When it rains, it pours.
It's finals week here at the University of Iowa. I'm in the lab studying for my AI final, taking a break to look back on the week.
Where to begin?
I suppose the main thing is the roommate. Everything else really pales in comparison to it - I suppose he's the real problem, dropped mightily on everything else I need to be taking care of.
I should have known he was going to be a problem in the house. He started the semester off by being fully a month late with the first month's rent. He kept whining about how his financial aid hadn't come in yet. I wouldn't be annoyed if he had a freaking job - he was taking four fluff classes, going to the bars every other night, and watching TV in his spare time. So his aid comes in, and he pays the landlord up to December. Huzzah! We will not be thrown out of our place due to insufficient funds!
He then goes on to order himself digital cable which will play on his brand-new 32" flat-screen television, whilst his favorite shows will be saved on his shiny new TiVo and archived onto VHS tapes. All of this new booty was placed on a newly purchased entertainment center, procured from the same store from which he purchased his new multi-level computer desk.
The rest of us hung our heads at this shopping spree, expecting trouble - which we got this past week, in armloads. First off, the cable modem service stopped. I called the cable company to find out why. Nothing was wrong, said they, just a temporary outage. We did, however, have near $200 in delinquent bills to pay by December 26th or both cable TV and internet service would be totally cut off. These bills were supposed to be paid by the roommate - we'd all been forking over our share. I ponied up three quarters of the outstanding dept to keep us running smoothly. Then, a check said roomate wrote to another roommate bounced. The check was to pay for around $150 in collect calls made to said roommate by his girlfriend. The bouncing of this check has precluded the latter roommate from scraping together the money he needs for tuition.
This whole time, the roommate has been back home, six hours away. He came back yesterday to take a couple finals. He was so damn sorry, he had no idea anything was wrong. He said he'd taken care of all the delinquent bills, and paid for this month by himself - don't worry guys, it's on me. He swore he'd have all the money he owes us by Friday.
So then we get a phone call from the landlord. He'd had a conversation with the roomate - seems he's "thinking" of vacating in mid-January, and had he spoken with us about it?
We went to his room to see what the deal was. He was gone - back home. All of his expensive stuff, the TiVo and TV and laptop were gone. Most of his stuff was all packed up in boxes. He knew he was going to leave, he was going snow us and just leave us in the lurch. That was the last straw. We called his home number, left a message to let him know that he was out of the house, and had a week to get his stuff out of there. We have a friend who'd love to live with us, so we'll fill the space.
I really hate to be such an ass to the guy, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. He's a lying jerk, and he's decided to lie in a jerky fashion over finals. He reaps what he's sown.