young and crazy.

I'd forgotten what a pain apartment hunting is. Not so much the pain that job hunting is, but only because there is less paperwork.

The trouble with Boone is that it's almost purely a college town. There's really not much else besides the university. And so the apartment complexes generally cater to the school, meaning most of them only have year-long leases that start in June or August. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that they sign these leases to people months in advance. Plus, there are really only four or five renting companies in town that control all the places to live. It's not much of a buyer's market.

And I'm having trouble getting used to the fact that living alone just costs more. It's not that I think I won't be able to come up with the money whenever the rent is due, it's just that I don't really want to.

We looked at these places in the beginning, these incredibly nice and inexpensive places. It's a shame that the too-good-to-be-true thing applies here. They really were that nice and they really were that cheap, but I do not qualify to live there. Those apartments are for poor people, and while I am considered to be one of those, the apartments are not for people who still get written off of their parents' taxes. Darn me and my dependent status. Of course, Ashley and Nick, in their destitute newly-wedded bliss, do qualify. I hate them for it.

But I looked at newspaper ad after newspaper ad and floorplan after floorplan. Ashley and I have been looking together, and at this point, I think we're both just hoping for a miracle. But all we've seen is just nice places that we can't afford and depressing places that we don't want to.

I told myself when I started out on this be-independent-and-live-alone plan that I was past the age where I would want to live somewhere because it had a lot of character. I bet you all laughed, because you know that I am not past that age. It seems doubtful that I will ever be past that age, 'cause man, I love me some character. In this whole process, the only apartments that I have liked have been the ones with a little something different. I'm willing to forgive the small stove if I can get a place with interestingly shaped rooms. I can deal with the carpet stains if I'm given some funky wallpaper in exchange. And check out the apartment that I'm most interested in now: it's semi-circular. The building is a giant cylinder. My reaction was "Wow, that's so cool!" when maybe it should have been "What kind of weirdo would want to live here?"

But whatever. I'd rather have my cylinder apartment than some cookie cutter place that I could get anywhere. It's all about the character. No one remembers the apartments that were perfect. You remember the imperfections, the flaws, the things that drove you crazy then but later will make you laugh and say "Remember when we were young and we lived in this crazy place?"

Here's to being young and living in crazy places.