Dark Water Update; A Convo with my Super

First of all, thanks to a conversation with Becca, I'm now convinced a ghost is living in my ceiling hole.

Today I got home from work and thankfully there didn't seem to be too much leakage. Though my pot placement seemed to be about half an inch off, my mastery with a plastic sheet proved itself. I went to pee, and around the same time, my ceiling decided to also. I made sure all the water was being caught and everything properly protected and called my super.

let me just preface this by saying my super is a very nice man and in my experience with him has always been very helpful.

Sara: Hi Humbert*. It's Sara in Apt. X**
Humbert: Hi.
S: Umm, I was told to call you to make an appointment about repairing the hole in my ceiling
H: Yes?
S: So when are you available?
H: Umm..well...lemme think...uh...well, I think the earliest is Wednesday.
S: My concern is that it's started leaking, so I don't want my place to get covered in water.
H: Oh, it's started leaking?
S: Yes, it leaked a little on Saturday and a lot came out yesterday.
H: Umm, when are you home?
S: I'm working all week, so I won't be home until at least 7 every day. I'm here all weekend though.
H: Well, we get off at 5, and the weekend's are my days off.
S: (shocked silence) Okay, well there's a lot of water coming into my living room. Would it be possible for me to leave it open for you to come and fix while I'm gone?
H: I'd need to check upstairs and see where the leak is coming from. (discussion about where the hole is located). So I guess I could look upstairs on Wednesday and come see you on Wednesday.
S: Okay...
H: Okay. Bye.

___

WTF?? oh, i'm sorry you have a GIANT FUCKING HOLE in your ceiling and a copious amount of UNIDENTIFIED LIQUID is spilling out onto your tv room, the room you value most, right over your lifelong collection of dvd's and books, the tv and dvr and playstation you cherish so, but i stamp my timecard at 5 pm SHARP, and i don't work on the weekends, even though my schedule is as UNREASONABLE as a bank's.

ugh.

also, does this mean i should or should not make the apartment easily accessible for him? i feel like it was unclear.

*name changed for absolutely no reason **apartment changed because i don't want any more stalkers.

wuz not seeling cat

Here is part two of what i'm hoping will be only a three part saga.

As soon as i saw that my ceiling had thrown up, I called my super. He said he'd be up in a minute, but then i got an immediate call back from some guy that must've been right next to him saying that Nyron (my super) had to step out for "5" but he'd come up as soon as he returned. This was approximately 1:00pm. At 7:30 pm (there goes my day), the old fellow who lives directly below me and is another one of the super's lackeys knocked at my door. He told me that Nyron would not be able to make it to me today, probably not until monday, but that he was there to check it out. He walks in, looks at my hole (ceiling hole you filthos) and goes "Woah". He then says that he has similar stuff in his apartment, all throughout the apartment (yikes) because someone upstairs is leaking. He also told me that exact spot had been repaired before (not well enough obviously). He went to his apartment to get some bags and said he'd be right back to clean it up. When he returned, he went to work cutting away the paint and removing the parts of ceiling. He asked me if it was dry...i told him it had been dry all day, but when i discovered it, it was obvious that some stuff had gotten wet. He very kindly wiped up my shelves with a rag and swept the floor up (after profusely apologizing that he couldn't bring his vaccuum because the bag was full). He then...umm..kind of diapered my ceiling with a small white trash bag to cover the hole, holding it in place with scotch tape. He then told me that nyron would be in touch to make an appointment, and took his leave.

At one point later in the day, a tiny bit of water started trickling out...and as you may or may not know, scotch tape does not hold up well to water... so i put an extra bag he left on top of my bookshelf. This is now what phase two looks like:



This brings us to Sunday. I get up, go to boxing, come home, do my laundry, and do a little bit of apartment cleaning. All of this physical activity has wiped me out, so i stumble over to my bed. I wake up about thirty minutes later and wonder who is in the shower. Then I fly up and run to the living room to see water pouring out of my ceiling hole. because of the nifty way i fashioned the shelf bag, the water is being diverted away from my tv and electronics, but still falling straight to the floor and also a little bit on my guitar amp. i think i'm acting fast when i run to save my amp, but realize it was a poor idea to step in a huge puddle of water with my socks. so i throw those off, pull my pants off (hott!), and grab some towels to throw on the ground. then i throw my largest water catching item, a pot, under the ceiling hole. Finally, i wrap the cords and outlets to protect them from water. At this point, the water has stopped coming out...I set up one more bag over my tv/electronics in case this happens again while i'm out.

so, this really sucks. i'm not home until after seven for the rest of the week, so who knows when i can get this hole fixed. also, what the hell is this huge leak? shouldn't that water be in pipes? no wonder the ceiling fell! how long was it holding up that amount of water daily? and if it affects my apartment and the apartment below mine, why is it just being covered up instead of repaired? i mean...if you're gonna raise my rent, the least i can expect is a literal roof over my head, right?

nice knowing ya

I had the news on this morning as I was getting ready for work, and there was a story about an explosion that went off in times square. since i work in times square, i started paying attention. There is this little traffic island in the middle of times square known as Military Island (a recruiting center), and apparently there was some sort of explosion early this morning resulting in a pile of glass right outside the building. This made me a little nervous, but the news didn't seem too concerned, so i headed off to work. When i walked past military island (it's like, half a block from my building) i indeed saw the pile of glass and the broken glass doors. cops were surrounding the island (luckily, military island is right next to a little cop station [but not like cops can protect anyone from explosions]) looking all official. My attention was drawn to the helicopter that was just hanging out above us. this actually made me more nervous because it seemed like the helicopter wanted to be there to catch footage in case anything else happened. I continued into my building and opened my google reader, where i was greeted with this story. As my friend bill said, "a biker in new york with a backpack. should stick out like a sore thumb."

Crazy Old Coot

There is an old (i would guess maybe 70's-ish) lady that lives in my apartment building. She lives on my floor in an apartment next to mine, and I'm pretty sure that she lives alone. It took me a long time to discern this because every once in a while, she flips her shit. She'll open the door to her abode, yell some nonsensical stuff (the same thing every time...a three "word" phrase that i can't even attempt to transcribe, but if it were morse code, it would be a dot dot dash...in that it's the same word forcefully said twice, and then a longer concluding word that really drives it home) and then slam the door. 5 - 10 minutes later, she'll do this again. This can go on for hours. Sometimes she does it every few days, sometimes its every couple of weeks. For a long time, i thought she was arguing domestically with someone. I eventually realized that the yelling is not directed at anyone. Whenever i see her she seems like a perfectly nice adorable old lady...however, I have been caught in the awkward position of either exiting or entering my apartment while she's about to go off. She is conscious enough of the goings on to just kind of stand there with her door open until i pass, and then continue with her crazy talk. i do my best to avoid this situation anyway, by waiting at my door until she does the yelling, and then running out in the spare minutes i have between.

Ok, so now that you're all caught up with this crazy old coot, let's get to the meat and potatoes of this post, shall we? Whenever my old lady neighbor goes into one of these inexplicable spells (oh also...i assume that this lady has lived in this building a really long time, because others [there are a lot of lifers that live here] don't seem to bat an eye whenever this happens) its usually during the day or evening hours. Last night, she did it at...judging by how deep of a sleep i was yanked out of, around 4 or 5 am. in the morning. and it was LOUD. she was angrier than previous times and i could tell was putting all her old lady effort into projecting and guttural yelling. this went on for SO LONG too. i kept fading in and out of sleep, but the fact that i could hear very clearly her through two doors and over music prevented me from really falling asleep again while this was happening. I'd say about an hour passed and i could not come up with anything that i could possibly do to make this stop. i wasn't going to yell at or hit an old lady, but i also wasn't going to confront a crazy for fear that she would pull a knife or walker on me. Finally, after the hour (or more) i heard someone trying to calm her down. i couldn't hear the conversation, i'm not sure how anything got resolved...all i know is that the nightmarish screaming that was giving me murderous thoughts had ceased (until next time at least). do you guys think next time it happens i should dart out of my apartment, spray her with a water bottle, and then run back in? or do you have any better suggestions?

Stupid Bucharest

Ugh! Everything's the worst! I logged into my bank account today to see if last week's paycheck had gone in yet and i noticed my balance was much lower than i remembered it being four days ago. as i clicked to see further details, i noticed that once a day, for the last three days, someone withdrew about 600 bucks from my bank account (600 x 3 =!!!!). I felt so violated! And worst of all, based on the brief transaction info, it looked like i got ripped off by a foreigner!! damn them! so i get on the phone with my bank and they assure me that everything will be back to normal after their investigation, but it appears that somebody made a clone of my card and is having fun withdrawing money from fucking BUCHAREST. AAARGH!! thank god i was permanently injured in that car wreck five years ago and i'll still be able to cover my rent when the fucking check i just sent out clears. ARJGHRERJGHRJE!! :(

does anyone else have fun bank fraud/identity theft stories?