Birthday was ok. We went bar hopping because Nick was turning 21 the same day I was turning 24. I have decided that the bar scene is not for me. It's expensive and loud and I just get way better blackmail material from the comfort of home. It was fun enough though, nice to hang out with friends. Wish Kirstin and Chris2 could've come but they aren't 21 just yet...well, at the rate Chris2 is going, he'll never be 21. But he is really fun when drunk...as he put it after Kirstin's housewarming party "they just had to say 'Chris2 boxers' and then BAM! I was pantless." We finally left the bars a little after 1am - YAY NEW BAR CLOSING TIME!!! About a mile and a half later, Nick stopped responding to us completely so Mike pulled the car over and Nick threw up all over the bike lane. (Sorry Chris2). We got home, hung out for a bit and then Mike was leaving so I walked him out and found Nick sleeping upright in the patio chair with an unlit cigarette in his hand and a pile of vomit at and on his shoes. Walked Mike to the car and walked back, sat in the chair for some fresh air and heard god awful car sounds. A guy named Dennis was mysteriously in the parking lot at that time (around 2am) and helped him. After jumping the car didn't work, he took his battery out of his truck, touched it to the leads on Mike's car and it started immediately. In the meantime, I went back to check on Nick who at this time was now face first in the flower bed. After Mike got the car started, he helped Nick inside who eventually fell asleep hunched over the garbage can vomiting.
Birthday party day was Saturday which started out amazingly sucky. First, Mike forgot to turn the alarm on for me so I overslept. Then after going to the grocery store, I found out Nick mistakenly got the wrong cake for that night. So I had to go back. It took so long to bake the cake and clean the house (though it was pretty tidy, I was just severly behind) that I had no time for laser tag which made me very sad. People showed up promptly after 8pm when I said it started at 7 so that means, me estimates were correct. It was more a gaming party than a drinking party which was dissappointing. Furthmore, because of cords everywhere, I spilled my only drink and was too inebriated to go to the store for more mixers. There was also much hostility between the dating couples there. Tiffany was angry at her Chris, Seth was mega angry with Kirstin, and me and Mike had quite the squabble which wasn't at all happy especially at my birthday party. Meh, the rest of the weekend was great minus the rant I will write coming up soon. I played a lot (8+ hours) of Warcraft 3 campaign over 2 days, its the first time I've done it. The story is neato, and it is a very fun game.
"Angry Miguel" Rant:
Monday night I come home from Warcraft3 at Mike's and I was putting my leftovers in the fridge when I noticed the post it with the utilities that everyone owes me (because the bills are in my name). The money for the yard work was crossed off with new totals written in at the bottom. Let me mention now that the amount for the yard work was a whopping $6 which is actually less than a 3rd of what I paid the guy. This makes me angry that they protest reimbursing me for the money I paid the yard guy after we had agreed on it. Whatever, so I write on the white board on the fridge that if they don't want to pay the bill, fine, they have to do the work and as long as we are talking about money, they are not allowed to pay me late anymore. Because 7 out of ten times between them, its always at the very least, a few days late. Lets not forget in late July when Miguel paid his credit card off instead of the rent and never bothered to discuss it with me until I asked almost a week later. At least Nick has always been very good about communicating when he will pay bills. In both their leases it says I can impose late fees - which I haven't done yet - UNLESS we talk about it and come up with a compromise that works for us...just so that I know I can depend on the money at a certain date. So anyways, I went up to my room, closed the door, and called Mike to discuss if I was being fair or not. He agreed that I was being completely reasonable and that's when I heard banging on the door. When I got off the phone and finally went out there, Nick was sitting at the bottom of his steps behind where Miguel was standing so I could barely see him. Miguel immediately starts yelling (and oh do I mean yelling) about why didn't I confront him about this instead of writing a note on the fridge. In a calm voice (although shaky because he was being scary), I asked him why he didn't confront me about the yard bill. That note has been on the fridge for several days and he didn't mention anything when he saw the yard looking awesome when it was cleaned up. Of course he shrugged it off saying that it wasn't the same thing but it seems pretty hypocritical to me. Then after that he goes off saying that I make a profit off him and Nick and that I'm taking advantage of them. "How is it possible that I make a profit when I also pay?" I rebuted. He came up with excuses that made it sound like I was raping them financially but he had no answer and shut up when I asked what this has to do with the yard? He seems to think the mortgage is the only monthly bill for the house and that his and Nick's rent more than covers it. Not only is that not true, but its none of his business. I've showed them where all my bills are and where they are stored once paid, its not my problem if they didn't look up the expenses earlier. Miguel also conveniently forgot that I just lowered his rent, bought him a ceiling fan, and even a birthday present whereas he didn't for me. While its not a big deal to me, if he wants to get nit-picky, I can play too. He also pointed at his room and yelled, "I can tear that up and go somewhere else." If he is refering to his copy of the lease, I think the rage has eaten his mind because tearing up his lease doesn't get him out of it. So while I was being threatened, I didn't take it to heart at all and just chalked it up to his being insanely violent at the moment. Anyhoot, after a lot of yelling, we agreed that if he didn't want to reimburse me, then its his turn to clean the yard next, and Nick after that. Apparently this wasn't the end of Miguel's rampage. He started in on how I always nag him to do chores and he's sick of it and does them timely. (This was much yelling that I paraphrased). Its true, he is very tidy and that's great so I think he's refering to the time I wrote on the fridge to please take the stuff that was sitting there for over a month up to their rooms. I would've done it myself, but I didn't know which stuff belonged to which roommate. And then there was Friday night when I asking whoever it was suppse to do the dished to do them before the birthday party Saturday night because we always clean the house before people come over....for lack of a better word...duh. Not like he did it anyway, I ended up doing them, so what the hell is he complaining about? Not only do I feel uncomfortable when I'm home, but I'm actually scared to go home now. Mike has been very supportive surrounding this crap though, he is very helpful and comforting.
Tenants Revolt - Day 2:
So after a lot of procrastinating, I finally went home a little after 11. It's been a crappy day. I can't get this bullshit drama out of my head and am having trouble concentrating on just about everything else. Work with Chris2 took my mind off it as we bitched about the usual stuff all day. Chris2 would like to remind everybody that he is awesome. I made it to my room without having to talk to anyone and started writing out some checks for a few of my non-house bills. Maybe 20 minutes later I see Miguel's light go off and door go shut (sleeping) and Nick knocks on my door. I said "if you are planning on telling me what a horrible person I am I'm really not in the mood to talk." He said that he was only there yesterday because Miguel asked him to be there and that I shouldn't associate him with anything that Miguel said. That put me a little less on the defensive side but still very uncomfortable. So we chit chatted a bit and he mentioned how his doctor visit went that day. His shoulder will eventually heal fine and he won't need surgery on it BUT that he needs a ligament replaced in his knee that he's been draining at least once a day since the motorcycle accident. (Oh and before you say, "he deserved it, he rides a motorcycle" I'll just let you know that the car was speeding and tried to mow him down and he took a fall to not get run over and then they took off without helping.) Eventually the "there's this one thing" came up. Nick started in on how the leases that everybody signed aren't valid and that he doesn't have to pay me the money his owes me from the month he was unemployed. I will explain the logic behind this. Nick says that leases are not valid unless they were notorized when they are signed. I said that that didn't make sense because my previous leases with apartments were not notorized. He said that all those people have their realtor liscense or something similar which lets them be official notaries. I highly doubt that so I said, we would talk more about this when I have time to look it up. He said fine but that he was faxing a copy of the lease to his dad in CA the next day and he would see if its valid or not. I said whatever, there isn't much to say until we can look this up. Now what brought up this string of attacking me as a landlord is this: he says that before he signed the lease I said to him, "we split all the household bills between the 3 of us" and took that to mean every single bill. He also says Miguel heard me say this too, even though this was in early May. If I did say this, it meant utilities or the word utilities was somewhere in this sentence. I suppose what I said could be interpreted in several ways but here is my logic....I am the owner, therefore I have HOA fees and a mortgage, they are tenants therefore they have rent. The mortgage is solely my bill as well as the HOA fees and the rent paid to me goes toward that bill, but I am free to use it for whatever purpose I choose by law. AND, as an owner, I can designate the rent amounts, the end. So his argument is that I mislead him into thinking that we split the mortgage and HOA evenly. Of course I didn't do that. Its no secret where I keep my bills and store paid bills and I encourage them to take a peek once in a while so that they don't think I'm dividing them wrong. Additionally, Miguel knew that he paid less than Nick, so I guess techinically we have all been deceiving him. I've always treated him as a friend and have never imposed the late fees that are mentioned in the lease. I believe this is his way of trying to get out of paying me for June's rent that I still do not have. So instead of being a friend, he goes on the "we can renegotiate if you want, but this lease isn't valid and I can leave and go somewhere else if you want." This is just an asshole way to approach a misunderstanding...as Mike said it. So eventually we ended our conversation by agreeing to talk the next day when we both had more information. Hard to get to sleep, hard to concentrate on anything.
Tenants Revolt - Day 3:
Not wanting to take any chances, I have taken all the original copies of leases and paperwork and put it in a safe place that is not in my house. This may seem a bit harsh, but then again, I'm afraid to go home so what does that tell you? Most of my day was spent in distraction of all the bs. I called a lawyer and inthe time I waited to hear back about the matter, Mike called his office people to ask if they were official notaries and they said no. Then the lawyer called back and said that of course notaries are not required just to have a contract or lease. That takes care of that. I spend most of the rest of the day practicing what to say to Nick so that its nice but fair. Again I took my time to go home, when I got there, Miguel wasn't home! Score! Nick's door was open but according to aim, he was asleep so I closed my door, turned off the lights, and assumed the talk was postponed. Good, I didn't want to do it anyway. I saw later from my window that he was outside smoking but by then I was about to hop into bed. I heard a bunch of banging around and it sounded like it was coming from Miguel's room. My first thoughts were that he believed Nick about the notary and was packing up to leave. I eventually went out there to see if I was right and the noise wasn't coming from his room, it was coming from the bathroom. I knocked and entered to find him scrubbing the tub. We had a 30 second civil conversation about why he was cleaning the tub at 11:30pm and I left. That was the first time I have talked to him since the yelling. In the morning before I left for work, I told him I got a movie from the library and he was welcome to watch it. Don't know why I said it, I think I just have a girly inclination to be nice to guys that are jerks to me. It must be inherent. I will talk to Nick tonight hopefully and get this bullshit over with. We'll see.
Wow this was a long post that took me 2 days to write.
Birthday party day was Saturday which started out amazingly sucky. First, Mike forgot to turn the alarm on for me so I overslept. Then after going to the grocery store, I found out Nick mistakenly got the wrong cake for that night. So I had to go back. It took so long to bake the cake and clean the house (though it was pretty tidy, I was just severly behind) that I had no time for laser tag which made me very sad. People showed up promptly after 8pm when I said it started at 7 so that means, me estimates were correct. It was more a gaming party than a drinking party which was dissappointing. Furthmore, because of cords everywhere, I spilled my only drink and was too inebriated to go to the store for more mixers. There was also much hostility between the dating couples there. Tiffany was angry at her Chris, Seth was mega angry with Kirstin, and me and Mike had quite the squabble which wasn't at all happy especially at my birthday party. Meh, the rest of the weekend was great minus the rant I will write coming up soon. I played a lot (8+ hours) of Warcraft 3 campaign over 2 days, its the first time I've done it. The story is neato, and it is a very fun game.
"Angry Miguel" Rant:
Monday night I come home from Warcraft3 at Mike's and I was putting my leftovers in the fridge when I noticed the post it with the utilities that everyone owes me (because the bills are in my name). The money for the yard work was crossed off with new totals written in at the bottom. Let me mention now that the amount for the yard work was a whopping $6 which is actually less than a 3rd of what I paid the guy. This makes me angry that they protest reimbursing me for the money I paid the yard guy after we had agreed on it. Whatever, so I write on the white board on the fridge that if they don't want to pay the bill, fine, they have to do the work and as long as we are talking about money, they are not allowed to pay me late anymore. Because 7 out of ten times between them, its always at the very least, a few days late. Lets not forget in late July when Miguel paid his credit card off instead of the rent and never bothered to discuss it with me until I asked almost a week later. At least Nick has always been very good about communicating when he will pay bills. In both their leases it says I can impose late fees - which I haven't done yet - UNLESS we talk about it and come up with a compromise that works for us...just so that I know I can depend on the money at a certain date. So anyways, I went up to my room, closed the door, and called Mike to discuss if I was being fair or not. He agreed that I was being completely reasonable and that's when I heard banging on the door. When I got off the phone and finally went out there, Nick was sitting at the bottom of his steps behind where Miguel was standing so I could barely see him. Miguel immediately starts yelling (and oh do I mean yelling) about why didn't I confront him about this instead of writing a note on the fridge. In a calm voice (although shaky because he was being scary), I asked him why he didn't confront me about the yard bill. That note has been on the fridge for several days and he didn't mention anything when he saw the yard looking awesome when it was cleaned up. Of course he shrugged it off saying that it wasn't the same thing but it seems pretty hypocritical to me. Then after that he goes off saying that I make a profit off him and Nick and that I'm taking advantage of them. "How is it possible that I make a profit when I also pay?" I rebuted. He came up with excuses that made it sound like I was raping them financially but he had no answer and shut up when I asked what this has to do with the yard? He seems to think the mortgage is the only monthly bill for the house and that his and Nick's rent more than covers it. Not only is that not true, but its none of his business. I've showed them where all my bills are and where they are stored once paid, its not my problem if they didn't look up the expenses earlier. Miguel also conveniently forgot that I just lowered his rent, bought him a ceiling fan, and even a birthday present whereas he didn't for me. While its not a big deal to me, if he wants to get nit-picky, I can play too. He also pointed at his room and yelled, "I can tear that up and go somewhere else." If he is refering to his copy of the lease, I think the rage has eaten his mind because tearing up his lease doesn't get him out of it. So while I was being threatened, I didn't take it to heart at all and just chalked it up to his being insanely violent at the moment. Anyhoot, after a lot of yelling, we agreed that if he didn't want to reimburse me, then its his turn to clean the yard next, and Nick after that. Apparently this wasn't the end of Miguel's rampage. He started in on how I always nag him to do chores and he's sick of it and does them timely. (This was much yelling that I paraphrased). Its true, he is very tidy and that's great so I think he's refering to the time I wrote on the fridge to please take the stuff that was sitting there for over a month up to their rooms. I would've done it myself, but I didn't know which stuff belonged to which roommate. And then there was Friday night when I asking whoever it was suppse to do the dished to do them before the birthday party Saturday night because we always clean the house before people come over....for lack of a better word...duh. Not like he did it anyway, I ended up doing them, so what the hell is he complaining about? Not only do I feel uncomfortable when I'm home, but I'm actually scared to go home now. Mike has been very supportive surrounding this crap though, he is very helpful and comforting.
Tenants Revolt - Day 2:
So after a lot of procrastinating, I finally went home a little after 11. It's been a crappy day. I can't get this bullshit drama out of my head and am having trouble concentrating on just about everything else. Work with Chris2 took my mind off it as we bitched about the usual stuff all day. Chris2 would like to remind everybody that he is awesome. I made it to my room without having to talk to anyone and started writing out some checks for a few of my non-house bills. Maybe 20 minutes later I see Miguel's light go off and door go shut (sleeping) and Nick knocks on my door. I said "if you are planning on telling me what a horrible person I am I'm really not in the mood to talk." He said that he was only there yesterday because Miguel asked him to be there and that I shouldn't associate him with anything that Miguel said. That put me a little less on the defensive side but still very uncomfortable. So we chit chatted a bit and he mentioned how his doctor visit went that day. His shoulder will eventually heal fine and he won't need surgery on it BUT that he needs a ligament replaced in his knee that he's been draining at least once a day since the motorcycle accident. (Oh and before you say, "he deserved it, he rides a motorcycle" I'll just let you know that the car was speeding and tried to mow him down and he took a fall to not get run over and then they took off without helping.) Eventually the "there's this one thing" came up. Nick started in on how the leases that everybody signed aren't valid and that he doesn't have to pay me the money his owes me from the month he was unemployed. I will explain the logic behind this. Nick says that leases are not valid unless they were notorized when they are signed. I said that that didn't make sense because my previous leases with apartments were not notorized. He said that all those people have their realtor liscense or something similar which lets them be official notaries. I highly doubt that so I said, we would talk more about this when I have time to look it up. He said fine but that he was faxing a copy of the lease to his dad in CA the next day and he would see if its valid or not. I said whatever, there isn't much to say until we can look this up. Now what brought up this string of attacking me as a landlord is this: he says that before he signed the lease I said to him, "we split all the household bills between the 3 of us" and took that to mean every single bill. He also says Miguel heard me say this too, even though this was in early May. If I did say this, it meant utilities or the word utilities was somewhere in this sentence. I suppose what I said could be interpreted in several ways but here is my logic....I am the owner, therefore I have HOA fees and a mortgage, they are tenants therefore they have rent. The mortgage is solely my bill as well as the HOA fees and the rent paid to me goes toward that bill, but I am free to use it for whatever purpose I choose by law. AND, as an owner, I can designate the rent amounts, the end. So his argument is that I mislead him into thinking that we split the mortgage and HOA evenly. Of course I didn't do that. Its no secret where I keep my bills and store paid bills and I encourage them to take a peek once in a while so that they don't think I'm dividing them wrong. Additionally, Miguel knew that he paid less than Nick, so I guess techinically we have all been deceiving him. I've always treated him as a friend and have never imposed the late fees that are mentioned in the lease. I believe this is his way of trying to get out of paying me for June's rent that I still do not have. So instead of being a friend, he goes on the "we can renegotiate if you want, but this lease isn't valid and I can leave and go somewhere else if you want." This is just an asshole way to approach a misunderstanding...as Mike said it. So eventually we ended our conversation by agreeing to talk the next day when we both had more information. Hard to get to sleep, hard to concentrate on anything.
Tenants Revolt - Day 3:
Not wanting to take any chances, I have taken all the original copies of leases and paperwork and put it in a safe place that is not in my house. This may seem a bit harsh, but then again, I'm afraid to go home so what does that tell you? Most of my day was spent in distraction of all the bs. I called a lawyer and inthe time I waited to hear back about the matter, Mike called his office people to ask if they were official notaries and they said no. Then the lawyer called back and said that of course notaries are not required just to have a contract or lease. That takes care of that. I spend most of the rest of the day practicing what to say to Nick so that its nice but fair. Again I took my time to go home, when I got there, Miguel wasn't home! Score! Nick's door was open but according to aim, he was asleep so I closed my door, turned off the lights, and assumed the talk was postponed. Good, I didn't want to do it anyway. I saw later from my window that he was outside smoking but by then I was about to hop into bed. I heard a bunch of banging around and it sounded like it was coming from Miguel's room. My first thoughts were that he believed Nick about the notary and was packing up to leave. I eventually went out there to see if I was right and the noise wasn't coming from his room, it was coming from the bathroom. I knocked and entered to find him scrubbing the tub. We had a 30 second civil conversation about why he was cleaning the tub at 11:30pm and I left. That was the first time I have talked to him since the yelling. In the morning before I left for work, I told him I got a movie from the library and he was welcome to watch it. Don't know why I said it, I think I just have a girly inclination to be nice to guys that are jerks to me. It must be inherent. I will talk to Nick tonight hopefully and get this bullshit over with. We'll see.
Wow this was a long post that took me 2 days to write.
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