Category Archives: Geographically challenged moments

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Apartment hunting is le suck!

I’ve searched high and low for the almost perfect apartment.  I’m a little spoiled where i’m at right now being so close to a metro which I obviously prefer however I am willing to make some minor sacrifices.  Such as taking the bus or not being 100% central within reason.  Bear in mind I don’t have a car so these things are nice to have in a relatively convient area.  The first place I went and checked out was OK, however I felt it wasn’t near anything.  Then today my geographically challenged ass found out different (DUH!) so hopefully it’s not too late to apply and hopefully I can score a 4.5 (2 bdrm) since they’re quite reasonable at $555.00/month.  I looked at the one bedroom which was decent and it’s cheaper then here!

Anyway, I took an application and kept looking just the same.  Holy shit, the dissapointment was UN-real!  I like most people have a budget of course and for the sake of having an extra bedroom to use as a guest room/office I was more then willing to spend a little more money.  False advertising should not be allowed when it comes to trying to rent your space!  IE: it’s on the corner of such and such (ideal street) and then you call them and find out it’s in a totally different part of town!

Then I looked at a place that’s relatively close to a metro which is ideal, until I actually seen the place!  Strangest layouts I have ever encountered!  I seen two, both were in the $600.00 price range and included nothing (appliances, heat/hot water/hydro) was to be paid by the tenant.  Which would have been kind of OK except that 1. I don’t own any appliances and aren’t in the market to purchase any either.

One place had a fuse box (WTF!?!) I’ve heard those aren’t allowed in apartments anymore due to being a fire hazard and the current tenant told me that his hydro bill was $150/month!  Holy shit!  I pay $45.00 all year round pretty much.  Granted I don’t cook here much or have a washer/dryer but still… Not only that it was totally open.  There was a claim of a closed room but I don’t recall seeing one (?) so it was totally open concept and the floor was really soft in some places, so that wasn’t ideal either.  Not only that ALL the flooring was this old, gross vinyl tile (ICK!)

The second one was not bad, although a tad large for my tastes.  Perhaps if the layout was different I would like it more.  It was also on the top floor, needed some major work and included nothing and had washer dryer hook-ups which is great if you have the money to buy them.  Yeah you can buy them second hand but then those usually don’t come delivered and don’t have warranties which bothers me.  Not only that, my sisters dryer caught on fire and almost wiped out my entire family so not down with buying used appliances!  So that in turn would end up costing me a small fortune.  I don’t mind painting, sprucing a place up a little but that would cost more then I have.

I seen another one the other day which I really liked except for the floors.  Again with the ugly tile and carpet throughout.  I HATE carpet!  It’s usually utilitarian and ugly, it was poorly laid and harbors dust, dirt and other icky things which I don’t care for.  It was also in the basement which is kind of meh.  That could be changed though, that wasn’t too big of a deal to me.  So we met and I called him back to confirm the place, leave a deposit and what have you and he just called to say that the woman who’s using it as a cheap crash pad is keeping it. It was also kind of pricey at $580/month which included nothing.  I would have dealt with it because I LOVE that part of town.  Alas it was not meant to be apparently!

So today I go and see a place and it’s *almost* perfect.  I loved the layout, the location was great, it included everything including a gas stove (total win) and the fridge, had a balcony, lots of windows and storage.  I could totally overlook the pink tub, toilet and sink.  Also the shitty paint job since I have every intention of changing it up anyway.  The landlord himself however?

Total ass-hat douche bag.

He focused far too much on the fact that I wouldn’t give him my SIN, actually in fact got rather whiny about it.  Said that major rental agencies would refuse to give you the apartment if you don’t give them that information and so forth.

Bullshit.

According to the office of the privacy commission of Canada you have to give written consent in order to access that information.  You also have the right to file a complaint with them if your rights have been denied or you have been refused a service because you refuse to disclose that information.  He (Wally) tried to tell me that it was my right NOT to disclose such information, it raised a red flag.  WTF?!?  A person’s SIN number is a nine digit number that pretty much discloses your entire life.  I am ONLY required to disclose this information to my employers and the government and that’s it!  I know for a fact that you can do a credit check WITHOUT having that particular information.  He tried to tell me that hydro Quebec required it and I called him on his bullshit.  I didn’t have to give them my SIN number in order to get an account with them.  Yes most places do require a piece of ID, however I am not comfortable handing out my personal information to some random dude!

Anyway needless to say he got really whiny and rather pain in the ass like over deferential things that Do. Not. Concern. Him. Period.  Overall, he acted like a greedy, petulant child and pretty much knew that he blew it.  Which likely pissed him off but I’m not an idiot and I am a responsible adult and I’m also willing to compromise here and there but there are some things I will not budge on, simple as that.

So I’m resorting back to the place I first looked at in the hopes that I can nab a 4.5 instead of the 3.5 going to give them a call in the morning and see.  I thought it was in a different part of town, but after being out on the hunt today, it’s actually not as bad as I thought.  So worth a shot just the same!  That place had pretty much everything that I wanted as well, so here’s to hoping!

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Come again? Tales of woe, drama and useless junk…

You know, my life is epic.  Truly, there’s never a dull moment and when there is I tend to cherish them.  Kind of like good people in my life…  Someone said to me the other day:”Is every guy you know (or been involved with, something to that effect) an ass?” To which I simply replied it would seem like that wouldn’t it?  Except he’s not (YAY, well at least not yet).  Oddly enough I got to thinking to myself would I appreciate him for who he is nearly as much as I do had I not encountered such douche-baggery through the years?  Likely not, but who am I to say?  Everything does happen for a reason does it not?  OH yeah speaking of douche-bags, I just about damn near lost it yesterday when I turned my phone back on after trekking all across Montreal yesterday afternoon to find my text message in-box flooded with messages from Micheal.  Micheal who has his own tag on my blog (mostly because he’s the only person I know who uses the word wow so much) and he’s also the guy who stood me up and pissed me right. the. fuck. off.Gives me the weakest reasoning behind why I haven’t heard from him in two months, yes that’s right TWO months.  That was the biggest insult of all!  Honestly, I wasn’t born yesterday, please don’t insult my intelligence like that!

I call bullshit, because really, I have several e-mail accounts (don’t ask I just do) and he has the two that I generally utilize the most.  So did he leave his laptop with said person who had his phone too?  I have a really hard time believing that.  You see he’s been dropping in and out of my life like a damn yo-yo.  I finally put my foot down and said this is it, you pull some stunt like that again and your done.  I know people are busy, we ALL have lives.  blah blah blah…  However after such a long period of time why bother?  It was made quite clear to me that apologizing wasn’t his intention(he even went as far to say that there was no apology in his message(s) to me), yet he felt “I had the right to know & what I’m(meaning me) thinking isn’t true”.  So obviously he still cares.  Awe how sweet, guess what?  I DON’T.  As in care.  Regardless of whether your sorry or not, its too late to apologize anyway.  You won’t ever have the best of me.  I have chosen to move on.  I made a promise to myself and anyone who truly knows me, knows that I don’t make promises that I have no intentions of keeping. NEXT!

Continue reading →

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WTF! absolute madness!

Jesus Christ, I swear to God my life is rarely dull!  Last night, I went over to a friends house for her birthday which was fine.  We all decided to go out to the bar, so I opted to go home first so I could change and call a friend of mine to see if they wanted to tag along.  So that’s all fine and dandy except that my phone died when I got back downtown trying to hunt down Lyndsay to find out which bar she ended up at, so that was a epic FAIL moment.  Couldn’t use my buddy’s phone because I don’t know her phone number offhand, so I feel bad because well that was exceptionally rude, however un-intentional.

Anyway ended up back at my house half wasted already and the friend and I decided to hang out and finish the night off.  Got an epic case of the munchies, decided to order pizza so that’s fine I order it online and we wait, keep drinking.  So by the time he get’s there I’m practically comatose by this point.  This is where the drama begins…

I open the door and I swear to God he looked starstruck! He appeared to be late forties/early fifties and was considerably shorter then I was.
He’s French, says to me Stephanie? I was like yeah.  Oh are you English or French?  Does your boyfriend live here? How come your alone? (said friend was in my room playing the memory foam on my bed at this time).  I was starting to get REALLY irritated at this point and I said can I pay now? That’ll be on debit (wondering where in the hell his hand held debit machine is) and he kept asking me all kinds of FAR too personal questions to be small talk. I mean really dropping off anything should take no longer then 2 minutes MAX unless I need to sign/pay extra for something or whatever. Then he tried to one arm hug me, I was like WTF? Dodged that bullet and again handed him my card and proclaimed loudly I would like to pay please. Finally he swipes my card but he got all nervous and starts fumbling around and did something wrong so had to swipe it like 4 times before it was finally processed properly.

I’m really pissed at this point I just want my bill and for this guy to get the fuck out of my hall. So I asked him for my bill and he’s standing there stammering and trying to talk in English and can’t quite get the words out right and I’m trying REALLY hard to be polite because I know what a pain in the ass last minute orders can be, I used to work there when I lived in Ontario. Then he says to me oh I just live over in NDG were neighbors, I’m like oh that’s nice, well thanks have a good night thinking fuck it he can keep the receipt.   I turned away to close the door and the next thing I know I’m in a headlock and he’s trying to kiss me and ask me out on a date.  He had his arm around my neck so damn tight I could barely breathe let alone do anything else! Thank God my friend picked that moment to stop playing with my bed and came into my livingroom and grabbed me by the waist and yanked me away from him and yelled loudly get your fucking hands off my girlfriend! Which I am of course not, but it worked at the time.

So finally he left, thank God! My friend was like are you OK and I’m thinking to myself no, it really bothered me because it was SO INVASIVE!

Had I been stone cold sober I would have knocked the shit out of him! Its on thing to hit on someone or pay them a compliment but that was just WRONG, SO VERY WRONG! That pretty much ruined my night because I honestly felt nauseous after that. That thankfully passed and by this point its almost 2am and I opted to go to bed.  As I’m walking into my bedroom to get said friend some pillows and what not since I wasn’t letting him drive & made him sleep on my couch; my intercom goes off!

Its the fucking pizza guy! So friend get’s up and hits the talk button and says who’s this? I know *I* wasn’t expecting anyone and very few people actually know where I live so that was a little disturbing.   I didn’t quite catch what he said because it was garbled and my friend says she’s busy fuck off! He still wouldn’t leave so he goes running outside after the pizza guy who had to smarts to leave pretty damn fast after that.  So I e-mailed them, not that I expect Pizza-Pizza to take me seriously or anything.  In hindsight I wish I would have thought to ask him HIS name and I should have phoned the police which I will do if he ever shows up here again.

This is *MY* home and I will NOT tolerate such things under ANY circumstances! For you to assume that its ANYWHERE NEAR OK TO TOUCH ME is asking for trouble! Everyone has 3 feet of personal space and should be respected at ALL times. Unless your a friend, my tattoo artist or I’m having sex with you, KEEP YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF OF ME! I didn’t invite him into my home, he was invited into my building and he violated that and I am currently deeply disturbed by this.  I’m proud of this apartment and what I have done with it and the fact that I made it in spite of the fact that a few people thought that I wouldn’t.   Now I feel almost as if that personal satisfaction has been tainted in some way and I personally feel just a little violated.

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A proper update if you will…

You ever have one of those days where you truly question how you manage to get through life? Friday for me was exactly that, normally I wouldn’t bother posting something so utterly embarrassing but I can laugh about it now. My awesome mom is hooking me up with a copy of her visa (thanks mommy I love you!) so I can re-build my credit & get some much needed dental work so I had to go to her bank here & sign the papers that they had sent over.

I also had to go to my bank and I wanted to pick up my Greyhound ticket for my vacation since the price is better if you buy a non refundable ticket 14+ days in advance. Anyway I thought it would be more simple to do a “round trip” if you will since the furthest I had to go was Berri Metro & back again. So I get to Berri, head over to station Centrale to buy my ticket from Toronto to Cambridge (my final destination) and the girl working the ticket counter asked my 5, count em 5 times what day I needed the ticket for.
For SOME reason I kept saying July 19th, when I am due to arrive in Toronto on the 18th I was distracted. Mostly because I got written up at work, I’ll get to that in a minute. So anyway after realizing my EPIC FAIL I went back to the ticket counter thinking I could save face by buying another ticket because the ticket price was $9.03 due to a heavy discount but to change the date it was $15.00 except that didn’t work out quite like I had planned.  I go back to another girl and she tells me that my ticket it $26.03 I was thinking come again? I know Saturday travel is more costly but it was an ADVANCE PURCHASE which is supposed to be MORE cost effective! So I sucked up my fail and said wouldn’t it be cheaper to change this one instead? After she realized that I had just bought it 5 minutes ago, the original person I bought it from changed my ticket (much to my chagrin) free of charge which was really nice!
Back on the metro and off to McGill I go looking for my mom’s bank… I’m geographically and directionally retarded and the directions weren’t 100% clear as to where this place was because their mailing address was totally different from the actual location because it was IN the metro Jesus Christ. Anyway I DIDN’T know that and ended up wandering around McGill university & area for the better part of 45 minutes trying to find this place and gave up. It wasn’t until I had finished off the last of my errands and headed for home that I seen an ad posted on metro vision that I clued into where it was! I’m pretty sure fate was mocking me at that moment… Perhaps not but regardless I went there today and I found the place and signed the papers. Didn’t help taht when I called them I didn’t get a call back for 3 days and the message that was left for me was in rapid fire French that none of us could understand.

My boss has been acting like an epic twat and it seems like lately I’ve been her “target” of choice. So I got a formal written notice that was SO BOGUS it blew me away! 98% of the things that she complained about which I did do to an extent (which she exaggerated and slightly bullshitted on as well) I will admit, however they are OVER AND DONE WITH. I even called the labor board and even they said she has no grounds because I am not a “repeat” offender and it was just things that pissed HER off, nothing more. *eyeroll* whatever, I totally rebutted that one. I was nice and polite about it, but I was also brutally honest and I got my point across pretty damn good I must say. She wasn’t nearly as bitchy to me today, which is a good thing because I’m not in the mood to deal with it.

I’m was far more concerned about my looming health issues…
A few weeks ago I started getting this odd tingling sensation in my pinky finger which I thought nothing off because I kill my nerve endings in my fingers on a regular basis anyway, that is until it started to spread up to my arm usually it would stop at my elbow but then I would get shooting pain that would sometimes carry up into my armpit.
I blew it off thinking that my carpal tunnel was acting funny again and gradually it started to go away except I STILL have almost no feeling left in my pinky finger on my left hand. That is until last night… I was sitting there on the couch with John after dinner and I never wear socks while at home and I propped my feet up on my coffee table and happen to notice that my usually tiny feet had appeared to have gained about 5lbs, I looked at the right and that one too appeared to be slightly swollen but not anywhere near the left one. Which struck me as odd because I didn’t feel like I was in any pain/swollen or anything of the sort if that makes sense. Until this morning when I woke up and took another look at them and my legs… Which appeared to have sprouted balloons! Holy FUCK! So I did my morning thing, went to put socks on which took quite a bit of effort as they barely fit on my fat ass foot and swollen ankle and likely contributed to the seemingly lack of circulation.
I really had to shove my foot into my normally too big for my feet shoes and I started off to the bus stop and walking was painful and took far more effort then it normally does. I could feel it stretching and it kept sending little shocks of pain to my knee which picked that very moment to start acting up again as well. So I said the hell with it i’m going to the clinic after work to get all this checked out because I also had a random smattering of bruises that keep appearing on my legs and taking a really long time to heal.
Lucky for me I got to see Dr. Hottie Pants again woo hoo! Anyway he was asking me all these questions about work, did I travel, get bitten by something and so on. This has NEVER happened to me before and because its on my left side mostly he’s a little concerned that somethings being blocked somewhere in the veins that could lead to my heart.

So I have to go and get a ton of blood tests, a bunch of x-rays & ultrasounds which I can’t afford AT ALL even if I wanted too! He referred me to a private clinic upstairs in the building because I would get in faster but my insurance company DOESN’T cover ultrasounds because the RAMQ DOES cover them *IF* they’re done in a hospital and they range from 2-4 hundred dollars EACH and I need 4, four of the damn things! Even he wasn’t 100% sure what was wrong with me and said that it was odd & a “unique” situation.  He tried to not scare the crap outta me but he failed, and failed hard!
So I’m going to call 2 reputable hospitals here and see if I can get into their diagnostics clinic because I can’t afford that, private care may be more effective but damn costly.    I’m scared to death about this whole situation because it could be fatal & I can’t afford to get the proper care I need. Thank you Quebec/Medicare for SUCKING SO FUCKING HARD! I pay taxes and into medicare for what? One can only hope that they realize how serious this situation is and get me in ASAP because this CAN’T wait!