We need some hobbies!

We love our apartment. When we were looking for apartments, it was an adventure for us. It was our first time looking for apartments and, I'm ashamed to admit, we didn't really know the best way to go about it. We looked at some around my school and actually put a deposit down on one. We decided to look at other apartments while we could still get our deposit back to make sure that we were getting the best deal.

That's when we decided that looking on the internet is not the best place. Surprisingly, very few apartments actually put things on the internet and those that do never have the actual price of the apartments.

However, we found one that looked to be way out of our price range, but we decided to go anyway. And, of course, fell in love with the apartment. It has two bedrooms, 2 baths, a decent kitchen, 3 walkin closets, a porch with a fantastic view, a swimming pool, beach volleyball, a workout room, and even tanning beds. Plus, with the apartments providing water and cable, it was someplace we could afford.

However, we got new owners. And they brought new changes. Change number one was that no more free water. When they built the apartments, they didn't build they in a way that they could easily split up the water. This was why the other owners just paid for it; they didn't want to deal with the hassle of splitting up the bill. The new owners have some company that does some formula that makes it so we (with only 2 people living in the apartment) don't pay as much as the people across the hall (with 4 people and a dog) but we still worry we're getting a crappy deal.

Then they randomly decided to throw in sanitiation and garbage disposal in on top of the water. grrr....I guess that's what you normally pay with your water bill, but still!

So last week, Carl and I come home to a nice note that basically says that we were informed when we signed our year lease that the cable contract was going to change (we weren't). The new owners didn't like that they were providing "free" cable to the residents and so were going to work out a new contract with the cable company. They finally decided to basically increase our rent by $40 MIDCONTRACT in exchange for cable. They say that they weren't happen with the outcome, but make sure to point out that this was about a $25 savings compared to what we would normally be getting.

Understandably, Carl and I were upset. We talked to his parents and found out how much they were paying for their cable. (they have the same cable we have, minus the HBO.) They were paying about $45 dollars. We got online and found out that to get all of the channels we currently get, plus the HBO package (which includes like 10 more HBO channels than we get right now) was only about $40. And shouldn't the apartments be getting a group package seeing how there's about 150 apartments? Basically, the apartments are ripping the residents off.

Carl talked to them on Monday, told them they were ripping us off, and said that we couldn't pay the extra $40 a month. So, they're disconnecting our cable on Sept. 1. I told Carl we need to find some new hobbies, because we won't have TV anymore. We'll just have to watch a lot of movies I guess...

On some different news, school started for me yesterday. I think this is going to be a harder semester, with lots of pointless homework. Wish me luck!