Steps to taking over the world

Yesterday my new roommate, Anthea, and I made a trip down to my leasing company's office to get her put on the lease.

I have not been involved with this at all until yesterday. My previous roommate, Jessica, moved out so dealing with the paperwork has been her deal. I wasn't aware that They would try to make me sign another lease with Anthea. We were under the impression that while sub-leasing was a breach of contract, that you could turn your lease over. So, Jessica was supposed to be able to have Anthea take it over.

Well, They "don't do that." And They are trying to make me and Anthea sign a twelve month lease that would push our move-out date to next August. Ugh. Apparently they only deal in increments of twelve months for all parties. Then another They informed us that we could sign an eight month lease for an additional $50 a month.

After talking to "my lawyer" aka Spencer's mom, and a my parents and a couple of others, I have been advised by all to go with what I was going to do anyway - not sign anything and not pay anything extra.

I spent last night and a good portion of this morning reading the Landlord Tenant Handbook for Virginia and my lease. And because they didn't inform us of all of their procedures for "if"-situations I am fairly certain that what they are doing is illegal. Dealing with things "as they come up" is hardly feasible.

And if our light fixture starts leaking again this month we are totally going escrow.

In other news, I called my cousin Robert Earl today. He is my mother's cousin and I will be interviewing him in early September. I am writing a book about my mother's side of the family. She has been asking her brother to do it for years but he doesn't want to. Understandably. Their side of the family has everything you love about Faulkner in it. All the uncles were in the Ku Klux Klan, alcoholics, infidelity, the whole thing. The aunts were all very polite women who cooked, cleaned and knew when to keep their mouths shut.

My mother keeps asking me if I'm going write "nice" things about her family, and I keep assuring her that I will write the truth. She is not comfortable with that answer.