I’m pretty comfortable where I live. I like the neighbourhood and the rent is reasonable for the amount of space I have.

It’s not perfect. It’s kind of in a parking lot, and it’s dark in the morning, but I’m used to it. I can go out on the front porch and watch the world go by, and I also have a side porch for breakfast on summer mornings. It’s close to where I work so I can walk or ride my bike year-round.

The view from my front porch in the evening

My side porch in the morning

Now my landlord is moving in upstairs. He’s in the middle of renovating. Yesterday he installed some kind of burglar alarm that beeps once per second. It’s very annoying!

There’s going to be a problem with hot water. I already have to battle the woman in apartment 3 to get to take a shower between 7 and 8 AM. That’s only going to get worse once my landlord and his wife and small children are also trying to have morning showers.

He says he’s going to put a washer and dryer in the front hallway, right outside my front door. This is bound to be noisy and it will place even more strain on the hot water situation. I think they should go to the Tang Coin Laundry like I do, but I guess they don’t see it that way.

My landlord and his wife have a toddler and they are expecting another child. I don’t have anything against little kids but I know what it’s like to live downstairs from little kids. They don’t walk, they run. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

What to do? I don’t want to move but I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet.

I don’t know whether to move deeper into Chinatown or else try another neighbourhood, such as the Glebe. When I’m down in the Glebe total strangers sometimes say hi to me because I look like I belong there. Some people might like that but for myself, I don’t like to seem so predictable. I prefer not to buy into a demographic. In Chinatown hardly anybody says hi to me and I kind of prefer it that way.

I find moving very stressful and I don’t like to do it. I guess the best plan is to wait and see how it is with my landlord and his family living upstairs. If it doesn’t work out I could move in the spring. The best time to move in Ottawa is in May when the students clear out. But that is 6 months away!

Here’s my landlord. He’s not a bad guy. I just think it might not work out.