subletting

we are subletting the apartment we're staying in here in santa monica. this guy posted his apartment on craigslist, and we emailed him, and then we skyped, and then we sent him $1600 for the first month's rent and $800 for a security deposit. crazy? YES. it was a bit terrifying up until the moment we walked into our apartment and knew that it really existed and that we really had keys to it and all that jazz. but hey, it worked out!

when we skyped with him, the guy said that he "wasn't sure if it would be too small for two people." this made us laugh, because it's at least the same size as our apartment in provo. i don't know what he thought we were expecting, but we obviously are not very fancy because it's working out just fine.

there are some odd things about living in someone else's place, though. for example:

-who knows how well he washes his dishes and cleans the bathroom? there's no dishwasher here and there weren't many cleaning supplies. husband of the year did a fabulous cleaning job in the bathroom after which the mysterious dirty smell has pretty much gone away.
-he doesn't seem to believe in using a dresser, so we hung up whatever we could and are literally living our of our suitcases all summer for the rest of our clothes.
-he didn't seem too concerned with clearing out much of his stuff for us when we got here. pretty much all of the shelves/drawers/spaces are full of his stuff, so we just spend have all of our stuff sitting in piles all around the apartment.
-we don't know ANYTHING about this guy, so we've been trying to act like sherlock holmes and learn whatever we can about him based on the stuff he's left around the apartment. like:

• a guitar
• movie scripts interspersed with his actual books on the shelves
• gun shells in the front room
• a smashed iPhone just left sitting on the side table
• a really nice bike tommy's been using to get to work
• canadian mac and cheese in the kitchen
• asian (chinese?) vases on the bookshelves
• a bong in the front room
• jay-Z's autobiography as a coffee table book
• mayonnaise and mustard in the fridge that both expired over a year ago
• no DVDs but several movie posters on the walls
• NOTHING for the oven (no cookie sheets, pans, or hot pads--he's obviously not a baker). 

old sherlock would have a field day subletting someone's apartment. unfortunately, we're not very skilled--all we have concluded is that he's probably an aspiring screenwriter and away for the summer doing a creative writing workshop (based on how he told us he was going to iowa for "school" over the summer).

the funny thing is, we're also subletting (kind of) our apartment in durham to some friends in the ward who sold their house earlier than they actually wanted to move. it makes me wonder what they're learning about us and what they think of us now that they're living in our space. . . . i kind of doubt that we're half as interesting or eclectic as this character.