Lori Moves In
In June, Chrissy told me that Zak and she were planning to move to California next year and that to save money she was going to move in with Zak, but not right away.. She also told me not to worry, because she was going to pay me back every cent she owed me as well. Losing her as a roommate wasn’t too bad. She only paid her half of the rent about half the time. The other half of the time her check to me bounced. My immediate concern was that the TV and the couch were hers. I wanted a heads up before she moved them out. Later she decided she would move out August 1st.
Shortly after this announcement Chrissy had gotten an advance in pay at her job and bought herself a car. Less than two weeks later she quit her job.
Naturally, the first person I turned to as a potential roommate was Lori. She was going to college, but currently not working, although she just started applying for jobs. She didn’t drive yet so that would be a problem. I told her we’d work things out.
We started immediately to teach her to drive. She already mostly knew how to drive, but she ended up learning to drive with my stick shift Jeep Wrangler. One of our first ‘trips’ was going to be a town called Masters, Colorado that I just had to visit for obvious reasons. She drove the whole way there. When we arrived the town turned out to be an intersection with a trailer home on one of the corners. That was kind of a let-down compared to the booming metropolis I was hoping to see in a town called Masters.
On the way back, we stopped at a 7-11 for a beverage when I noticed I had missed a call on my cell phone. It was Val. She relayed a message apologizing for not being able to go to the softball game when I was in town, and explained what had happened with Lori and Avi.
When Lori got back to the Jeep, and we started driving again, I casually mentioned. “Soooo…. Val called me.”
Lori looked really sheepish and sank into the seat.
“Funny thing, she told me what you said at Dan’s party.”
Lori went off on a big comical tirade about how she didn’t know he was there, and how she was drinking, and how it was my fault for telling her that in the first place. The thing was, at first Val was mad, but she said in the end it was a good thing and Avi and she needed to talk about it. After all was said and done, Valerie and Alan started dating within a year of so anyway.
Much to my surprise, one day I came home for lunch in early July like I always did and the couch and television were gone. All of the living room furniture was gone. So was the silverware. Luckily, that day the travel agency that was in the same building as the bank I worked in were giving out Ice Cream scoopers. I happen to have brought one home. So there I was sitting on a pillow and using an ice cream scooper to eat my lunch. It was at that point I thought to myself, I hate that girl.
When I talked to Chrissy, she had said a friend they knew was moving to California early and had room in her moving truck so to save money they put what they could fit and had them sent early to be put in storage.
I went back to work and vented my frustrations. Alan donated to me his old silverware and an old television that was pretty much broken. The picture was fuzzy and greenish in color, but I was happy even for that. He also donated a leather recliner his wife wouldn’t let him keep. The senior Vice President of the bank, Dick, gave me his old dishes and bowls.
When I talked to Lori, we decided to go to a thrift store that she knew of that her family shopped at. Her family had always struggled financially, so Lori learned early on to be frugal. She was also very money conscious. She was quite the opposite of Chrissy in every way. When she had agreed to move in, she was concerned about her financial situation, not because she couldn’t afford it, but because she preferred that she always have money in her savings account, just to be safe.
So we went to this thrift store and she purchased an entire living room and dining room set for a total of $58.00. A couch, two chairs, a coffee table, two end tables and a dining room table with four chairs. She had splurged when she bought a petrified wood stool thing as well. We ended up borrowing Jennifer and Bill’s pickup truck to get all of this stuff home.
The workers didn’t pack the truck all that well as the heavy wooden table was on top. When I took one of the final turns a little too quick it had fallen off the truck and had broken on the street. Not very badly and it was easy enough to fix and strong enough to take such a pounding.
The first week she lived there she claimed she had come home and my guinea pig, Nova, had climbed out of her cage and was sitting on her bag of food on the shelf. To this day, I can not confirm or deny this occored but I’ve never seen a bottom heavy guinea pig climb out of an aquarium before.
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nt size=”3″> Lori also bought a car. Actually she attempted to by a car. It was a 1969 four door powder blue Chevy Impala. It was a boat. The agreed price was a hundred dollars but the owner told her to make it out to a battered women’s shelter. The problem with this car was it was so big, she was afraid to drive it.
Things were clearly getting better. Lori always paid her half of the rent and if she was going to be a little late, she planned it with me a head of time, and still paid mostly on time anyway. She also had gotten a job interview. The problem was that it was on a day I worked, so she needed a way to get there. I told her she could borrow my jeep but there was another problem. She still didn’t feel comfortable making left hand turns. The day before the interview, we did a ‘dry run’ and got her to the location of her interview by only making right hand turns. She did great in the interview, although it took a lot longer to get there and back.
Shortly after that, I took her to the DMV to take her road test. While she was taking the test in my Jeep, I finally got my driver’s license changed over to Colorado. I had already gotten two speeding tickets in Colorado by this time, but none of the points took because of the out of state license, so I had been reluctant to switch over. Actually, I fought one ticket and won, but surcharges and court fees pretty much cost as much as the ticket would have been anyway.
Lori passed without a problem. Statistically, I heard they say people who take a road test with a manual transmission vehicle always pass their road test as some testers do not know how to drive them.