A Skewed View

Uh ... yes, okay, I see the right side of the wall is patched. And ... uh ... there's more crap sitting in the tub. But it is still not me sitting in the tub. 11:30 a.m. on Monday. No maintenance guy. Because he popped his head in half an hour ago to say that he won't be working on my bathroom today because he has to finish the other suite -- people are moving in to it tomorrow. Meaning I have no backup bathroom as of right now. I said to the guy "So now I'm screwed." "No," he says "I'll finish tomorrow." (side note: look at what is left. do YOU think he'll finish tomorrow?!) So I say "Okay. So tomorrow I'll have a sink and I'll have a tub I can bathe in." "Yes" He says. "Okay." What am I going to say? "Thank you." "So I'll try to do it tomorrow." He just had to keep talking. "Wait. You'll TRY?" "No, I'll do it." It's like he spoke out loud whe...

Basically, the tiles were destroyed and the old tub was taken out and the new tub was put in by 3 p.m. on Wednesday. It is 11:30 a.m. on Friday, and this is as much of a new tub as I have. The maintenance guy worked until maybe 5 p.m. on Wednesday (for about two hours after the plumber had removed the old tub and put in the new one). Showed at 11 a.m. yesterday, worked for, I'd say, two hours. Left. Returned between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. (because he wasn't here when I went grocery shopping, he was when I came back) and worked until 6 p.m. So that's, what? Three hours on Thursday? Four if he showed up the second I left for grocery shopping. He just dropped off some stuff a second ago, and left again. He and the superintendant both say how much they want to get the tub and sink installed so I can "get back [my] apartment". But I have severe doubts that the above can be turned into a working tub and sink by the end of today ... so I guess I spend the weekend walking down...

First, they have to destroy the tiles around the old one, to get at it: Then they pull the old tub out through my bedroom closet, apparently: So this is what a bathroom without a tub looks like, for anyone who is curious. AND note, it would appear that upon seeing my bathroom sink, the plumber decided it best to replace that sucker too. Which may or may not be a good thing. I can't see from the packaging what the new sink is going to look like. I kind of liked the old sink. It was wide and shallow, which perhaps is an odd thing to like in a bathroom sink, but I did. Now, you can't really tell because of all the crap that is in it, but this is my new bathtub: One would think that the first thing one would do with a new tub is NOT use it as a garbage receptacle for broken tiles. Could easily explain how the old tub got damaged to the point that it had to be replaced in the first place. As you can see, my bathroom is still non-user-friendly. When I first arrived, my toilet was n...

One of the six television channels I get without cable shows documentaries on various wildlife on Saturdays (thus the musings on elephants last week). Today's was on whales stranding themselves on shore, and trying to figure out why they would embark on this suicidal mission. The theory in some situations was that, best as they can tell, sonar testing by the navies of the world drive whales to flee the water, possibly to avoid whatever the sonar is doing to their insides. The documentary had footage of a pod of dolphins and a pod of whales frantically avoiding an ship that was known to be testing sonar, heading like a tidal wave towards the shore. The heads of two of the whales who actually did beach themselves were given a CT scan, and the brains were shown to be damaged. They note that this did not prove the direction of the causation (did the sonar damage the brain thus preventing the whale from recognizing it was heading to the beach, or did the fury of the retreat and sub...

Just as gosh darn adorable as the days when my mom would cut my bangs before sending me off for school pictures and use christmas ribbon to tie back my hair. (seriously mom, I know we had some lean years ... but just how darn expensive were bobblers back then?)

Just a few hours short of ten years ago, I was sitting in my newly purchased KITT, on the upper level of WEM. I had just come out of a movie and was pondering how the next morning I was going to be 30 years old. I sat and I sat and I thought and I thought, and I just could not summon the angst one sees in all the television shows and movies about my impending age. I had no great ephiphany while sitting there, until boom! It hit me! If I was sitting there, almost 30, that would mean ... one day I'd be almost 40. I drove away, satisfied that I had had some kind of emotional reaction to being 30. And poof. Like some psychic vision come true, here I am. About a day away from being 40. And still ... no angst. I don't even feel any great attachment to the knowledge that this means I will one day be 50. Well, okay, just typing that out right there, there was a twinge. But I don't anticipate it is going to mean a whole lot to me. I've come to terms with the fact that...

I've been pretty lazy and lethargic this weekend. The heat has come, and brought with it my overpowering desire to nap every few hours. Mercifully my bedroom stays the coolest room in my apartment, but that means that my bed beckons me almost all day. That being said, it's not too bad. A few cool showers, sitting with a bottle of frozen water behind my neck, sticking my feet in a basin of ice water ... it's not too bad. I have started talking back to my tv, though. Well I guess it isn't technically talking "back", because it isn't like the tv is talking "to" me in the first place. Yesterday I was watching a fascinating and tear jerking documentary exploring the possible causes of elephant rage. It started by showing footage of an elephant herd tearing apart a village apparently for no reason because they weren’t looking for food. Turns out the villagers had “accidentally” killed one of the baby elephants earlier in the day, and had dragged the ca...