Quick story: Sharayah and I were on our way home from Starbucks a few days ago.  I had been there since 7am (it was roughly 4pm at this point) and Sharayah had come in around two hours before the end of my shift so she could read and get some things done.  After I clock off, we hang around for a little bit, then head home.  Do you know what the first thing I notice is?  The intense smell of weed.

Our beautiful door...hidden behind stairs.

This is my first time living in an apartment.  I don't count the fraternity house cause it was more like low-income housing.  Nor do I count the dorms, I guess since it was so expensive and pretty well taken care of. But I count this place.  And so does Sharayah, but this is like her fourth or fifth apartment.  I'm not really sure.

I admit that I feel rather silly for not expecting our apartment to cause problems.  Here I was blissfully assuming all of our difficulties would come from each other, or lack of money, or my job.  Once we had moved all of our stuff into the living room on Move-In Day, I scoured the apartment in search of every crack, discoloration, hole, smudge, tear, and every other sign of irresponsibility from past tenants.  The form I was given to document these marks of negligence could barely contain my inspection.  But as thorough as I thought I was, as prepared as I thought I had been, any confidence I had in a neat and well maintained apartment was literally washed away in an invisible cloud of weed...which I'm pretty sure gave me a contact high.

I went to the management office to inform them (or complain) of the problem, and they said the only thing they could do is call the surrounding units and remind that there is to be no smoking in the building.  Pretty lame.

Despite the very air in our apartment being a poisonous fume, weed-stink is fairly tolerable.  For around the first hour (and every time I left and came back into the apartment) my head was swimming and my eyes were burning, but we overcame it.  Our biggest worry is that it may show up on drug tests.  Since Sharayah is job hunting right now, that's the very last thing we want.  Actually it doesn't show up on our List of Wanted Things at all.

Any rate, enough of the weed story.  The point of bringing that up was to preface the fact that apartments are a gamble.  No matter how prepared you think you may be to move into an apartment, you're not.  There will always be something that you aren't going to expect.  Like weed.  On Monday or Tuesday, Sharayah and I finally built up the motivation to work out in the complex's fitness center.  When we got there, however, we found out that our keys didn't work on the lock.  It was confusing.  Are we supposed to have another key for that room?  Is my apartment key supposed to work on the weight room door?  I just don't know.  But I do know that I was pretty annoyed.  Like, isn't our key supposed to open this door?  Did I misunderstand something?

Another problem that happens every so often deals with parking spaces.  I know it's trivial, but it is pretty aggravating when I come home to find someone in my parking spot.  We're assigned spots and given a window sticker with the parking spot number,  so, for example, when you see my car in a spot, you can easily find out if my car is supposed to be there.  Every now and again, however, some inconsiderate person parks in my spot.

To make a long story short, you never know what you're going to get when you live in an apartment.