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2004-10-04 @ 12:12 a.m. |
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Well, that about says it all. So I'm somewhat anxiously awaiting a peek at the Vice Presidential debate Tuesday night. Or as we're calling it at our house....Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vadar. Hope Cheney has his nitro patch on. Hope Edwards tones down his sunny infomercial personality a notch. Not much happened today except for a beautiful 5 mile autumn walk on the lake. Lots of people were out enjoying the nice, coolish weather. We have an awful lot of roller bladers out on the trail. I've never roller bladed before. I'm kind of sloth-like. Not sure if I could do anything that required speed and velocity. And besides, I like to enjoy the scenery and look at seagulls and grasshoppers and butterflies and examine the beautiful falling leaves and notice that between five large trees there were 5 perfectly framed sailboats. It looked like an image Martha Stewart might have used for a story on yachting. I may spew out a lot of angst and anger here, but I am also a very nature oriented girl. I love walking. I love feeling a breeze press against my face. Occasionally on the lake, if nobody is walking towards me on the trail, I will walk along with the eyes closed. Its a very pleasant, if not sensual sensation, to trust yourself to nature. You can really hear a lot of things, like the rustle of bird wings of seagulls flying overhead or tree leaves clattering against each other or the distant sound of children laughing. You also really need to feel trust. Trust that you won't bump into anyone or fall off the edge of the paved area and break your neck. But it feels really cool. Of course, if you're blind, it probably loses its cool factor after about 5 minutes, but for me, its an interestingly tactile experience. So I gave my Eye-talian landlord the rent this morning and kind of hinted about something kinda important in these parts in early October....namely: HEATShe has to turn on my furnace down in the basement. And unfortunately I have to "remind" her each year. I didn't know that last year. I had just moved in in September and didn't exactly know what the heat-turning-on protocol was. But as it turns out, it was as follows: Since we (the landlord) have to pay for it, we won't turn it on until it snows...unless you really beg, plead and grovel for it. I can do that. Legally in my city, all renters are supposed to have heat available to them by September 15. And we're having our first frost tonight. And you would think I wouldn't have to remind her...as in we're having FROST tonight, you know frost...as in frozen ice crystals depicting cold temperatures. I guess it didn't dawn on her that little witty might need some heat. Of course, this is a little better than one apartment I had. They never put the heat on until October 15th, and by then we had had frost like 4 times. I must have called the management office like 4 times in two weeks, and they kept saying they were putting someone on it. Of course this was the same apartment that had my hot water turned so low in December, it was barely lukewarm. So I bitched and bitched about it and I had some rental office dimwit telling me it was as high as it legally HAD to be. I felt like asking her if she would eat off a dish washed in lukewarm water. I finally managed to nail this one maintenance guy who I had always been friendly with and he came in and pumped up my hot water heater by like 5-8 degrees and it was heavenly. Unfortunately, once my hot water was pumped up, over a Christmas weekend, when it was only about 5 degrees out, the heating went out. I had ice on the inside of my windows. I tried to call the offices but they were closed and none of the maintenance men were working so I had to sit in a frigid apartment for 3 days. Merry Christmas to me. This was also the same apartment which had a thriving mouse population. Guardcat loved it. She thought she was in Rodents bar at the Outback Steakhouse. Everynight I would hear her running around and sliding on the hardwood floors chasing vermin all over the apartment. I'm not particularly scared of mice, but finding bloodied mice carcasses on the floor every morning was just not very appetizing. So I finally called our ever-pleasant rental office for help once again. I didn't want to KILL the mice, I just wanted them to plug up whatever hole they were coming in (I think it was under the kitchen sink). I specifically told them NO VIOLENCE...as in no mouse crushing devices. The mouse invasion did get slightly better after that but then I started to smell this really rancid smell. My first thought was that it was the cat box, but it OK, so I decided to start look further. I finally looked under the sink and found a rotting crushed mouse carcass in a spring loaded mouse trap. I was so furious. I called the rental office the next day both crying and yelling at their incompetance and cruelty. They finally sent over, yet another maintenance guy (I got to know all of them, because they came to my apartment so often) and he put down several humane mouse traps under my sink. And I got my first visitor in the first day. I looked under there and lifted up the trap and it felt a little heavy and then I looked and saw some little beady eyes. Me: Awwww, a cute little mousie! So I brought it outside and tried to dump the poor bugger out onto a picnic table, but he was too terrified to come out. I tapped and tapped on it until he came out in a clump. He stood there dazed for a moment, looked up at me and then leapt off the picnic table in a single bound and probably headed straight for the hole into my apartment again. Finally the apartment management sent somebody to clog up all the holes under the sink and I no longer had a mouse problem. See how easy that was guys? I mean it only took 3 months. Guardcat, of course, was distraught. She no longer had an endless supply of four legged hor's doerves. Older Entries |
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Lyrics by Lennon/McCartney. All angst copyright by awittykitty |
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