finally some time and energy to update.
Wow. So, since I last wrote, many things have happened. I believe the last thing was that I didn't get the duplex I was *this close* to getting. Well, went back up to Portland to look around again. Was very pessimistic, thought I'd never find anything, and even if I did, it would be too expensive, or I wouldn't find a job, or something. Well, we were driving around in our favorite neighborhood, when I saw an interesting looking apartment complex that was for rent. We peeked in the windows of the one that looked empty. The carpet was gross, and we were worried that this place was a grunge-hole. But, we decided to call the manager and look at the inside. At 5, we came around to meet the manager but she had just stepped out for a moment. As I stood around waiting, a nice looking woman came up and asked if I was looking at the apartments. She wasn't the manager, but lived in the complex. We talked about living in the complex, the surrounding neighborhood, and bascially really hit it off. She told us the apartment that was open, right across from theirs actually, so we went up, and it was the same one we'd looked at before. The woman, Jen, said that they really wanted to fill up the complex right now, so it was a great time, and we could probably get them to agree to do all sorts of things for us. Jen showed us around her apartment for comparison, introduced us to her partner Jan, and just hung out for a little while. The manager eventually showed up, and she took us to the same apartment we had just inspected. Apparently, they hadn't cleaned the carpets yet, and still were going to clean up, so that was a relief. We mentioned the carpet looked really bad to us, and she said they were going to clean it really well. The cat was no problem, "we love cats here". Also, she waived the cat fee (regularly $200) and also gave us $200 off move-in costs, so in short, it was rediculously cheap to move in. We were able to move in two days later, the carpets were spotless (Jen said it looked way better than theirs had when they moved it, and that she had talked to the manager about making it nice for us. They are all very nice... the manager even gave Jen and us $50 recommendation bonus each off next month's rent). The whole deal was so nice, easy, cheap, and we moved in with two new friends as neighbors.