Blergh

The negatives of the new apartment are led off by the smoke smell. It really is very strong, inadequately covered by the floral carpet deodorizer they used to try and hide it. The wall to wall carpet and non-accessible layout are minor by comparison (the layout is not at all as bad as it could be, I can get to all important places especially after we invest in vinyl carpet runners). After lots of research and thought, we have already done as much as we can by ordering the air purifier. The heat and water are free, which most likely means we share our air with all the other apartments, at least those in our wing, and will not have access to the air ducts as we would in a private residence. Likely at least one source of the odor is the coating of tar in the ducts by the many years of people smoking.
We will look into finding charcoal-impregnated cloth/filter material that we can cut to fit our vents, if the air purifier is not enough.
After we get a vacuum cleaner better than the little one we have, we can use baking soda to try and neutralize the smell from the carpet. In the meantime, we will crack the windows and do the best we can to ignore what we can't change.
We are into the hard slog portion of the move. Oscar is exhausted. He has made good progress, but he feels like he is not doing enough each day. Hopefully a good night's sleep will improve his outlook.
I have a busy day of packing ahead of me, with some cooking for the week to come thrown in.