Yet another sad story about hunting for an apartment.
Here it is July already and I haven't done a thing with this web site yet. It's been a crazy six months and I haven't done anything fun yet this year. My lease expired in April and I've spent all this time trying to find a better apartment, and checking out the job market in Portland and Cleveland. This is the long sad story.
My lease expired April 1, and I've been wanting to get out of there since long before that. It's a nice apartment community but kind of claustrophobic, so I started looking for a place in February. On top of that, the plant where I work moved a dozen miles east on April 1, which increased my commute from 1 mile to 15 miles. So this was a prime time to find a place closer to the new plant. But as it turned out, this was a lot harder than it sounds for two big reasons.
The first problem was the job was turning into shear misery. I was months behind in writing plant documentation and the chronic production problems were getting overwhelming. Then in mid March one of our customers started x-raying their product and sending them back for rework, even though we had no way to see the defects. So we had to overhaul the process and send these to an outside processor who specializes in this type of operation. It takes a while to qualify an outside process and meanwhile the customer was freeking out because they had sent back everything they had and expected us to return it the next week, which was flatly impossible.
I was already checking the job market in Portland before that, but I had enough of that hysteria and took a week off to do some more serious job hunting. In the end I decided to stay, not because I was worried about the plant, but because it would have been catastrophic to the people on the line. In Portland there were four of us who could run the line, now there is only me. So that meant I had to get back to work searching for an apartment.
And that's the second problem. It's really tough finding a decient apartment in my price range in this town. The new plant is in Cerritos, which is a dozen miles from the beach, which usually means cheaper rents, but it just didn't work out that way. Turns out, Cerritos banned apartment building some time ago so now there are only two apartments in town. In fact, if you search for apartments using Google maps, there's a big blank spot over Cerritos.
So I was searching for three months and finding nothing that I wanted to live in. I checked a dozen apartment hunter web sites and the two with the best selection were Zillow.com and CraigsList.com. Craigs has the most listings but has a horrible index, until I found PadMapper.com which indexes Craigs on Google maps. But I still wasn't finding anything worthwhile. Meanwhile, my lease was expiring fast. It originally expired April 1 and then I went month to month, but June 1 I gave them my 30 days notice, and made the commitment to find a place, or else.
But June was no better than April or May, and by the end of June I still didn't have a place. June 26 I found a place I liked, a scenic setting with all apartments bordering leafy creeks, and I filled out an application. But the place was a claustrophobic interrior unit so the next day I pulled my app and started making plans to spend some time in a hotel. But then on June 30 I found another scenic place, but this time the apartment was facing outward overlooking the pool in a treed, park-like setting. So I filled out an app, got approved, and got moved in in two days.
This is possibly the best apartment complex in Long Beach, and this might be the best unit in the complex. It's like living in a resort, with trees, grass, creeks and waterfalls everywhere. I barely see any other buildings off my porch - all I see is the pool, trees and grass. It's also a bunch bigger than my old place and only $100 more a month. And it's two miles closer to work and ten minutes quicker.
Mike
Click these thumbnails to popup the big pictures
This is the view from my patio, overlooking the smaller pool. The other building is hidden in the trees to the left and the highway is to the right.
A view of the pool from my patio after dark. This is a 1 second exposure.
The smaller pool with my apartment first floor, center. The pool is 8 feet deep.
The pool and my apartment behind it after dark. Another 1 second exposure.
My patio.
My apartment is first floor, center. The pool is to the right.
My huge living room. Not real big but plenty comfortable and nice views.
My dining area and kitchen.
My fabulous bathroom. The sink is kind of fancy but not very big.
The front door to my building.
The scenic garden area near the center of the compound. The pool is beyond the bridge in back.
The bigger of the two pools near the center of the compound. Note jacuzzi at top left, barbecue area at top right.
A gazebo where the paths cross, the pool is to the left.
One of the many waterfalls in the compound. They are only about 3 feet tall.
This scenic little bridge goes over the driveway between buildings (parking is under the buildings). The pool is beyond the bridge.
Another gazebo.
The patio area overlooking the pool (left), next to the clubhouse (right).
The meeting area inside the clubhouse. The patio and pool are to the left.
The big screen TV room at the clubhouse.
Long Beach 2011 Index
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