Thursday, January 24, 2002
Whirlwind
9:00 am: Rob and I leave Condo Conner for Find-a-Home, a free (to us) service to locating places to rent.
12:00 pm: Rob and I have already filled out the applications to live in an apartment and are heading for lunch.
I wasn't really expecting this to happen quite so fast, but there you go.
It started yesturday when Rob sent me a few listings for rentable homes in Boca and I started calling the numbers. The first one I called was to a company called Find-a-Home located in Pompano Beach just a few miles away. The person who answered said they have hundreds of listings and the service (for us) is free to use. So Rob and I decided to try them out and look at a few places, and on Saturday, go back with Spring when she's not working.
We left the house around 9:00 am to make sure we have plenty of time to see a few places. We arrive and are immediately met by Lori, a frazzled mom-type who is always chattering away. She hands us a questionaire to fill out while she's answering the phone for a few minutes.
Over the next hour she pretty much grills us on what we are looking for—pressing for details all the way. Which city? How much? Do you care if it's a townhome? And in between, Rob and I kept adding details—no association. No gated communities. No restrictions on vehicles (at which point, we had to digress and tell her about Rob's hearse).
After all this, she tells us she has a rental community in mind; two story townhomes with private fenced in yards, many trees around located in Boca Raton. She's describing the unit (which is a 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom unit) as I realize I know what apartments she's talking about—the same units that our friend JeffK lives in, located in South Boca Raton.
That is indeed the place. It sounds agreeable to both Rob and I and all three of us drive out to look at the unit. There we met The Rental Manager (who's name I forgot, so she'll be referred to as TRM), an overly friendly woman who was good friends with Lori. Rob and I were then taken to the model, which sold us immediately. Nice construction, decent layout (although the kitchen is a bit small, but comes with microwave, and the downstairs bedroom isn't much larger than a walk in closet), huge master bedroom; master bath has a Roman tub with jacuzzi implements, and the second bedroom (with private bathroom) that is fairly sizable. A porch spans between the two bedrooms and overlooks the fenced in yard. The mirrored stairwell won't be in the unit we're taking.
And they have nooooo problem with Rob's hearse.
And so we found ourselves back in the rental office filling out paper work for background checks, employment checks, etc., etc. The sureal part was Rob listing me as his current landlord (“No Rob, I am not evicting you.”). Moving in will be fairly cheap and fairly soon if we're accepted—February 5th.
The only hurdle will be passing the checks. If that goes, and we do move in, then I'll work on getting Condo Conner rented out.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Rob and I found ourselves having to run a few errands after getting home from our morning running around. On the way out to the car Rob spotted a set of keys lying in one of the reserved parking spots. I think I know who they might belong to, but don't know for sure, nor do I remember which unit they live in. So we decided to let them be.
Upon returning back, we see a car parked in the spot and I wondered out loud of the owners of the car found the keys. Rob said they more likely parked on the keys, and yes, he was right. The keys were still lying on the ground, almost crushed by the front left tire.
I picked up the keys, intending to put them under the whiper blade but Rob said that was an inventation to having the car stolen. I didn't want that, nor did I want to leave the keys on the ground. The car key on the chain matched the model car in the space, and I figured a good test to see if this was the correct owner was to use the key to open the car and leave the keys on the seat and lock the car back up, since the owner obviously had a second set of keys.
I took a quick glance around, inserted the key into the door. Unlock and open the do—
WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! ALERT! ALERT! DANGER! DANGER!
—or alarm is going off toss keys on seat slam door shut walk away like someone trying to walk away nonchalantly but failing miserably as Rob is attempting to remain upright laughing so hard and Spring coming out asking us what we did.
