The month is just over half over, and already things have gone and decided breaking is the thing to do. It started last week, with the near breaking of my plans to return home this past weekend–plans that were changed for other reasons, which will be elabourated on once the appropriate people have been properly hunted, nailed to the nearest wall, and my time and effort in aranging things is appropriately compensated–in blood, if necessary.

Then, earlier this week, the old blogging stomping grounds of LiveJournal, where I still occasionally show up mostly because I’ve yet to convert all the cool people away from it to much more fun things, decided it would be fun to break my LJ RSS hack. More specificly, one of their upgrades apparently broke their own authentication mechanism. That only ended up being fixed an hour ago–and not, laughably enough, before several people who were experiencing similar problems re: their RSS feeds had decided to bring it up quite blatantly in the dev community–I should really consider watching that community, now that I think about it.

Last night capped off the reason for renaming the month of August to the month of Broken. We needed to get laundry done. As in, like, ASAFP. Which turned out to be at just about midnight last night–hey, we never claimed to keep a normal schedule. That was around the exact same time we figured out that hey, this building’s supposed to have two working washers and two working dryers. This building has one of each. And the broken ones are broken in such a way that by the time we figure out they’re broken, we’ve wasted a dollar in each. Those are, to my knowledge anyway, still broken–we’re presently air-drying the affected articles of clothing. Sadly, my name isn’t on the lease here so I don’t get to personally scream in some poor maintenance bastard’s ear about it, but Jess will undoubtedly take amazing amounts of pleasure in doing exactly that just as soon as she can find 30 seconds to breathe.

Well into the third week of August, and we’ve already had plenty of things go breaky smash on a technical and non-technical front–an average of one per week at this rate. I’m officially renaming the month of August to the month of Broken. Now, to go whip something real quick up to make it official on this here website.

Take the act of actually paying your rent as a perfect example. If you happen to live somewhere like in Ottawa, failure to pay the rent on your part resulted in a warning of eviction notice on the part of the landlord a week or two later. It doesn’t matter if you have the money and they didn’t try to take it, or they tried and you didn’t have the money. Compare that to somewhere like Pembroke. Apparently, not taking one’s due rent–even if you have the cheque that says you can do so and even if the money exists–is perfectly fine. I might be inclined to say normal. Of course, equally normal–for the building I live in, anyway–is to not actually get your landlord on the phone to figure out if he does, indeed, intend to cash the said rent cheque, or if it’s just going to sit there collecting dust while he does I’m not sure what. I’ve lived here for almost a year now, and I think I’ve actually gotten him on the phone all of twice.

I handed him 6 months worth of rent cheques in April; he’s already cashed two of them. This month’s rent should have been drawn at the latest by the seventh of the month. As it’s currently ten days later, and I still have more money than I should, I’ve spent a large part of today trying to invent a means of geting him to wake up and answer his phone, short of showing up at his front door with cash in hand. If I can’t drag an answer out of the man by Monday, I’m halfway tempted to do just that.

I’ve been contemplating finding an apartment over here that may or may not be slightly cheaper than what I’m paying right now, in an attempt to stop my bank account from sliding in altogether the wrong direction. At the moment, cheaper or not, at this point I’d settle for a landlord that’s actually available. I’m not a huge fan of talking to someone’s voicemail–particularly voicemail on a cell phone. I’m an even less huge fan of it when we’re talking money owed that has not been collected. I’m significantly less of a huge fan when the owner of that cell phone who’s voicemail I’m forced to talk to is extremely bad at returning phone calls. I get the pleasure of having to contend with all three rolled up into one.

Tiny little note to my ever so pleasant landlord. I’m trying to give you money. Or, rather, I’ve given you permission to go right ahead and take my money. I’ve even given you that permission for the next four months. I have money, which you have not taken. Please to be rectifying this situation quickly, lest you like the idea of irritated blind man showing up at your front door. I can oblige, if you’d prefer. Personally, I’d just prefer you take my money. No love, the irritated blind man.

Also: He clearly loves his voicemail. Just called yet again. Is there a legal method for firing your landlord while still keeping the apartment?

Update: Superintendant dood doesn’t have an answer either. Yay multiple levels of stupid. Now we both get to wait for the guy or guys who actually own(s) the place. Go me.

I’ve been trying to find halfway decent ways to save me some money–cutting back on things where possible, changing companies if another company offers me a price significantly lower than what I’m paying now, and most recently, looking for possible places to call my temporary residence that end up being relatively cheaper than that which I’m currently staying in. On top of trying to get me properly educated, but that’s another entry. Since no one around here wants to hire folks in my particular fields, and since no one in Ottawa has gotten around to calling me back yet, saving money until either situation changes is the thing to do. Enter a bit of research being performed on my part over the last couple days.

There’s a possible building I’m looking at moving into. When I called about it on Friday, they didn’t have anything available. I got a call just a few minutes ago that one of the renters there may be looking to sublet the apartment. Over the course of the conversation, the process of 20 questions ended up starting. Around question 19, I was in full WTF mode. He asked if I was working at the moment, which–okay, I get it–you need to be paid. So do I. I told him I was presently on disability, but that I had been working. I didn’t tell him if I have my way I’ll either be working or back in school by this time next year, mostly because that would generally lead to me informing him I’d be moving out just as soon as either situation came to light. Then, he asked my age.

I’m not one to keep my age a secret by any means–I’m 26, if you’re curious–but, er, what does that have to do with my ability or willingness to pay the rent? I don’t get it. If it’s a disability thing, I’m kind of WTFing just a little more–but that, at least, isn’t altogether very surprising. But, still. I have money in hand. I want to give this landlord money. I can keep giving this landlord money until such time as either I go completely and totally broke or he raises his rent beyond my price range. My age has very little if anything to do with that. So, uh, what’s it to him? Anyone have a clue? Can I borrow it?

Sometimes, my apartment has the weirdest benefits. I blame living in a small town. I was treated to a rather unplanned–at least, I didn’t plan it–fireworks show for the May two-four weekend. Or, as we call it up here, the Victoria day weekend. It didn’t last entirely too long, but it was vaguely entertaining. Kinda makes me wonder what unplanned goodness I’ll be privy to for Canada day. Or if I’ll still be here to see it.

In randomly unrelated and still amusing news, I’ve gone all 24th century on my cell. My text message, instead of one of the default Nokia sounds the thing ships with, is now one of the com badge sound effects from Star Trek: Voyager. Because, well, I had it on the computer and didn’t have any other use for it. I was moderately amused. Still kind of am, a little. Or rather, I was–now I’m just lazy.

Sorry, no earth-shattering content here. Perhaps I should have saved my PAC-MAN rant for today? Oh well. I’d of still posted this anyway.

Thing about having a basement apartment, even if it’s in a building that lacks certain important features–like, say, security–is you have certain built-in benefits at no extra cost, be it for electricity or the extra convenience. Like small-time central air. I think it’s a law internal to the building. Usually, it doesn’t matter what part of the building I end up in. If it’s warm outside, it’s pretty nearly hot in here. Step into the hallway and it kind of slaps you in the face. But, step into this apartment, and holy crap. Temperature drops a good 10-15 degrees the second the door closes. I almost never open the windows in here. It’d be a sort of violation of the laws of summer, I swear. In here, the laws work in reverse. And at no extra cost. I can live with that. I can really live with that. Now, let’s see if it keeps being liveable in about, oh, August.

I haven’t been spending a whole lot of time in this apartment, particularly when compared to how long I’ve been paying rent on it. But, there’s one very noticeable thing that always seems to be present every time I am. A very bad-sounding, apparently constantly in heat, cat. I didn’t pay it much mind when I first moved in, mostly because I had no idea what it was and, well, was home even less than I am lately. The cat and its owner live right across the hall from me, so anyone who happens to be dropping buy, or standing close enough to this side of the outer door of the apartment, gets treated to a very entertaining meow.

We initially thought the cat might have been sick and/or left alone–particularly considering it’d been keeping it up for almost the entire time Jessica was here after Christmas. So I had little to no choice but to get the landlord over to have a look and make sure. Shortly thereafter, we discovered a note posted to she who shall be officially dubbed Catwoman’s door explaining the cat hadn’t been abandoned/starved/what have you, just that it was in heat. A week, two weeks, three weeks later, and it seemed the cat was still doing that. There might have been small breaks in between, but it seemed every time I left or came back to my apartment, that cat was always in heat. And, sure enough, to this day the note still remains stuck to her door. And I thought I heard it go off again this afternoon.

If I had some kind of decent recording equipment handy I’d post a sample of this cat’s vocalisations up here, mostly because it tries very hard to sound pathetic and instead comes off more slightly amusing. Still, Catwoman maintains the thing’s just in heat–I don’t even know how long a cat’s supposed to be in heat. And, since I can’t prove otherwise, all I can do right now is be highly amused. And try to get a halfway decent recording. Anyone wanna loan me something portable that does MP3 recording? Anyone?

I spent almost 4 years in Ottawa, on the third floor of a three-story building you couldn’t get into without buzzing in, or having a key for the front door–this on top of the key you had for your apartment. Jessica’s building in Rochester takes it a step further, needing a key to get into the building, a key to get onto your floor, and a key to get into your apartment. This building in Petawawa? You have a key to get into your apartment. Well, actually you have two, but who’s counting? And this building gets something the other two I mentioned don’t seem to get–or at least, they get very rarely if at all. Folks coming around marketting their own electricity initiatives.

I get an average of one of these people knocking on my door on a weekly basis. And, of course, not being able to know who’s there until I open the door, I take a chance it might not be someone trying to sell me something. And every time I’ve done so, it’s been any number of situations from people who’d just like to see my hydro bill, to people who just want to tell me about the green initiatives their particular company/organization/what have you is offering. To one offer I’ve received asking if I’d be interested in locking in my hydro and/or gas prices for 5 years. And every time, my response is the same–I point at the door leading out of the building, with a polite suggestion that they go that way.

I received a grand total of one such offer while living in Ottawa. And they were stupid enough to try pitching that offer to me over the intercom system the building has. They, of course, got hung up on. I don’t have that option here, so to get rid of them, they first have to be effectively standing on my doorstep. I swear, just as soon as I can twist a governmental arm far enough back that it decides it’d be in its best interest to increase disability payments–or just as soon as I can get myself hired again, whichever comes first, my next move will be back to a secure building. Ideally I’d much rather see that type of marketting made illegal, but since that’s not very likely to happen, I’ll take my secure building. Besides, there’s something to be said for having a little warning when you’re getting company–welcome or not. Gives me time to hide my porn magazines. Er, wait, I didn’t say that.

For about two or three months before I moved to Pembroke, I scouted the apartment listings for a halfway decent place that doesn’t knee me in the wallet. The very few places I found that didn’t were, well, closets. My room during my time at Algonquin College was considerably bigger–they pretended to call it a bachelor. And, of course, now that I’ve found this apartment to fake my way through calling home for a price that almost doesn’t knee me in the wallet, halfway decent places for almost halfway decent prices started becoming available. Now, just when I can’t actually move into a place like that. Somebody clearly has a very cruel sense of humour. Nice to know such creatures exist, though. Now, if they just could have showed up while I was still looking.

Unless I’d like to devote half my small amount of spending money to cab fair, laundromat fairs and replacing half the supplies I don’t get back from the said laundromat, apparently. At the beginning of the year, I discovered this building’s dryers rather suck when it comes to actually, you know, drying. But in order to find that out, it required I first take 25 minutes to convince it that it wanted to take my money. After a long conversation that involved the temporary use of my mail key to complete payment, and actually force the thing to accept my money, I discovered I’d of been better off not bothering. Getting my clothes roughly equivalent to dry would cost just about twice what it cost me to wash the things. Instead, after having a very short conversation with the landlord, I decided my parents wanted to see me more often anyway. Now they had a reason.

And, because technological screw-ups always happen in at least twos, while not hearing back from the landlord on the building’s machines, my parents’ washing machine decided to take a permanent vacation. So now it’s temporarily laundromat or nothing for all of us, at least until their replacements get there–fortunately it shouldn’t be more than 3 days. Or, in corporate speak, whenever they get around to it. They say bad things happen in threes. well, I just ran out of laundry things to go break. Any guesses what’s next?

My apartment in Ottawa had its moments of sheer and utter amusement. Not the least of which is the lower floor that, after about midnight or so, took on a decidedly potlike quality. Usually I only happened to notice because I was, as always, up at that hour–only doing laundry instead of my usual routine of, well, doing nothing. Of course there was the lazy and plenty of it, but it wasn’t *all* lazy.

I’d actually gotten used to not being able to giggle amusedly at the fact some poor fool was pretty much baking his brain on a day when most folks would be considering maybe existing just enough to think about going to work. Then I decided to come down to Rochester.

Jess and I were in the midst of getting done with the week’s laundry, and were distracted with talking so much that I didn’t immediately notice, but when we did, I had to keep myself from bursting out laughing in the middle of the hallway. Right there, in my girlfriend’s apartment building’s basement, the potlike quality made its reappearance. My regular source of amusement didn’t abandon me, it just moved in with Jessica. The mocking shall resume.

I keep threatening to do that post about what the hell happened to me since the last time I was actively blogging (Um, LJ-ing, perhaps?). Well, consider this my attempt at doing so. I’ll warn you in advance there will probably be things that get missed–it *has* been about 4 months, after all.

For starters, there were more than a few trips across the Canada/US border between myself and Jessica, who’s rarely updated LJ is over here for anyone who doesn’t already read her. Things in that department I don’t think can get much better. Well, beyond the elimination of the border but eh, that’s coming. Beyond that, I’ve been doing a lot more experimentation with Gentoo, my for the moment linux distribution of choice. I’d messed around very briefly with Debian and Ubuntu, but couldn’t get quite what I wanted out of those distributions. That, plus I rather like a challenge and Gentoo definitely provides that. I kept an old HP laptop around for the purposes of experimentation–and, actually, it was the same laptop I did most of my blogging on in the old days–so I can break it 6 ways from Sunday and not really be set back more than a couple hours’ tinkering. Works perfectly fine for me. In addition to that, I’ve been continuing to pound pavement in hopes of landing me a job. Not an easy thing to do when every day the unemployment line gets longer, but we manage. This in between trips to catch up with family, because… well, you know, they don’t tend to like it when you avoid them for long stretches at a time.

Then there was the move. I’d spent the last year and a half or so on employment insurance while I looked for work, thus enabling to keep my rather nice–even if I do say so myself–apartment in Ottawa’s west end. Not having found anything though, it became necessary for me to find somewhere else to call home lest I end up going very broke very quickly. So, on October 23rd, everything I own and a few things I forgot I owned got stuffed into one box or another, and carted an hour and a half away to this, a basement apartment who’s upstairs neighbour has perhaps one of the creakiest floors I’ve heard in my life. Now, I’m still looking for work, still finding time to do a little geeking, and still–at least, as of about 2 weeks from yesterday–making trips across the border when I have the time, money and transportation. Not a whole lot has changed, save for my mailing address–which I’m still finding things that didn’t get the notification of that change–and the fact some things in life just plain aren’t as convenient as they were a month ago. But, win some, lose some. That be life.

Once I have the space in this apartment, and everything I’ll immediately need to do so out of boxes and set up, I plan to get back into tweeking the laptop and making things work just that much better. And, with a little luck and a small miracle, it might result in me accidentally coming up on a skill or three I can put in a resume. Never hurts to say you can do something, particularly when that something didn’t require you shell out money you don’t have for a college/university education. Of course, if I don’t get that out of it, then maybe I’ll just have a computer I can use should I ever decide to wipe windows off this one. Either way, I can’t find a down side here.

Well, that’s the summer and part of spring in a nutshell. Not very exciting, just… chaotic, really. Semi-organized chaos, but still. And if this is any indication, the next couple months don’t plan to be any different. Which, surprisingly, is how I like it. Can’t very well go researching new and somewhat impressive things to buy if you don’t have time to, after all.

This just started earlier tonight, but every so often, I’ll hear what sounds like someone/thing hitting the cieling below me. Except, it/they only bang once, and then that’s it. It happens by the sounds of it every couple hours or so. Apparently completely at random. I are having none of the idea what the hell’s going on, since I don’t really hear anything else going on down there. If it happens again, I’m half tempted to throw my day clothes back on and go knock on a door. They’re lucky I’m not sleeping right now, whatever that is. Or my half awake ass would be getting all up in someone’s face. And just for effect and to see what kind of reaction I’d get from whoever’s doing it, I’d be bringing the stick. Yeah, *that* stick. Blindies know the benefits of *that* stick around other people. Fortunately for them, though, I live mostly at night. So all it gets out of me is a mighty large wtf. Well, okay, and a random semi-rant on LJ. But it’s my LJ, goddammit, I’ll semi-rant if I damn well wanna. There’s plenty of other shtuff to read if you’d rather not read mine.

Dear landlord: why in the name of everything did you wait until *now* to tell me the bank decided I’m too poor to pay my rent? I understand the banks are generally run by morons with approximately half the IQ of my biggest pimple, but I honestly expected something resembling inteligence from you folks. It’s friday. You’re barely open past lunch tomorrow. The bank is probably barely open past lunch tomorrow. You want me to pay you ZOMG naow plz. Oh, yeah, and you send me a letter stating so, dated today, telling me to call superintendant lady like right bloody now or else. Except she’s not working until tomorrow. And barely past lunch time. Again I say, what. the. fuck? Words cannot describe the level of stupid this just blew right on past. They can’t. You fail.

No love,
Me.

Dear RBC: Die. Die die die. I am not broke. I was not broke on the second of the month, when they tried to cash my rent check. I am even more not broke now, because my rent check, for reasons beyond my comprehension, decided to bounce. So why, pray tell, did you tell my landlord upon trying to cash my rent check that I’m broke? I fail to understand the mentality here. Or maybe you fail at making sense. I mean, I love that you’ve escentially given me more money with which to play, but next time, can it please please pretty please not come from that which you should be giving to people with the power to kick me out of my apartment? Urg. I’d say you should be shot, but that would be a waste of a perfectly good bullet.

Die in a goddamn grease fire,
Me.

Siiiigh. My headache, let me share it.

ETA: Going to collect money order tonight. Still want to drop kick somebody.

Every 3-4 months or so, my land lord or maybe the super intendant, one of the two, comes around and does their quarterly inspections of the fire alarm system. Which, roughly speaking, translates to setting it off several dozen times on some random afternoon. And, with the exception of maybe one, I’ve been home every. single. bloody. time. Sadly, half the time sleeping (I did used to work nights, y’know). On the bright side, I know it’ll wake me up in case of an actual emergency. On the not so bright side, can westop playing with ‘em now? They work already…

Jessica’s birthday went off without so much as a hickup. We spent the majority of the day just hanging out and talking, and I gave her her next and last birthday gift. It was a foot warmer from mom, which turned out to be appropriate thanks largely to the fact we had a slightly colder than usual night and it only served to confirm that yet, in fact, the heat in here isn’t working quite as well as I’d of liked. So there will be phone calls made about that momentarily. I took Jess out for dinner last night, dropping in for a couple hours at Montana’s Cookhouse. For the record, I’m ever so slightly reminded of a restaurant we went to during my initial trip down there. Except, of course, it’s in Canada. So it’s better. By default. Now we’re both sort of awake and hanging out in my living room; she’s checking her email, and we’re both just doing that thing where we be like 6 different kinds of lazy. Eventually, the plan is to take off for the parentals’ place and the coming Christmas cellebrations (translation: eat ’til you puke, drink ’til you puke, and get up early-ish). As for immediately right now, though? This apartment needs some serious heatage. Like wo.

As generally hinted at by other entries posted here, Jessica (samari76) made it here with absolutely no difficulty whatsoever. Well, once she found herself a bus that was actually leaving when it was supposed to. She managed to get herself aboard the bus leaving at 8:15, since her usual bus was cancelled thanks to the queen bitch that is mother nature. She didn’t end up getting in until about 9:00 on saturday, much thanks to one delay or another; be it trafic, scheduling, or people taking too damn long. She was tired as all get out, so we crashed relatively early (well, early for us on a saturday, anyway). We slept in extra late yesterday, then were significantly more lazy than is usual for us while she recovered a bit more from her trip. Spent the rest of that day just talking, and catching up on things. I gave her one of her birthday presents yesterday, the 9th season of Everybody Loves Raymond. There’s another one here for her, but being as she’s both in this very room righrt now and reading over her friends list, I won’t be saying what it is on here, but thanks for coming out. There are plans in the works for later on today, assuming I can get a hold of specific individuals. But first, I’ll need to nail someone to the wall regarding our apparent lack of heating in the place. See, this is what happens when you’re not actually sleeping in your own bed for a couple weeks at a timie; the major cold sets in, and you don’t notice it until you get to being here with, um, company. So that’s the basic plan for the day. And, though I’ve already said it in person, I’ll say it here anyway because, well, it’s me. Happy birthday, Jessica! Hopefully this year’s as good for you or better than the last one.

Random observation: honey garlic wings, while being supremely divine in their awesomeness, make my apartment smell really, really good.

Or maybe it’s just a this morning thing. I’d of posted about this yesterday when I first found out about it, but that would require reasonably functional internets. I went to do laundry yesterday morning, at like 4:00 or so (I have no idea why, other than the fact I’m back on my lack of work schedule, officially and for reals), and discovered that the usual $1.5 it costs me to actually clean my clothes wasn’t working for that particular trip. Justifiably irritated, I packed up my shit, went back upstairs, and made a note to call the landlord about it when someone was actually in the office to check the phone. In other words, today. So this morning, hoping against hope I wasn’t the only one who needed to do laundry yesterday and that someone else had called the emergency number about it (I could have lasted another day or two if need be), I went back to check. And sure enough, what’d probably been there yesterday but, you know, we can’t all see when someone’s trying to pull one over on us, was a signal the price had gone up. I found it completely by accident when I decided to try that one again. So now it’s $1.75 to actually get things sorted out that way. Which, roughly translated, means it now costs me a dollar more to do the usual amount of laundry I’ve had to do for the past year and a half or so. On top of the fact my rent’s gone up about $25 in that time. Can we say wtf, boys and girls?

It did prompt a little tiny bit of creativity during the bored that is my waiting for laundry to get done. So as of 5:30 this morning, note2landlord was created. I always figured the logic behind it can’t be too complicated. That, of course, being I’m surely not the only one who’s renting from the clueless. Join if you wanna, or don’t. I’m just tossing it out there. Because occasionally, I do that kinda thing.

From about mid-October or early November to mid to late March, the neighbourhood where I live is pretty much a dead zone. I mean, understandably; no one in their right mind would willingly risk prolonged exposure to -20 degree temperatures. But it’s just such a huge freaking difference between that and, for instance, what I walked past coming home today. I almost wished for maybe 3 seconds I could see well enough to take a picture or two. Which, would require that I first be able to see at all, but that’s only a minor technicality. I must have walked past at least 3 different baseball games on the way home. All pretty well on the same street, too. Kinda gave the city a little of the small town feel in a way. Which is kinda nice, considering that’s sort of the environment I spent most of my life in (millitary bases were pretty much just small towns with actual purpose for the most part). And that particular street’s usually quiet enough if you’re lucky, you could walk down it towards my place and maybe count on one hand the cars that pass by you. If it wasn’t for the fact I’m fucking starving and didn’t really feel much like standing around, I’d of just kinda hung around and listened for a few minutes. Because really, it’s the often not noticed crap like that that only confirms moving here when I did for the reasons I did turned out to be a damn good thing. Not that I need the confirmation, but it’s always nice just the same.

Okay, so it wasn’t really doing all that much before it uncerimoniously decided to kick the bucket. Oh well. Murlynns_view, her husband, and I spent a couple hours when we got back from Pembroke last week setting it up. We had it running for a bit on Tuesday, after we finished getting it in place and discovered that the lid to the internal water tank needed to be positioned just so (and, for the record, exactly not the way the instructions say to position it) for the AC to even turn on. If positioned *properly*, it slides in uber extremely easily. And out the same way. Except the AC behaves like it’s not there. So we fought with it for a bit on tuesday, we got it to run supervised (I had to practically babysit it for the evening so it didn’t turn my kitchen floor into a small lake) that night by positioning the lid in a way that it had no choice but to actually keep the AC unit turned on. Of course, this meant that supposed beneficial feature of the AC unit being able to turn off automaticly to prevent flooding was pretty much negated. It also meant that the tank was a uberbitch to get in, and out again to empty it (fortunately it wasn’t full when I turned it off that night). And of course, putting it in the exact same way afterwards did absolutely nothing to get the thing to come back on. Royal pain in my ass, that is. So we again fought with it for an hour or so yesterday, and between the 3 of us decided the thing was designed to be a piece of crap. So when next I meet up with someone with a set of wheels, the thing’s going back to the nearest Canadian Tire, and I’m force feeding the first person to tell me there’s nothing wrong with it my extended warranty. So Now I’m back in pre-AC mode. Which means those stupid little restrictor things my oh so caring landlord put in the windows so they don’t open more than maybe 5-6 inches are coming out, and those things are open as wide as they go. As for my landlord? He can either put an AC in these apartments or stand in one spot for a couple minutes while I take those restrictor plates and break them over his head. Since he probably won’t be too inclined to do that, I look forward to getting a letter saying he’ll put AC in these apartments. Though he may not be quite so inclined to do that, either. Cheap bastard.

Seeing as, you know, I’ve got time now that I’m installing windows for someone. Woot and such. So for the first time in all of… hmm, maybe a week, I actually didn’t drag my ass out of bed before 7:00 this morning. By choice, even. I likes me my sleep… sue me. Ended up throwing things together for lunch, finding something to call clothing and still got here in plenty of time to not be late to work. And it’s been pretty well non-stop since then. With the exception of this morning’s break, which I caught up on paperwork and threw together something resembling a post on this here thing, I haven’t really been off the phone since I got here. Not complaining, it’s just… unusual. Yesterday and monday were pretty well, um, written off. So I was kinda hoping today’d be more of that. Not so much.

The weather forecast does look like we’re gonna catch another pouring at some point today, so at least I won’t stick to myself when I get my lazy ass the hell home tonight. I love that apartment, but 3-4 days of 30+ degree temperatures plus top floor apartment? Yeah, not pretty. Note to Wall Mart: I am *so* not paying $300+ for a $80 AC unit, thankyamuch and die in a goddamn fire. Okay I’m over it now. And going back to actually doing my job. Hmm, I thought I said there’d be substance.

• My intercom decided not to work last night. In fact, the intercom apparently building-wide crapped out. I did not find out about this until delivery came with bad for me food. someone did not want me to order out, apparently. I, as usual, elected not to listen.
• I’m getting off the bus about halfway to work (I have to switch buses, le sigh), and this random girl comes up to me. “Are you Jeff?” I’m thinking, um, buh? But all I actually say is, “Nope, I’m James.”. She promptly walks off. Again, buh?

I could be persuaded. All this thing needs is AC and I give my 60 days’ notice next week. I think I’ve just discovered what part of my time off this summer will consist of. Sweet Jesus I have too much time on my hands.

So I finally get around to opening the letter someone stuck in my door last night, uh, this morning. And it turns out ye ol’ landlord has decided to up my rent by $25/month. I’m already taking it on the chin a little bit as it is considering this here apartment doesn’t come with AC and I’m still paying for my electricity on top of that. Ah well, once the employment situation’s been kinda widdled down to something resembling a secure job (I know, it’s a myth, but let me have my goddamn dream.), I’ll tackle the apartment situation. For now though, the place isn’t exactly half bad. One bedroom, easy to clean when I’m motivated enough to do so, and built in such a way that on the nicer days I can open up the windows and pretty much have a breeze wherever I happen to be. Still though, I’m not getting a whole lot out of this rent hike. Which means I’ll be apartment hunting by summer provided job hunting pans out by then. They say bad news comes in 3′s. Well, I’ve got 2.

It’s a small apartment building, so if someone downstairs starts into the cooking, it gets up here in a real hurry. I never bothered taking any kind of time to learn to cook–it’s just me, I’d be cooking for 1 on most if not all occasions, so what the hell for? But in this particular instance I almost, almost wish I had. So instead I’m ordering pizza. And they tell me my logic’s gone screwy.