Settled In

Well... Ray and I have been able to settle into our new apartment (for the most part). My Mom has been with us visiting for the past three weeks, which has been AWESOME!!! I felt a lot of pressure to get all the stuff in our home unpacked before she got here, so the day before and the day she arrived was full of frantic cleaning. Successful cleaning I might add! She admitted she was impressed at the state our home was in. haha. That kinda makes it sound like I'm a slob... I'm NOT! I promise! It was just nice to have everything put away and to actually have a place for everything to be put away IN! Unfortunately that organization was only temporary because my Mom came with a truck full of my stuff that had been left behind in Canada. It all got unloaded into our apartment and we're still in the process of figuring out where to fit everything. Slowly but surely it's all working out.

Anyways... Wanna hear a crazy story??

Moving out of our old apartment was a complete gong show. It couldn't have gotten any more ridiculous. We had given our notice we were moving which gave us until February 9 to be out. That worked really well for us because it ended up giving us three weeks to move all of our stuff. After making a couple trips back and forth each day for a week or so, all the small stuff had been taken care of and we just had to move the big things. Once we had that done, there was still a few things left over at our old place that we were just gonna wait on moving because it wasn't important stuff. We figured it would be easiest to unpack all the stuff we already had then deal with the leftover stuff when it was less overwhelming.

The final weekend before we had to be moved out, Ray and I went back to collect the remaining stuff from the apartment and the storage units he had there. The key to open the storage units was the same one to open the apartment, so he unlocked the storage units first then went to unlock the apartment. He was having a hard time with the door lock but that key had always been temperamental so I didn't think anything of it until he asked me to try opening it. As I was unsuccessfully unlocking the door it dawned on me that the lock had probably been changed already. We were locked out of our place and couldn't get the rest of our stuff!!! At least the key worked for the storage units, so we could get our stuff out of there. Yeah that would have been great but when Ray opened them, he realized that they had been rummaged through and our grill was missing! Our brand new, never been used, still in the box grill!!!

We realized that whoever changed the locks to our apartment also opened the storage units and felt entitled to the stuff inside. Not. Cool. Ray promptly made his way to the apartment managers office and explained what had happened. They told him that they had lost the written notice saying when we were moving out so they just went ahead and changed the locks on us! But they also admitted that they remembered when Ray went there and handed that notice in. Clearly this was their error and Ray was determined that they were going to make sure our stolen stuff was replaced. He got the manager people to open our apartment door to check if things had been taken from inside there too. Lo and behold, things were not as we left them in that place. Ray took a look around and realized that he had a shotgun that was missing too. Kind of a big deal right??? That meant that the police needed to be involved.

Ray called the police and filed a report with them. Apparently stealing a gun is a felony charge. A cop had to come and meet us in person at the apartment, so we showed him that we could open the storage units with our key and not the apartment, blah blah blah. It was so obvious that it wasn't just anyone who broke into our place and stole the stuff. They clearly used a key, ESPECIALLY since they got into the storage unit. Since this all happened on the weekend, we had to come back on Monday to talk with the big wig apartment manager.

Once Ray went back to figure this all out, he was informed that they had talked to the maintenance people who swore they didn't steal anything and that they had more reason to believe them over us because they had been employees for 20 years. BULL!!! Up until this point Ray had been pretty calm and was dealing with everything quite responsibly. But once they told him that and almost made it sound like we had plotted this thing ourselves, he lost it. Rightfully so!!! These people were being ridiculous!!! It was obvious whoever did this had a key, and there are only so many people who have access to those keys, but they were saying that it could have been anyone. They could have broken through the window. Again. BULL!!! He told them that it didn't explain the stuff taken out of the storage units, and all they had to say about that was that they believed the maintenance people when they said they didn't take anything.

Wow... So at this point the only thing the manager people did was give us a copy of the key to let us in the apartment to take our remaining things out.

The next day Ray goes back to get our stuff and he calls me to inform me that when he opened the storage units, the grill had been returned!!!!! These maintenance people had balls to lie and say that they didn't steal anything, only to return what was stolen as soon as something was said. Ray said that the box had been opened, the grill had been taken out, and it had been repackaged before it was put back. Unfortunately the missing gun was not returned. I guess the thieving maintenance people took the position that nobody could prove they stole from inside the apartment because someone could have broken in through the window, but we COULD prove they used their key to get into our storage units and take that grill. Either way, if they're found with that gun they're in BIIIIG trouble. Again... Wow...

Ray went and told the apartment managers that the grill had been returned and that he was going to get the police to come by and fingerprint the grill, to which the manager said GOOD! She said she wanted to know who it was and why they lied.

So that's where we're at. The grill is still boxed up and we're just waiting on the police to come by to fingerprint it. It makes us wonder what else these people have stolen... Needless to say, I'm more than happy to be out of that place. Our new apartment managers are actually human, and this place is a heck of a lot safer. The old apartment managers tried to smooth things over by waiving the rent for those 9 days into the new month that we technically still had possession of that place. Good thing too. We wouldn't have paid it anyways. It's their fault they lost our notice and their fault for allowing the locks to be changed in the first place.

Since going through those last few things, Ray figured out a few more things were gone as well. His really nice running shoes being one of those things. Who steals running shoes anyways?!

Welcome to America... hahaha...