As expected, it's moving time: the landlords are raising the rent waaaay beyond what I want to pay for this place (which was meant to be temporary anyway). Currently I pay $1250, and they're offering $1400 with a 6-month lease, or $1568 otherwise. Plus they'll start charging for water/sewer/trash, bringing it to about $1600. (It's not clear if that's legal, since there's not individual meters for water and sewer; the word is that those charges have been shut down in Alameda County and will be so here.) For a place that's not well-maintained and the doors stick? No.

So I've been looking for several weeks now, and a place turned out through one of the local music communities...it's bright and sunny, but I figure I can buy blackout curtains and hope for the best in the summer (it's an unshaded building, but it does have cross-ventilation). It's an in-law unit attached to a house, with its own garage underneath. The unit itself is smaller than the current place, but I realized I'm using almost all my space here for storage, so the garage should make that moot. There's also my own washer/dryer in the garage, which will be awesome, and then a bigger kitchen, which will also be awesome: I may actually unpack all my dishes.

This is, of course, why I get all my mail sent to a P.O. box.