Finding My Place in Dayton (okay, Kettering)

As many of you reading this may know (and I do like to imagine that many people ARE reading this), I am moving to Dayton, OH in the second week of August. I knew this, but also lost track of the summer and wound up not looking for an apartment until a week ago Tuesday! But never fear; I found something that seems like it will be wonderful for me and my dog, Melisma.

The trip down was enjoyable, with a few Storyettes to tell (apologies to Mr. Bernstein).

To begin with, and to my utter shock and awe, I learned a few weeks prior to my trip that the University of Dayton would be giving me a moving budget "not to exceed $4,700" to cover relocation costs, including gas/food/lodging for one apartment-hunting trip and gas/food/movers for the actual move. As such, I went online and booked myself a room for two nights downtown at the Crown Plaza hotel. I gave myself a room on the club floor (the one you need to use a special card in the elevator to get to) with a king-sized bed and full breakfast each morning at the rooftop restaurant, because I deserve it (and because it's not my money being spent ;) ). My room had a great view and came with aroma-therapy and a progressive muscle relaxation/imagery/meditation CD to help me fall asleep. Also, everyone called me "sir", which I really need to convince other people to start doing....

Oh, and on the way down, as I drove through Indiana, I came upon my favorite restaurant from when I was a kid, combining all-you-can-eat with variety: The Ponderosa (which, loosely translated from Spanish, means "you really should think about this...."). It was much better than a $11 all-you-can-eat meal had any right to be, but also a bit unsettling. First, the cashier asked me a question which, even though I recognized all the words, still confused me: "Would you like to add an 8-oz. sirloin steak to your meal for a dollar?" HUH?! Later as I was eating my meal, I heard a young boy in the booth behind me tell his parents that he had just lost a tooth. Responding in all seriousness, the mother inquired "Was it one of your new ones?" Okaaaayyyyy....

Also at this Mecca of deliciousness, I noticed a very obese woman going to the buffet. She was so obese, in fact, that she walked with a cane. Now, I believe that everyone can be a good person, don't judge someone by the way they look, etc....but I really think that if you need a cane to walk to the buffet line, it is definitely time to stop eating at restaurants with buffet lines. Seriously. When your knees can no longer support the top half of your body without help, that should be your cue to stop eating so much!

So anyhow, Dayton.....I had been there once before during my interview in May, and then only for a day and at the University. I did not know what I would find with regard to the quality of living options. The first place I drove to (and kept on driving from) was so unbelievably ugly....you know how every apartment complex has that one person or family who is dirty, leaves old furniture and bags of garbage outside, and generally makes you want to avoid eye-contact and double-check that you locked your doors? It looked like this place was their spawning ground. Plus the buildings looked to be in bad shape from the outside, and I am pretty sure that letting my dog shit on the lawn would improve the property value. I was so glad when I saw the next place and could rest easy that it was this particular apartment community, and not Dayton on the whole, that was horrible.

Apartment-hunting was going to be more complicated than it turned out to be. I had planned to visit 14 different places (wound up seeing 12) and, since I wasn't sure which order I would visit them in, I did Mapquest to all the apartments from the hotel. I quickly got tired of returning to the hotel in order to go to the next apartment, and was quite fortunate that each apartment manager was willing to give me directions to the next closest apartment community on my list. I got lost with most of the directions I received, which might have been a good idea for the people giving them, since if I can't get to the next place, I have less options and still think "wow, those people at Apartment Community X are really nice!"

There is no nice way to say this, so I will just say it: many of the apartment representatives I met with were very obese. So much so that I really felt badly for asking them to walk outside in the heat and go up and down stairs to show me an apartment (huffing, puffing, etc). In fact, it was so bad that I felt like I had to pretend to be more interested in the apartment than I actually was! "Oh wow, the kitchen has a big pantry; I like how the livingroom just flows into the dining area."

Several of the apartments had specials if I signed that day....$300 off first month's rent, or a discount on the security deposit....which I didn't like, because I think an apartment should sell itself and I don't like feeling pressured to skip looking at other places to rush back to them and sign a lease before they close. My favorite incentive was that, if I signed a lease application that day, I would have the outside temperature at the time I signed deducted from my monthly rent for six months (so if it were 90 degrees out, I would have $90 taken off my rent for half a year). My least favorite was "if you come back tomorrow, we will probably have had time to clean the apartment."

I wound up taking the third place I looked at. It is a 900-sq foot, 2-level townhouse set-up with 1.5 bathrooms, a patio, and 14x8 balcony. Plus it is about 12 minutes away from where I will be working (well, an hour and 12 minutes, if you include the hour it took me to find the building I will be working in...the guy at the Information Booth on campus gave me directions to a different building each time I asked them after they sent me to the wrong place....I figured that by process of elimination they'd eventually send me to the right building). The floorplan is below:



Anyhow, it was overall an enjoyable, productive trip. I had dinner with a coworker (appetizer on my part of the bill, to be paid for by our employer, of course!). Also, I got to see my office...I have a garden outside my window which is tended by an elderly monk. I have arrived!

But maybe I have arrived too quickly....I got a speeding ticket on the way home for doing 70 in a 55-zone. As he left, the cop told me to slow down and watch my speed, which I did for the whole quarter-mile to the highway before doing 70 again.

But, like I fantasize about telling my clients: it could be worse.....I could be on fire, too....