Update on bad reviews

  So on my last post called bad reviews,  I wrote about how we were stressed about how we read a bunch of bad reviews on the apartment complex that we were moving in to in Houston.  I came to the conclusion that I could hold my own and protect my wife if need be. I'm not going to lie I was still a bit stressed on our drive to Houston,  thinking about our cargo trailer and what would happen if someone stole it or our car. Those possessions are kind of our life line right now, and we can't afford that to happen to us right now.
  When we arrived in Houston,  we entered the directions in to the GPS and began driving toward our new place. The GPS took us to a neighborhood that was nice and green with thousands of shade trees surrounding the streets and million dollar homes. The first thing that came to mind was " This stupid GPS sent us to the wrong side of town!" That GPS has sent me in the wrong direction in the past,  so forgive me if my trust in modern technology seems a little lost. Well anyway,  for once it had us going in the right direction.
  We turned down Brompton rd. Which is the street that our new apartment is on, and to our surprise it was a street with tree's shading the road, and huge brick apartment buildings. " if this is the getto,  then then Albuquerque and Tucson are way behind the times" This place is Awesome!  It looks like a old school college campus. Tons of amenities such as 5 swimming pools,  a convenient store located on the property,  fitness center, and a off the leash dog run. I have not seen anything like it before, and I have not seen anything that the bad reviews had mentioned.  Not getto at all!

Bad Reviews

   Vanessa and I will be heading to our next assignment in Houston TX next week. We are very excited to move on, and continue our gypsy lifestyle.  We decided that we would have the company that she works for find us an apartment on this assignment, just so we don't have to deal with the stress of the search, and a couple of other factors that I'm not going to get into. A couple of days ago we were emailed the address of our new ( to us) apartment, which of course peaked our curiosity, which led to a night of Google searching.

    The first stop on our search was the apartments website which was a very nice site. It had pictures of the inside of an apartment, and of several amenities that they offer. To tell you the truth we were impressed by the things that they offered, and we started to get excited. Little did we know that when we began reading the reviews that excitement would soon be replaced with fear.

     Now I know that reviews can be deceiving, sometimes people are just angry that they didn't get their way, and take it out on a place of business by writing a bad review. However when a business has two good reviews, and over a hundred bad reviews, you start to feel a little uneasy. Now as we were reading through these bad reviews we read stories of rats, cockroaches, vehicle break-ins, home invasions, drug activity, and horrible management which quickly lead to us discussing how we could present this problem to the company, and ask them to find us something safer. As we were discussing the action that we were going to take, we came to the realization that it's not fair to the company to ask this of them, due to our unique situation of traveling with our large "aggressive breed" dog. we know from past experience that finding an apartment that is pet friendly to that extent is a very difficult process. 

      I thought over this situation most of the night, and this morning, when it hit me. I came to the realization that I have gotten used to a certain/safer way of living. I have closed my eyes to what goes on around us everyday. Break-ins, home invasions, infestations, and drug activity happen everywhere. Until recently in my life I have lived in gang, and drug infested areas I have made it out alive, I know how these neighborhoods operate, and I know how to, and have the means to defend myself and my family in these situations if I have to. 

     In conclusion, we are going to be just fine! Like I said this stuff happens in good neighborhoods as well. We are solely going off of reviews, and who knows it might not even be an issue. With that said I will leave you with this. Take reviews with a grain of salt, because most people only take the time to write bad reviews.  Thanks for reading! 

Get it, while the getting is good

   As most of you know, I'm kind of what you would call a "Tag Along". My wife and I travel to different US cities, where she works as an RN for hospitals that are under staffed. The first response that I receive when I tell acquaintances that this is what we do, is "Well what do you do while your wife works?" My response to this question did not come so easy in Los Angeles as it has in Albuquerque.
   In Los Angeles I found myself going stir crazy about 3 weeks into the assignment, and convinced myself that I was ready to put myself out there and find some work. I posted Craigslist ads in the gigs section, and started getting up earlier to browse through want ads. I felt pretty confident that I would soon be on my way to contributing to our finances. WRONG! After weeks of responding to dead end ads, and scammers taking advantage of my ads I was discouraged. I even went and sat at a Starbucks for  2 hours talking with a guy that was interested in using me to help him move into his new apartment, just to find out that the guy never intended to use me, he was just bored and needed someone to talk to. Needless to say Los Angeles is not the place for a Husband Of A Traveling Nurse who is looking to make some side cash, and the only money that I made there came from selling a used coffee maker, and a guitar on Craigslist.
    Albuquerque on the other hand, has been the exact opposite. I used the same strategy to find work as I did in Los Angeles only this assignment it paid off. Two days in to my search I received and email from a contractor who needed my help digging trenches for the concrete footing on a house that was being built, he then used me again to help pour the concrete for the footing. While we were pouring the footing, the homeowner who is also a contractor asked for my number, and told me that he would like to use my services for framing the house, and he kept me busy for about a month. Then I received another email from a elderly couple that needed help organizing their deceased relatives belongings for an Estate Sale. While I was doing that I noticed that they were accumulating a large pile of trash in the driveway. I told them that I have a trailer and for a fee I would haul it to the dump for them, which I did and it lead to them calling me back two more times to haul trash away.
    I'm not sure where our next assignment is going to be, but I will leave Albuquerque content. When I think about what it was that I did differently on this assignment compared to the Los Angeles assignment it comes down to this. While on assignment here, I found a Church home, I started reading The Bible more often, and I know some may think of this as a superstition but I Started tithing 10% of what I have been earning back to the Lord. Hope that you enjoyed the read!  Peace!

OH KATHY!!

    I would like to start off by saying Albuquerque is our second assignment, and compared to our first assignment in LA it takes the cake. The people and the hospital in LA were wonderful, and we are thankful for that experience, however: LA is a busy city and we are everything but that. Albuquerque is more our pace, and the people with the exception of one neighbor are terrific. So with that said, lets get down to the nitty gritty.
   Prior to arriving here in Albuquerque, we had already set up where we were going to live for the 13 weeks that we would be here. It's a great gated apartment complex right up against the Sandia Mountains, and to top it all off we are even able to park our 5x8 cargo trailer within the complex which means one less monthly bill for us. Anyway, we arrive at our new bottom floor apartment, unloaded the trailer, and unpacked in record time. The next day we are joined by my daughter Jadabelle, who lives here in Albuquerque, and spending time with her is one of our main focuses on this assignment. We had just sat down to watch the movie The Lone Ranger, when we receive a faint knock on our door.
  I paused the movie and got up to answer the door, expecting that one of our neighbors had come over to welcome us to the neighborhood. When I opened the door to my surprise stood an old woman with blood shot eyes, who without even introducing herself said " I live upstairs from you, I pay rent here, and I shouldn't have to hear your TV." In shock I stared at her with the blankest of stares, partly due to the fact that the volume on our TV was on 30 which is a considerate level. Being the person that I am, I refuse to stand there and have it out with an 80 year old woman so I said "Ok by the way my name is Matt!" She said "my name is Kathy" and then I shut the door turned the TV down a little and we finished our movie.
  Moving ahead one week. I am outside on our balcony watching some people play with their dogs in the middle grass area, when low and behold Kathy slithers out of her apartment and starts yelling at them telling them that they have too put their dogs on leashes, and that they better be picking up after their dogs. Right then and there I realized that this woman is CRAZY, and that we haven't heard the last from Kathy. Later in that same week, my wife and I are in the kitchen making dinner when again we hear a faint knock on our door. I look at my wife and she says "What did we do now!", I open the door yup you guessed it, it was Kathy. She said " whatever you are doing in your kitchen is making a vibrating noise in my kitchen and it's annoying me." I told her that we are cooking and shut the door. By this time my wife and I are frustrated, but again we brush it off and go about our business.
 Moving ahead to the current week. Sunday afternoon my wife is in the shower, and my daughter and I are pinky swearing that we are not going to spray each other with the squirt bottle anymore when Jadabelle says I think someone just knocked on the door. Yup low and behold it's Kathy again and she says " I should not have to hear every conversation that goes on in your apartment, you need to be more quiet!" I shut the door, and told my wife what she had said and we both decided that I should go down to the office and talk to the manager about it. So I put on my shoes and went down to the office.
    When I got to the office I approached the manager and told her who I was, and that I needed to speak with her about our upstairs neighbor. When I mentioned that her name was Kathy the manager immediately began shaking her head as if to say that she already knows what is about to transpire. I go on to tell her all about it and how I think that 30 is an reasonable level for my TV to be at, That I should be able to use the vent for my stove while I am cooking, and that I should not have to tip toe around my apartment just to please a grumpy old lady. The manager agreed with me, and went on to tell me that this is exactly why the last two tenants had moved out of our apartment. She then told me that she is going to call Kathy into the office on Monday and tell her to leave us alone, and that if she wants a home that is noise free than she need to look into purchasing a house. So here it is Monday morning and I made breakfast with the stove vent on, and so far Kathy has left me alone. So with that said, I believe that by not letting my temper get the best of me, and by choosing not to argue with Kathy I left her with no firepower when she was summoned to the office. Oh Kathy have fun with that one!