Still here?
Oh yes, and how. Perhaps this summer I’ll try updating thisdarkqualm a bit more often. I need to spend the summer sending out and prepping a couple articles, revising the diss, and getting a book proposal together. But lately, I’ve been apartment hunting.
Not apartment hunting in connection with a tenure-track position in some interesting metropolis–rather, hunting for an apartment here in Champaign, again, since my landlord has decided not to renew my lease. There’s a sad story here, actually:
Having at last finished and deposited the diss, I decided, with some strong encouragement from the family, to attend the UI commencement ceremony. Surprisingly, I shared the stage with pretty much everyone in the department who collected a PhD. Ceremony is back.
It was all very nice. But when I arrived home, there was a surprise waiting. My parents had brought our family’s two dogs to visit, and we left them in the apartment during the ceremony. My landlord (see previously) had apparently, during one of his random wandering about sessions, detected the presence of one or more dogs in the apartment. This caused him to post a notice of eviction on my door, which I discovered on returning.
A few days later, he explained that he’d forgo legal eviction procedures (not a small mercy, given Champaign’s vicious tenant laws, that permit virtually any landlord to dump his tenant’s property on the lawn in 10 days, should he feel his lease agreement has been violated). However, he explained that he was still intent on not renewing the lease in August. Which brings us to today.
By last week, I had narrowed my apartment hunt to two places. One was a fantastic old upstairs unit in the downtown area–perhaps the last really inexpensive such place to be found. The other was a smaller but nicely remodeled space, just a block or two from downtown Champaign. Sadly however, this weekend, following a lengthy negotiation, the amazing apartment was withdrawn from consideration (the renter decided to renew her lease), while the backup apartment was simultaneously leased to some unknown person.
So, I find myself spending time combing various regions of the internet, and jotting down numbers on the “FOR RENT” signs scattered across the city, looking for just one more reasonably habitable apartment to inhabit for just more more year. And each day I meander through a few tiny unbreathable apartments, some complete with sullen tenants, almost all in embarrassing states of dilapidation. Sort of a drag.
Tomorrow, however, I’ll be headed to the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, and perhaps hanging about in Hyde Park. Should be a nice break, before resuming my hunt for an apartment so lovely and inexpensive that it makes Champaign seem like Portland Oregon, or some beautiful Italian village.