So I've been homelessly loitering around Dearborn for a week and a half now. Aside from an all too intimate knowledge of the local rest areas and truck stops, I've also had a chance to drive around the area for the last 10 days. Long enough to have some collected a few first impressions.

Some early impressions are good, others are less so... but since all I've been doing is bitching for the last week, I thought it would be worthwhile to take some time and focus on some of the good so far. 🙂

How About This Weather?

High temps have been in the low 80's since I got here. At night, it gets cold enough to be incredibly cozy under a blanket (even if I wasn't in my car, I'd have the window on nights like these). This is mid-August... and let's be honest, this could've totally a much, much more difficult experience if I had driven here in the middle of a heat wave or something.

I've been warned about the Winter, and I'm admittedly worried about my car's ability to handle any level of snow/ice... but for now, this has been excellent. Thanks MI. 🙂

You Can Drive!

I hope I don't end up eating my words once I get some more road time... but so far, the people here are the best drivers of anywhere I've driven. Bold claim, I know, but I've logged several hundred miles already (ffs) and so far, road etiquette is top-notch here. Not only do people move to the right if you're approaching faster, but more often than not (so far) people just get out of the left lane to begin with.

But don't think I'm zooming down the left lane blowing past all of Michigan. No no. The speed limit on the highway is 70, I'm doing 80 and people are blowing past me on the left. 🙂 This is nice.

But let's keep going... the lanes? Fuck... after 15 years in the PNW, it's so nice to be on normal width'd lanes again! The highway lanes in Seattle aren't as wide. It's not a huge issue, but it definitely takes more work to stay in your lane, while also forcing you to pay more attention to nonsense from opposing lanes. It's a tiny, tiny thing, I know, but I was surprised at how noticeable it is here. It is noticeable.

Keep going still? OK!

Let's talk about the the roadway system. Pretty much all of western-Washington is "covered" by 3 highways. This is why there's always traffic in Seattle. Politically, it's simply more popular to fuck over cars as part of some "green" agenda, so there's some weird pride in having shitty roads there. Here, it's a web of highways and major roads that, every time I ask the googles for directions, enable me to have multiple highway-based options to get from A to B. If I end up living further out than expected, I'll bit more comfortable with the commute variability here than I ever would've been in Washington.

Peeps

On Day 1, I rolled into Dearborn... straight to U of M campus, and took a selfie in front of the sign. The very next thing I did was find a gas station to fill up (to get a final tally total gas used).

"All the way from Washington? That's far!", some random lady says to me. She's pumping gas at the pump in front of me. We briefly talk, and she shares an ominous, "Have a good time, but stay aware of your surroundings." OK... so, aside from that little warning, the first person I ran into? Immediate normal, nice conversation.

Since then? Too many too count. No, really... people here aren't walking douchebags like all of Seattle. I've got my mountain bike strapped to a bike rack on the ol' FR-S (pictures coming, I promise!!), and I've had no less and 3 conversations about that bike, none started by me. 😀

And I'm not just talking about people forced to interact with me; leasing agents, cashiers and the like. I mean, there's a been a lot that obviously, and yeah, they've almost all been pretty positive... but yeah, even beyond that, people just seem more human here. It's been a nice start.

And More!

There's more to share... but, 1) I've already told you long posts break my blog (for now) because I'm ass and 2) I'm done with dinner. 🙂 That makes this the perfect place to wrap it up. 😉

So, more to come, of course. It's clear this adventure isn't going to be what I envisioned, but it never is, is it? What I can tell so far, is that I'll be driving more than I want (more details to come), I'll be spending more than I want (more details to come), but I may end up enjoying the day-to-day more than I have in quite a while.

Who knows... we're just at first impressions still. But there's more good than bad so far. Once I get a place to live, get my stuff moved in, and get going... it'll be interesting to see where this little blog takes us.

So far? Interesting start. Room for hope.

So... you know what's fucking hilarious in this apartment situation?

By and large, no one gives a shit if I have the money or not. For every single apartment, if I could show three months worth of paychecks, that would be good enough. That's it... 3 months.

Well, it just occured to me... I OWN my own fucking business. It's a fully registered LLC in the state of Washington. This, by the way, is why I've technically haven't been unemployed... because I'm "self-employed".

If I had known this horseshit would've been an issue... I could've quite easily paid myself a very handsome fucking salary for 3 months... since "paying myself" is just transferring money from one account to another. But it would've been legit enought to use as income.

Clearly I couldn't have known.... but I'm just saying... that's how dumb this is. BUT ALSO... I know for moving time next year.

Dumb, dumb shit. 🙂

C'est la vie.

As someone who currently has more free time than places to be... I suddenly wish there was a busy mall to go to.

Remember malls?

CmdJournal Is 💩.

So 'CmdJournal' is the official name of the blogging software I'm writing for this site. And, as of now, it's still shit.

There's a bug in the interface code that breaks if a single blog post is too large. I've known about it for a while and was hoping to get it fixed (and add pictures!) as part of my pre-school month of freedom. But, that has not happened. 😐

Well, last night I wrote a crazy-long post, updating the road trip from Saturday through Tuesday. Haha... my sad little software client absolutely shit the bed. I tried to break it into two, and that didn't work. So I went to bed. 🙂

Anyway, I chopped the shit out of the post and ended up publishing one for each day, Tuesday, Monday, Sunday and Saturday. But... I literally just cut them up and posted them. So if they read a little rough, my apologies. We'll get this cleaned up, unless...

Is It A Feature?

Unless you think gigantic posts are a bad thing? Do you think that a single, 4-day post is too much to read? If you have an opinion, poke me. 🙂

Pictures? Ever?

I really, really wanted to have a picture system working long by now. This blog needs it. Again, sorry it's taking me so long to get on it. This last road trip has pictures associated with it, and the posts will read much better with them. So... honestly... when I do finally get a few good picture-widgets up and running, I'm hoping to go back and do some re-writing of the posts to give them a little more life. 🙂

So... if you're super bored, whenever that happens... maybe come back and revisit my road trip. 🙂

Until then though... seriously, I get that text-only posts are a little dry in 2024. Sorry. 🙁 It's coming. 🙂

Day 7 - Tuesday - Let's End This Already

Tuesday morning. Another night at the rest area. 😐

I had a final set of places to check out Tuesday morning, and planned on applying to a place by noon.

I found Plymouth, Michigan, which sits a little further North. The commute would be be 30+ minutes on good days. Plymouth seems trendy (though a bit hipster) and had a very, very cool downtown vibe. I also found a mediocre apartment out there that is affordable and was... umm... it was, OK? Meh? It wasn't great, not by any means... but it wasn't terrible.

But I did like Plymouth enough to add the apartment to my list. But also, while there, the leasing agent was super friendly and talkative, and also just moved to Michigan a year or so ago. By the end of our chat I decided to check out Taylor, MI and Southfield, MI.... both much closer to Deaborn but were supposed to be less sketchy.

By the time I finished looking at the Taylor apartment it was 3 o'clock. I really wanted to get something sorted and applied to today. I still have shit to get done for school, I still have to move, I still have to get a driver's license, register my car, and so on. Life is calling.

So I went over to IKEA, which had become my unofficial office these last few days.

I don't know. I don't have a single great choice.

But, there is one that stood out the most: Fairlane Wood. Of course, it's among the priciest of places I looked at. I'll cover costs a little more in a future post, but when I was originally budgeting this grad school craziness, I used the rental prices I found on apartments.com. I had seen nice one-bedrooms as low as $1,000-$1,200/mth. But that was in neighborhoods I now realize I don't want to be in.

The trust is, every decent apartment I looked at here (and many shitty ones) were pricier than I had planned on. So I was likely going to end up breaking the "budget" either way. Fairlane Wood is like $150/mth more than my 2nd choice. So more, but not astronomical.

The location? Minutes from campus (like Fairlane Meadow) and in a very non-sketchy little bubble (like Fairlane Meadow).

So... OK, let's do it. At 4:30 today, I drove over to Fairlane Wood. Ready to apply.

If You Tighten Your Stomach Muscles, The Punch Hurts Less

I'm at Fairlane Wood. I'm on my laptop inside the leasing office. I fill out the application.

They use a verification service, like the other apartments did. I'll go through it, and I'll fail. We discussed it ahead of time. After I fail the income verification (but pass the credit history and criminal history shit), then the plan is to email Jessica, from the leasing office, my bank statements.

It's all going as plan. I finish up the verification. I pay the non-refundable fee.

"You're going to hate me a little.", I warn Jessica, "I have my cash spread over 6 different bank accounts. So I'll have to send you 3 months of statements from each one."

Jessica's face gets a little more stern, "It all has to be in one account, we can't accept multiple account statements."

What. The. Fuck.

I don't know what to say. I smile. The laptop, held upright in my hand, lowers with the rest of my arm.

What. The. Fuck.

I didn't know what to say, but I guess my face said it all. Because alongside me and Jessica, was Nicole, another leasing agent. "Don't worry", she tells me, "we can get it figured out."

I keep smiling and just turn away, walking back to my backpack. I place the laptop down.

"No really, we can work with the numbers a little. Maybe change the lease length so the total needed is lower."

I still haven't said anything as I turn back to them. I give a little shrug. I looked at Nicole, still though, I wasn't sure what to say. Work with the numbers a little? What does that even mean?

"Do you have one account with most of the money?", Nicole asks.

"I do, but even still that's about half of the total cash across all the accounts."

Nicole and Jessica retreat for a bit. Then come back, and whip out a calculator, and punch some numbers in my face. So here's the skinny: If I look at my single biggest account, based on their minimum requirements... I have enough by like $3,000.

Enough.

So... according to the plan, I should get denied. Then Jessica will take my bank statements to her manager. If all goes well, the manager checks off, and I get a phone call telling me my application has been accepted.

If all does not go well... then the apartment story continues.

That's where we're at. It's Tuesday. It's 8:30 at night. I'm in a coffee shop, typing away. I'm tired. I'm not enjoying this. I'll be sleeping in my car again tonight.

Hopefully this works out. And if so, I've got a place to live... although I'll have to wait another week and a half before I able to move in. So, yeah, that's also ass.

There's more I want to share. More details, more thoughts... but I think most of it will remain lost. Trying to bang out these posts before I forget them, while also kinda miserable, isn't making for the best blogging, I know. Sorry. For now, this is where things are.

I still have a ton of shit to do for school before it gets started... including registering for another class.

I hoped this would've been smoother. It has not been.