Has this been mentioned yet? Real life superheroes:

[link]

Yay New House Robin!! I gave up on cleaning rentals after I got charged for bullshit in my first post-college rental (a room in a townhouse) and didn't get charged after leaving my next place a pigsty. Now I let the chips fall where they may, and I've always gotten the money back.

Yeah, for my last place, I basically gave it a half assed sweeping and rolled out. I'd been living there for six years, they were going to have to do a major overhaul anyway.

Yeah, by "pigsty," I mean I didn't clean the oven or clean under where the furniture used to be, like that. On the flip side, I moved into an apartment in college that the landlord didn't clean -- and apparently neither did the tenants, for a year. A year of stir-frying. The bathroom and kitchen in that place were the nastiest things I'd ever seen.

My cousin is a landlord who owns a bunch of properties in our little podunk hometown. He says he gives the security deposit back unless the damage is more than would be fixed by what they normally do between renters. They deep-clean, and fill in nailholes and re-paint, and replace the carpet, anyway. After he told me that, I quit fretting about leaving apartments pristine, and I've always gotten my deposit back.

Our first university apartment....whoa. We made the mistake of trying to clean a splash on the wall near the stove and had to scrub all the walls, as it soon became apparent that the room had originally been white, not beige.

My roommates have tended to be very unconcerned with dirt--in university there were cats they didn't clean up after properly, and when I was in MI my roomies would rather put 2 dirty dishes back into the dishwasher that had just finished running and run it again, rewashing all the STILL PERFECTLY CLEAN dishes they were too lazy to remove. Which, I guess, was better than letting the dirty stuff pile up in the sink. Except not so good for the environment or utility bills.

I got charged once for not vacuuming out the window sills. That's when I figured out that It was arbitrary. so I just did what I felt was reasonable.

I totally feel that anyone here could have written a better MCSL essay than that one.

hey erikaj! - have things gotten any better w/your person?

I crave Greek food. My stomach has been being very willful these past few days. Either no food at all, or just the one specific thing. I hope it switches to Mexican by lunchtime, because I think that's all it's going to get. Besides, I had a Greek cheeseburger (basically feta insteada chedda) yesterday. With the loveliest steak fries. I love a big fat slice of potato fried up nice to the outside is crisp and the inside is hot and soft.