alas...

market still sucks.

on to june...

so, that's april.

as expected, it was a little shorter, and i expect that to hold for the rest of 2014.

the market is not opening up like i hoped, but i do have some showings on the weekend.

back to looking for the day...

i think i need a personal update.

i appear to have forgotten to mention that i finished rebuilding february, 2014 on the 10th; i think i thought i'd get through this fairly quickly, and not need to update. i guess i forget that i spent most of march with a broken recording machine. it was a heavy posting month. but it's done now...

how's the smoke? well, it has gotten dramatically better, but i wonder if the heat is a factor. the flip side of that is that the a/c might be off downstairs, which is a sign suggestive of the idea that she has left. that said, i've also been very ired this week for some reason, and my sweat smells alarmingly like marijuana. so, i don't know. it's weird all around, it really is.

i would expect that the posts will start to slow down again soon. i guess we'll have to see....

i'll need to stay in on monday because of the weird message about the electrical. i don't currently have any showings planned until saturday.

i filled out an application, but i don't intend to move into that unit; it's far too small.

she's been blazing all day. again. gross.

i intend to get some work done tonight.

i don't care where the pot store is located; i'm not going to be in there very often.

my biggest concern, location wise, has always been access to downtown. i've wanted to be close to the downtown strip, and close to the tunnel - because that's how i get across.

i suppose that the tunnel is still going to often be the easiest way to cross, even after the bridge is built. it depends on where i'm going, right? and when i'm coming back.

the key thing about the bridge is that it means i won't have to wait anywhere any more - i can just bike through at 3:37 or whatever.

it's maybe the space between the bridge and the tunnel that is optimal, then. but, i should be a little less dismissive about sandwich. it might be boring as fuck for right now, but it will be nice when the bridge is built.

i'm going to take a walk around the block to see something, but it's surely far too small.

i was again knocked out cold by the pot this morning.

i'm 60% asleep...barely awake...what a sad excuse for an existence...

no new listings to take note of, just the big apartment buildings. i'm going to have to start a deeper search on monday, i think. that's how i got my spot in 2013 - i found something that was only listed at an obscure site.

i'm going to try to get some work done tonight, but i suspect i may end up sleeping all night.

i have no intentions of doing any partying at all, whatsoever, until i get this sorted out. life is not about the time you spend partying, it's about what happens in between.

where does the compliant worker get her mind-numbing drugs from?

the state.

and, who tells her it is "cool" to get stoned, and non drug users are "uncool"?

the corporate media.

do you get it? because orwell got it, and huxley got it, and bakunin got it and...

i mean, you'll note that it's the employed worker that is the pothead, and the unemployed anarchist that isn't - and you'll note what the drugs are doing to this employed workers' revolutionary potential, as they likewise harm the productivity of the unemployed anarchist.

the pothead worker doesn't want to start a revolution; what the pothead worker wants is for the unemployed anarchist to get a job.

this is not some accident, it's by design. and, it's what everybody on the left (except marx.) has always seen as patently obvious.

my position has been clear for years: i reject schedules.

i don't want to live on a 24-hour clock.

some days, i want to go to sleep at 5:30 am; other days, i want to wake up at 5:30 am. and, if we can't be free to set our own schedules, what does freedom mean? is that not the definition of freedom?

so, if somebody is infringing on this ability (be they a boss, or a pothead), are they not restricting your freedom, by definition?

these are actually very basic left-wing arguments; this is not a conservative viewpoint. i'm appealing to ideas of autonomy and self-ownership, and i'm attacking those that would restrict peoples' freedom by enforcing their habits on others. that's the very centre of left-wing thought.

there's a reason why all of the dystopian literature places drug use as a central component of statist mind control. what i'm typing here should not be surprising; i'm really just living through something that every single leftist 20th century visionary saw coming from a great distance away.

waking up stoned on a saturday morning from your neighbours' early morning second-hand smoke is pretty awful. it's just kind of like "i just slept. i shouldn't be tired. that's why i slept. what's the point of sleeping, if you're just going to wake up tired?".

ugh.

i need to be up early until i can find something else, but i won't start calling until after 9:00.

because i'm a fucking polite canadian.

fwiw, she is of course still smoking inside.

my lease is cut. i will determine whether i am going to file a human rights complaint or not depending on the ruling i get. documentation, moving forward, is not particularly worthwhile.

what i'll say is this: the situation is not different than it was previously, and there is no reason to think it will change, moving forwards, unless the property managers react to the settlement by attempting to evict her. so, the assumption should be that i'll be dealing with this pretty much constantly until i leave, unless i state otherwise.

i didn't really sleep this week, as i had a lot of video editing and journal compiling to do. i tried to get up around midnight, but i really actually mostly just slept for the last 12+ hours - a needed and very much wanted sleep. i'm up now and ready to start a new day...

the temperature fell sharply over night and it's actually quite nice, right now. i like the heat & humidity, but i was developing a mild rash from exposure to it and did need a bit of a break from it. it's actually going to be a bit cold this weekend, and balance out to "seasonal" again for next week.

today, i need to look at listings. tonight, i'm going to clean a little. i'm going to have more flexibility this month, at least until the ruling comes in the mail, but the basic situation hasn't changed - i still need to save money to plan for the move.

the lease is done on sept 30th, so i need to be out by october 1st at the latest. i'm confident that i can do this, and that it should prevent me from needing to compromise too badly - i think this should be enough time to get what i want.

i think my arguments went over well, but it's not clear what kind of damages i'm going to get. i think i probably got moving costs, or some abstraction of it. i'm not going to get cleaning costs, but i might get an abstraction of it in pro-ration. i don't expect costs for furniture or dry-cleaning - and knew that would be almost impossible to get. that was meant almost solely as leverage for mediation; i didn't actually intend to go to trial.

the big wildcard is that pro-ration. if i'm here for ten months, that's $7000 paid in rent. i asked the court to determine a percentage, because i claimed i couldn't quantify that kind of hardship - but what i was really worried about was lowballing myself. i would have asked for something in the 10%-25% range. but, i know this judge is very sympathetic to non-smokers. if i asked for 60% and that was too much, she could have kibboshed it; if i asked for 25%, i could have been missing out on an opportunity for 40%. so, i instead left it at the court's discretion to determine a percentage - under the expectation that such a percentage is going to be higher than any guess i could have made. it's a sneaky algorithm to optimize my return. 30% is over $2000; 10% is a month's worth of rent. but, it relies on the judge not seeing through my ruse - or at least being sympathetic to it. i mean, i volunteer that it's manipulative, sure, but it's not so terrible, is it? is the judge not best qualified to figure this out? am i not putting myself at a threat of lowballing myself by presenting a percentage, or harming myself by appearing too greedy?

we'll know in a few weeks.

for now, i'm glad that there's some certainty about things...and eager to get things back in order.

the time spent preparing was not wasted: i've now sorted through vlog data from most of the last six months, which i needed to do anyways. i should be back to rebuilding from 2014 on within 24 hours.