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2004-01-14 - 11:47 p.m.
this house is empty now
So Mike has been my roommate for the past year and a half. I didn’t know him that well before we moved in together, but since then, we’ve become pretty tight, hanging out together a lot, playing in a band together, working on his student film together, good times. We moved into a nicer apartment over the summer, and signed the lease for a year. But Mike graduated a few months ago, and has been applying for jobs constantly. So recently he finally got a gig, down in D.C., a good entry-level job with a big company. And since his mom’s place in Laurel is closer to D.C. and he’s working there full-time, he’s staying there until he can find an apartment down in that area. He’s promised me that he’s going to fulfill his responsibility and find someone else to move into the other half of the apartment, and pay his share of the rent until he finds someone. At one point, it looked like his girlfriend Shannon was going to move in and take his old room, which would have been cool because I’m friends with Shannon and she’s awesome, but it just turned out to not be possible for her. So Mike put up some ads and set about looking for a stranger to live with me. I suppose I could have taken it upon myself to try and look for someone, but I can’t think of anyone I know who needs a place to live right now, and I figure Mike would have as much luck finding someone as me, and since it’s really his responsibility, I’ll leave it up to him. I’d prefer if he found someone that at least he or someone we know knows, so there’s some level of pre-established trust/familiarity, but beggars can’t be choosers. So the first guy to answer Mike’s ad came by to look at the place on Sunday. I was there, but I slept in late and was doing laundry that day, so I was just feeling kind of sleepy and anti-social and only poked my head out of my room for a second to say hi to the guy while Mike showed him around the place. Mike interpreted my behavior as my being pissed about something, which I wasn’t really, but maybe to some extent I was just uncomfortable with the situation. The thing is, I just fear change. Mike was a pretty cool roommate and I doubt whoever takes his place will be as fun to live with. But he has to move on to bigger and better things, and I understand that. But when this guy or whoever ends up getting the room moves in, I’ll try my best to be friendly and give them a chance. I figure worst case scenario, he turns out to be not the kind of person I hang out with, and we stay in our respective rooms and leave each other alone, which would be fine. It’s not like when I lived on campus and shared a cramped dorm room with another guy with no walls between our respective personal spaces. My one pressing concern, though, is whether or not to take Mike’s room. At the old place, I had the big room, so at this place I let Mike take the master bedroom. So I’m thinking that once he gets all his stuff out, I’ll move in and take over the big room before the new guy moves in. Mike’s already moved most of his stuff out, but his bed’s still there, so I’ll wait until he gets that out of the way before I start worrying about all that. Mike already kind of told the guy who he showed the place that he’d get the big room, but fuck it, I was here first, I get my choice. It’d be kind of a pain in the ass moving all this stuff even just a few feet over into the next room, though, espcially the bed and dresser and desk. And I dunno if I have the motivation to move it all myself, and I’m really all settled in here. But it’d be worth it to have all that extra space. It’d also be a good excuse to clean up my room and get rid of all the mess around here and kind of have a clean slate. One thing that’s kind of nice is that I don’t have to worry about replacing much. Most of the furniture and kitchen stuff was mine. The only major shared apartment thing that was Mike’s was the TV/VCR and DVD player, and he was cool enough to leave me his old DVD player since he’s getting a new one. I offered to buy it off him, but he said that wasn’t necessary, so I’m just going to buy him a burrito sometime, which I’m sure he’ll appreciate. So I’m going to take my Christmas money and go buy a TV sometime soon. I always said that if I didn’t live with someone else who had a TV, I could live happily without a TV. But I’m already paying for cable TV as part of a package with the cable modem, and at this point I’ve got too many new DVD’s I want to watch and I’m accustomed to having a TV around, so I’m going to go ahead and get one. People keep telling me to go for HDTV, but I’m probably just going to go for something basic. I’ll miss having Mike for a roommate, but hopefully I’ll still see him around a bit. We are still playing in a band together, for the time being, so we’ll at least have that. -al
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