It's Wobin, I'm He-yuh!

Of all the apartments I've lived in before my favorite has to be the upper floor Piccadilly St place in London. It was small and had those angled walls from the roof slope so I could really only utilize a a few feet for standing room. The size was really small but the layout was done so well that you felt as if the space was bigger. It was also really high up like a third floor. The ceilings on the main floor must have been insanely high. Insanely high... it sounds like a turn of phrase that makes complete sense until you see it written. The height of this room must have mental illness.

Across the street was a small convenience store that rented movies at an insanely low rate. The inexpensiveness of the rates had mental illness. The Asian family that owned the store took turns manning the counter. I remember that on occasion the nine year old son would be working the cash. There was also a chubby teenage son and a grandpa, the kind of elderly Chinese man that pops into your head when you read "Asian grandpa". After I moved away to Montreal I found out that the store was robbed and the father was stabbed or shot.

The neighborhood was pretty nice and a lot of other houses were easily million-plus homes. That said it was also the area where my car was stolen on Christmas Eve. It was actually pretty easy to steal my car because the back window was composed of strips of packing tape from when my car had been broken into in the same parking lot about 2 weeks earlier. I had Credence tapes but they didn't get stolen. Put a candle in the window indeed. These events didn't bother me because the car had no insurance. This happened after the only car accident I had ever been it. I wasn't actually driving but it was decided I would just claim I was.

At another juncture in my life I lived in a soviet style concrete box on what I remember as being the fifth floor. I think it's the 35 year old carpet in the lobby that makes every shitty apartment building have that poverty-esque smell. The smell of Value Village-musk has a poorish smell too but it's much easier to handle than a decaying building. The kind that has the thick black elevator buttons where the white paint that once made the embossed floor numbers have long since faded.

From the balcony of the concrete box the view consisted of a rail-yard and a large psychiatric hospital. If you squinted you could make out a massive catholic high-school that looked more like shopping mall than a school. Beyond that was Fanshawe College. This was Fanshawe when it still looked like a set from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (this was my reason for choosing the school... I'm not kidding).

The building was part of series of buildings that were called something along the lines of The Mornington Towers which of course meant referring to it as "Morning-Wood Towers". It had a lot of Students as well as recently release patients from the crazy house down the road. At the time the idea of being close to people who were hospitalized was quite unnerving. I'd go as far as to say in was insane... Now, having seen the inside of more than one crazy-house the idea that they were scary is funny.

I'm not sure if I told this story yet but across the hall of this particular location was a pair of brothers and a wife. They were scary. Scary in a way that chills me to the core even now. "If I can just get the frog out of my throat we can all have a Merry Christmas." They were like a cross between the McPoyle brothers and the family from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

I lived in two other places in London but they both take up full posts on their own. The two in this set are my favorite and least favorite. Oh... besides the cavepartment, although I do miss my cot-air mattress combo.

Today Mary and I went to see two apartments. We have our specific area that we're sticking to which is essentially within walking distance of the Hamilton Go Station so that I can take the long train ride into Toronto to work. I imagine myself playing Mario on a DS while sipping on a hot coffee that eventually stains my tie as I relax on the lengthy ride into the T-dot. This area of Hamilton is completely foreign to me other than St Joe's which I really only knew from the inside. Circumcisions and overdoses.

The first place we saw was pretty nice but kind of small for the price. It had exposed brick but I couldn't really see myself living in the space. We don't actually plan on getting a place until May 1st but it's good to get an idea of things and to to jump on it if the perfect place pops up. That's a lot of 'p's so you know it's important. The big sellers on this place were the brick, the insuite washer/dryer and the parking spot. If Marybral Palsy gets a placement at St Joe's than she won't need her car anyway. She works essentially beside the Go Station so if we need to go to Toronto to visit people it right there and everything else is also in walking distance.

After we saw the first place we walked around looking for For Rent signs but it was fucking chilly. I had on three pairs of socks and my toes still went from pain to numb. We eventually went to a Bakery on Locke Street. I had never been to Locke Street before. The trendy part, not the Al Simmons gunshop. I liked it a lot.

Later we saw a place that was on an awesome street in a great area that had a nice price and was listed for May 1st... It sucked. The people who own the property were really nice and Scottish. I say that with both meanings; that they were nice and also very nice and Scottish.

We wandered around a lot more and even went to White Elephant and Mixed Media. I almost bought a book on Graphic design theory and at this moment regret not spending the money. If I do buy it I'll go back and get it there rather than online or at a Chapters. I want to support the scene. I'm a huge fan of gentrification! Not sarcastic either. I love gritty areas and I think that if the local poor don't figure out how to make the best of gentrification through creative economics then they're too dumb for any area and are probably better off getting shuffled out.

I'm excited about claiming Hamilton as my home. I grew up in Stoney Creek hating both Hamilton and pretty much all of the lake brim. After living in so many places though I think Hamilton is really awesome place. It's not yet trendy but it's still punk enough to be from. It's Canada's Portland, it's the tiny Apartment with the slanted walls that feels bigger then it actually is.

Song of the day: