Twelve days and counting until the big move… glad but a little sad to see the old place go

This past Friday I was on the phone with Verizon, terminating my phone & internet effective the last week of September.  Unlike my other utilities which took all of 10 minutes to cancel, Verizon wasn’t letting me go that easily.  (They told me they couldn’t do a thing without my account number, which I didn’t have as my bill has been auto-paid thru my bank for the past several years; when I finally found an old paper bill, I discovered it was my phone number!  They couldn’t have told me that upfront?!)  Douglas, are you sure you want to do this??  Yes.  You don’t want to move your services to your new address??  No.  We hate to lose your business, you’ve been at this phone number since October 1, 1994.  Wait, 1994?  I’ve been in this apartment even longer than I thought.

Before moving here, I lived farther outside the city in Sharpsburg.  Our main street had no less than 13 bars, and a Stop N’ Go directly across from my place had the distinction of being the most-robbed convenience store in Allegheny County.  I had a wooden balcony you couldn’t go out on (it was black from being on the main drag) and a little laundry room (with no washer, only a dryer & laundry sink where I washed all my clothes out by hand).  Still, it was my first apartment in the city and man, I loved it.

The Sharpsburg apartment, 1989-1994; it sure was blue!

I had so much fun there; I did my share of dating, and my sister Shawn visited every other weekend.  And then one day I came home from work to find a Sheriff’s Notice on the front door; the other tenant & myself were being evicted.  The owner (a compulsive gambler) had not been making tax or mortgage payments on the property, and been served with a foreclosure notice.  When I shared the bad news with my office, my IT manager suggested I move to Bellevue.  Dougie it has a movie theater, grocery store, banks, shopping—you can walk to everything.  (I didn’t drive at the time so that was a big plus.)  “It’s also a dry town, not a bar for miles.”  I was sold.

I made appointments to see a couple apartments for rent (both basement setups & big let-downs) but it was after checking out the second one that I saw Monroe Apts over the hillside, and told my friend Elisa (who’d grown up in the area and was tagging along) that’s where I wanted to live.  I said “I’m going to be just like Mary Richards, who left her apartment house on Weatherly and moved into a high-rise closer to the city!”  Elisa said “Who’s Mary Richards?”

 

My current place on Monroe (before I got my flat-screen tv and some other things)

 

And here I’ve been, ever since.  I’m a little excited, a little nervous but I’m ready to move on.  To be honest, I’ve been ready for awhile--the building changed ownership several years ago, from a private owner who screened tenants carefully and took great care maintaining the property, to the current slumlords who’ve let the place go downhill.

Still, for what it’s worth… it was a good run.