Living at Rueben's House

I found a new place to live. Those of you regular readers already know that I had bad luck with my first roommate here in Vegas, and since all the utilities were getting turned off, I had to find a new place, but quick. So in the middle of April, I moved out of the nice--but messy--house and moved into my current abode. I didn't much care for it when I moved in here, but I was in a bad spot so I took it.

This roommate is a decent fellow, never steals from me (unlike that hooch I lived with first who stole everything she could get her hands on), and he pays the bills on time. It's just that the house should be condemned. It's seriously falling apart on it's foundation. I could go on for days about the stuff that's broken down and had to be fixed since I've been here. Hell, my roommate didn't even have a shower head in his bathroom when I moved in--he was showering under an open pipe! (I was a kind fellow and bought him a shower massage head and even installed it for him after my first trip to Walmart after moving in...) Yeah, he should've done it himself at some point, since he's been living here for years--that shoulda been my first clue... But it took him three months to get the dryer fixed, around three weeks to get the garbage disposal fixed, etc. etc... The kicker for me is that the pipes have been getting clogged by tree roots and flooding the place--it's done it twice this summer, most recently last week. That was the final straw. It's time to move on.

So I've spent the last several weeks searching for a different place to live. I couldn't find anything affordable in a one-bedroom apartment that didn't have a waiting list. I visited several homes where people needed roommates, but none of them seemed to work for me. (One lady had a 1250 sq. foot home and was trying to get four people living there and paying $500 per month. Oh yeah, that'll happen).

But this weekend I found an excellent spot and grabbed it. Just today I signed the papers and paid the deposits. I start moving boxes and stuff over there tomorrow, with official move-in set for the first of the month.

Anyhow...lemme tell you about this new place. It's over 4000 sqare feet, with six bedrooms, a huge lot (2 acres), a very large pool (and it's 12 feet deep, too, none of this gubmint-mandated-no-drowning-allowed-three-foot-deep-only bullshiat that has taken over the new pool construction in this state). I'm sharing it with three other guys, kinda like the 'frat house' I shared with my buddy Derek back in Phoenix a couple years back. But the best part is the abundance of cheesy goodness that comes straight from 1965. Red shag carpet in the living room--Yeah baby! Pink tile in the bathroom. And who doesn't love the etched glass on the oven door that looks like it came straight outta the Jetson's kitchen? It's the kind of house that would likely sell for almost a million bucks in the current real estate market, but would cost another $300,000 to modernize.

Honestly, the first thought I had when I saw it was Hey--this is exactly like Rueben's house on Ocean's Eleven!-- right down to the stone double-sided fireplace and living-room bar. But as cheesy as it appears, everything seems to work.

I think my favorite feature is the large party patio with the firepit. I can see myself sitting out there enjoying a few cigars and rum drinks over the course of the next several months, searching for inspiration. Or just sitting and doing nothing.

Mikey