putting down roots

I hate apartment hunting.

My lease is up at the end of April, so I'm moving out. I decided last October not to renew the lease; I don't need three bedrooms and I'd like to pay a few hundred dollars less a month in rent, too.

But finding a new apartment is a bitch.

Note to apartment complexes -- you can't get rid of the smell of cigarettes just by cleaning the carpets. Painting the walls helps, but the smell gets into the pad and the carpet fibers and the only way to eliminate it is to replace the carpeting. I can't count how many apartments I've walked into only to walk right back out, all because of the tobacco smell.

Ick.

I'm not even violently anti-smoking. I'm just not going to live in it.

I've got two weeks to find another home or my stuff is going into storage and I'm going into an efficiency.