luxe chandelier

Exactly 4 years ago we were living in freezing Rochester (NY) where we both attended RIT. We lived together with a roommate in an apartment only a few miles away from campus.

I was on campus in the computer lab working on a project. A few hours later I decided to take a break because I couldn’t really receive text messages in the lab since RIT is a brick school! I checked my phone and received messages from Tyler and our roommate that said something brief like,

“The ceiling in our apartment fell through!”

I had no idea what to expect or think since they both were not responding back to my messages. I quickly got my things together and left. That was the longest 4 minutes drive home… unsure of what to expect or think. Is the old lady downstairs okay? Are our things okay?! Every possible thing was running through my head about what could have happened. I arrived and left everything in the car and walked up to the door and saw this…

Then I walked up and saw all the damage to our things…

(and that’s not snow – that’s wall insulation)

It turns out that the pipes were frozen and burst. Luckily for us, our roommate was home when it happened and had to call the office to have them shut off the water. The smell was so bad! The management crew did a horrible job handling the job. They didn’t leave a drying fan to absorb water from the carpet. They left us with a hole in the ceiling for days until they fixed it. And it took them weeks to replace the carpet.

This isn’t the first time I had my fair share of home disasters though. When I was younger we lived in Seattle and there was a really bad thunderstorm one day when I was at school. I thought it was an awesome day at first since the power was out and we were all playing games in the dark in our classrooms. I clearly remember the principal coming to my classroom and pulling me aside to tell me that my grandparents were on the way to pick me up because a huge tree fell on our house. I didn’t think anything too serious about it. I never really thought about asking my parents where exactly it had done damages to. I remember driving home with my parents and seeing that the impact was MY BEDROOM! There was a long branch poking down on my bed. For days after that I refused to sleep in my own room.

Have you ever experienced any house disasters like this or worse!? Do share!

Tyler and I went tanning tonight and we were excited and in a good mood to come back home to watch The Biggest Loser….only to receive a letter on our door from the apartment again!

“Ten Day Notice of Intent to Terminate Lease Agreement”

I’m unbelievably upset and pissed off. This letter was written yesterday and they didn’t give it to us until today? Also they decided to wait until the office closed to put it on our door…probably because they don’t want to face us now.

We both contacted our moms for advice. We have not had anyone over in a while and we always come home to make dinner, watch TV, go online…. how is that being loud? I feel like we’re not even allowed to breathe or walk at all in our own apartment that we pay rent for.

My mom is coming after work tomorrow to go to the office with us because I don’t think I can be rational and calm when approaching them. I’m mentally and emotionally tired of this happening all the time.

Tomorrow I want to tell them that we’ll be more than glad to move out because I hate their services because what can we do? We’re NOT doing anything at all so how can we keep it down a notch? Be lifeless in our apartment?

I’m stressed out because I don’t want to get evicted… and have to take time off work or anything to move. If worst case comes, I suppose we’ll be moving back to my parents’ house and seriously start looking into buying a house soon.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow….

On a brighter note, Obama came into Phoenix during rush hour!! I didn’t know why we were completely stopped at the Intersection on my way home with 2428934 police officers everywhere. It was Obama passing by to stay at Montelucia Resort & Spa where we stayed at in December. It’s exciting knowing that he’s only minutes away from us tonight!

It’s amazing how a design/photograph can really put you in the mood. KK at work designed a beautiful holiday card for our company. I had the pleasure of looking at them all day since we had to put them together and label them for the brokers. I’m excited for tommorrow since we still have a lot more to do and it’s FRIDAY!

Bad news on the thief… there’s nothing we can do because there were no insurance on the card. It was a 3 digit amount in dollars. :(

On a better note, we got our wedding photos from our photographer (online). 462 photos to be exact! I’m in love with them all and cannot wait to see the photo book they’re putting together for us.

My next project is to make a wedding photo album from Picaboo or Blurb with all the pictures I’ve received from friends and family relatives. In one of the photos, I saw one of my uncles video taping the ceremony which I really hope he did because I feel like I was “drunk” the whole time since my memory is foggy of the ceremony since it went by too fast!