Full Metal Lunchbox

 
This is an expanded version of a post I started on Sunday morning, but was not able to finish.  Appologies to anyone whose comments got deleted.



Well, it's Monday morning and I think I'm finaly ready to blog about this past weekend.  I tried typing something yesterday morning, but was too weak to finish a paragraph.

The weekend started out with every indication of being a fun time.  I started my Saturday morning with a bike ride up to Lakeview to drink bloody marys with my good friend Jeanne.  While we were hanging out at the Avenue Tavern I got a phone call from my future landlord, telling me that he had made a mistake and already rented out the apartment he promised me.

To say I was angry, as tomato juice vodka and horseradish shot out through my nose, would be an understatement.  I felt ready to flip up the table and rampage through the bar, destroying everything.  

(The Avenue is just the kind of bar just waiting for someone to rampage through.)  

But I kept my cool through the rest of the conversation while I considered:

• I hadn't found any other apartments I liked so far
  
  
• The best Apt. People could come up with was a Rogers Park craphole with broken windows.  
  The Apartment People suck.
  
  
• I had cancelled my appointment with Apt. Finders already
  (They have a 2+ week waiting list for appointments)
  
  
• I had stopped trying to find an apartment on my own (Reader, Craig's List, walking around, etc.) several days previous when I had been promised the 1BR that I had just lost.  Now it was too late to start hunting again.
  
  
• No one else will rent to me in my price range, mid-month, with a dog
  
  
• I have movers already scheduled for 7/15
  
  
• Sleeping out on the street wont be so bad, at least during the summertime

Not knowing what else to do, I had another drink.  I resisted the urge to have a third, but I was already flying because I drank that first bloody mary on an empty stomach.

After finishing my second drink and lousy buffalo chicken sandwich (Avenue is only good at one thing: bloody marys) I raced back to Jeanne's house and called Apt. Finders, begging and pleading with them on the phone to sneak me in.  The guy on the phone finaly relented and sympatheticly gave me an appointment slot for 30 minutes later.



Halfway between Jeanne's house and Apt. Finders was DSW shoes.  Jeanne had been teasing me about the shoes I was wearing that day, so I went into the store and walked out 6 minutes later with a nice, expensive pair of sandals.  

Angry, drunken shoe shopping is fun.







Apartment Finders was a sad experience.  They even took me to the same Rogers Park craphole with the broken windows that Apartment People had shown me.






Later that day, I came down with the stomach flu.

I started feeling the effects shortly before Justyna and I sat down at Hamburger Mary's, a joint I can only categorize as "gay hillbilly."  The slowest table service I've ever experienced in the United States could only come at a moment when I was increasingly unable to tolerate the very idea of food, or people, or anything at all.



I got home that evening and spent all night in a painful, cold sweat.  The 10' distance to the bathroom always seemed too far, as it was difficult to remain conscious for the entire journey.  I ate nothing that night, or the next morning.

I woke up on Sunday and briefly entertained the idea of going through with my weekly long run.  The very act of getting out of bed convinced me that wasn't going to happen.  But I was still determined to leave the house that morning; I could at least help Justyna with her apartment and perhaps even find one of my own.

I got to Justyna's new place but ended up being of very little assistance.  Every effort I made to be helpful was followed by at least an hour sitting down catching my breath.  



The only major contribution I made to Justyna's housekeeping was to help her rescue a baby bird that had fallen from it's nest.



Later that afternoon I spoke on the phone with the same landlord who had given away the 1BR he promised me.  He had wanted me to come by and look at a studio that day, but I wanted to put him off for a day while I still tried to find a a bigger place elsewhere.  So I told him I had the stomach flu.  His response was, "Oh, yeah, I had that last week, it was awful."

So, this dude not only gave away my apartment, he also gave me the stomach flu!

I would kill him, but I can't because he's probably going to be my landlord.  I'm almost certainly going to rent that studio after all.  It's a great building in a great location, and it wont hurt to save money.

So that's where we leave things.  I'm way behind in my running, I'm getting over the stomach flu, and I'm probably moving into a studio.

Unless anything else goes wrong.