Who is going to have to move?

After a period of time of driving back and forth to San Jose on a monthly basis, Myz and I decided we wanted to be together long-term without the distance between us. Originally, I didn't want to move. I had lived in San Diego for more than 10 years and felt like I had settled in pretty well with regards to my friends and my involvement in the local music scene.

However, I remembered what happened the last two times I made someone move out from their home to be with me. Those turned out to be utter disasters and I didn't want Myz to go through that. I just knew she was going to be homesick and would be eternally angry at me that I took her away from her family. I was going to have to be the one to make the sacrifice this time. But I seriously didn't have to like it.

So, Myz and I started doing a little apartment hunting in San Jose. She found a decent-sized studio apartment, but I was hoping for at least a one-bedroom. At the apartment complex where this apartment was located, there was a significant difference between the cost of a studio and a one-bedroom. We decided to apply for the studio. The living area was somewhat larger than my current apartment, but there was less space in the kitchen and bathroom. We decided to apply and I started mentally preparing to make the move.

However, our application got turned down. Not because of the bankruptcy, but because of a negative mark on my credit report. There was some collection agency that I supposedly owed $900 to. This was a shock. Who were these people? I attempted to look them up on the Internet, but I could not find their phone number. I couldn't call them to straighten it out. When I ran my own credit report, I had to ask to have them send me information on the debt. When I got the information through the mail, it appeared that I had written bad checks to K-mart. I haven't written any checks in years. (I went into some details about missing checks from a couple of years earlier.) I know I was never contacted after I had stopped payment on those checks. I submitted a dispute through the credit reporting agency. Months later, I was informed that the negative marks on my report had been removed. But that still didn't help me at the time. We weren't able to get that apartment.

(A couple of years later, I applied and was approved for an apartment in San Jose. However, the owner told me that the credit report showed a dispute with K-mart. This was a different reporting agency that he used. Since he had gone ahead and approved me, I just didn't feel like having to go through the dispute process again. As far as I know, that mark is still on my record.)

So I continued to live in San Diego and work at Walmart for the next year. Then Myz found out about a new apartment building that was going to be affordable studio apartments for low income residents that would rent for $500 a month. She was going to apply for one. I figured that was a good deal and I decided that I would also apply for an apartment as well. We could both have our own apartments at the same building.

As it turns out, I got approved for the apartment. I set about making arrangments to transfer from the San Diego Walmart to the one in San Jose and put in my 30-day notice that I would be vacating my current apartment.

But Myz' application was rejected. It turned out her employer thought he was doing her a favor by embellishing her income. That wound up putting her outside the range for affordable housing. She was going to have to find a different apartment if she wanted to move out of her cousins' house.

Still, things were underway for me to make the move to San Jose.