Clean house

I cleaned my apartment this weekend. Not that this is something I never do, but most weeks it's really just tidying. And it wasn't deep-cleaning. No scrubbing the walls or cleaning nooks and crannies with a toothbrush sort of clean. More the, "Lo and behold, there IS a kitchen table underneath the piles of stuff" cleaning. I mean, I could actually eat anywhere at the table, instead of one little corner of it.* So, getting rid of clutter and stuff. And it feels  awesome! Like, I keep looking around my place thinking, "Wow! This looks great! I love it!"

Admittedly, there is still a lot I could do to make it even better. Why do I have so much stuff? And how do my blinds get so dirty? And in a week, there will be enough hair on the carpet for a wig. Again. But, maybe this time, I will remember how nice it is to have a kitchen table, or a desk, or to shut the closet door** and I will keep things looking good.

Yeah. Maybe.

*which is a moot point because I rarely eat at the table. Probably not the best thing.
**it's not that I can't usually shut it. I mostly just don't. Or I have socks and stuff that didn't quite make it into the hamper, trailing out of the closet. Amazing how little things like that really add to the sense of mess. 

Joys

The best thing about today was that it rained*. A LOT. With lots of thunder and (presumably) lightning. But what really made it so great was that it was still raining when I left work**, and raining pretty good. As I left, there were a bunch of people hanging out in the lobby, at least some of whom were waiting for a lull to avoid the soaking that they would have gotten otherwise.

Not me, though. I embraced it. (It's water. I don't melt in water). I embraced it so much that I puddle-jumped and puddle-stomped my way home, which admittedly is not that far (one city block, more or less) but was very puddle packed. And I didn't just jump in one. Or jump with any kind of reserve. I went all in, full-fledged five-year old, and it was AWESOME! It's amazing how jumping in 2-3 inches of water can soak you up to your knees. Also, it is totally worth it.

So, moral of the story? Turn your rainy day into a great one and hop in some puddles.


*It wasn't a bad day. It was a fairly normal day and more good than bad. 
**but not thunder and lightning. I had to enjoy all that from work.

Worth getting up for

On Sunday, I noticed a flash flood warning had been put out for my neck of the woods for today. I was super excited about it all day yesterday. At the very least, some rain. At best, a flash flood!*

Yesterday,  none of my coworkers believed my news about the flood potential.**And when I got to work today, it was looking like we might not even get rain. I made it very clear that if it didn't rain--and hard--there was no point in my having gotten out of bed this morning. And whaddya know, by the time I headed back from lunch, it was raining. And then it rained some more later this afternoon. And now, there is a load of thunder and more thunder, and maybe lightning (but I'm inside so I can't tell. I live in a basement apartment). And just now a HUGE clap of thunder! And I can hear the rain pouring down and I can smell it and feel the cool rain air.

Aaaaah. Yep, totally worth getting out of bed for***. Now I'm going to go to bed, so I can fall asleep listening to the rain. Brilliant.

*I have no idea why I want a flash flood. It was probably mostly driven by the hope that maybe they'd send us home from work, which was a long shot. But I think there was also just the lovely thought of wading through rivers of water without a care in the world.
**until we had a 15 minute downpour.
***Although, clearly, not flooding (yet). And I am obviously not sloshing through puddles. But there's always tomorrow. 

Did you say 'bats'? Yes, yes I did. Or: "Holy Bat Infestation, Batman!" Or, "For Rent: 1 apartment, bats included"

Friday night, I was doing some dishes around 9:30 and out of the corner of my eye, I saw something fly by a couple of times, but didn't catch what it was. Figuring it was a moth, I finished the dishes and headed to the living room where I discovered, no, it was not a moth. It was a bat. A BAT. Flying around my living room. And I let out one yelp, ducked to the floor, and tried to figure out what one does when one has a bat in one's living room.

I decided I would turn off the lights and open the front door and hope the bat flew out. (Logically it didn't really play out in my mind, but apparently it was the right thing to do, according to a website about wild bats). It didn't seem like it was really working and for some reason I peeked out in the hallway. Lo and behold, there was a bat! So I slammed the door shut, turned around, and realized it was not the same bat because there was still one flying around my living room.

At this point, I ran in my room and shut the door and called Animal control. While waiting for them, another bat flew out of my closet. This one kindly landed on the floor and held very still, allowing me to put a box over him. And there I waited for the animal guys to come. Which also meant braving a trip out of my apartment to let them in, but I survived. 

My friendly Animal Control officer caught both bats, informed me that he'd contact the Public Health department and test the two bats for rabies and let me know if I would need a rabies vaccination. And he warned me not to stay in my apartment until the situation was resolved.

Since Friday, I have found 3 more bats in my apartment on my random stops in to pick up a change of clothes, seen one in the hallway, one in the window of another apartment, learned that my neighbors had three in their apartment, and I have talked to the emergency management line, the night manager, Animal Services twice, the security company for my complex twice, still don't know when I'll be able to move back in (or if I will want to! I'm terrified that I'll be finding bats long afterwards. It's a little traumatic, okay?), whether I need a rabies shot, where I'm going to stay if I can't get back in soon, etc. And, of course, none of the necessary businesses are open on the weekend, so I just have to wait til tomorrow. In the meantime, who knows how many bats are partying in my house. 

Give me frogs any day. 

Somehow, it was less creepy taking a picture of this bat in the building hallway than trying to photograph one in my apartment. Still gives me the shudders though. 

Missing things

I miss living in a place where apartment buildings use laundry cards instead of quarters.
I miss an apartment complex with a gym.
I miss an apartment complex with an office for management.
I miss a dishwasher.
I miss my grocery store.
I miss having a usual living in a radius bigger than 3 blocks (even if I do get to ride a train to get out of my radius).
I miss central heating.
I miss open, free parking at my place of residence.

But I still don't miss the goose poop.

March Madness

Well, so far, March has been cold and bitter and insanely freezing. Finally, the last couple of days, it seems that spring has arrived. It was actually 48 degrees today!

And, with the coming of pleasant weather, the world seems to be reacting. Around lunchtime today, my co-worker mentioned that my old college building (and by old, I don't mean old. The building is approaching it's 3rd birthday, and I was only there a year ago. By old, I mean, I used to go there) had flooded. Apparently, a pipe broke in one of the residences, and the building got to replicate a waterfall, inside and out.

Well, half an hour later, there was a sudden downpour right there in the office! They'd been doing some maintenance on the machines at work (machines at an archive, you ask? HVAC, my friends. A critical component of every archive. Ideally). They'd drained the pans on one of the machines (I cannot explain any better than this, not having seen it and having no idea what it really means), letting loose 100 gallons of water, down into a drain that is not equipped to handle 100 gallons of water. Just like they did 2 years ago, the story goes.

The good news is, I got home and no floods. But I did spend some time reminiscing on the good old days in The Puddle. It seems like a lifetime ago, and I would sure love to be able to say that my biggest problem in life was a flooded apartment and a paper to write.

So, years from now, when my biggest problem is a flooded apartment and a paper to write, remind me to be grateful.

It's raining, it's pouring

I am sitting in my living room, which since the move has a very nice view of something other than the parking lot, and it is raining. Hard. Lightning, and thunder, and downpour. I love storms like this. And I am really enjoying being able to enjoy it. And the next best part? I don't have to worry about waking up in a puddle.

Sometimes the right hand should know what the left hand is doing

As I mentioned, I recently had to vacate the Puddle. My new apartment, by the way, is much less puddle-like, but I digress. In the process of moving, I naturally had to change my internet service over to the new address. I took care of this the day after I decided to go ahead with the move, and 5 days before the move. Everything went great, except for the fact that they didn't have any appointments available until Thursday, 3 days after I moved. Now, I'm not entirely sure what this appointment is, because I never met with anyone, and I'm not sure what they were doing during the week while I was waiting for them to switch my internet. It doesn't make much sense to me, but there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it.
So on Thursday, I got home, and tried to get the internet working. No luck. I checked the confirmation letter, and it said that it may not be activated until 8pm. So I waited and waited and that night, I tried again. Nothing. Since I couldn't do anything about it then, I decided to deal with it the next day and went to bed.
The next day, I tried calling on my way to work. My reward was to be on hold for 15 minutes, with a message every twenty seconds saying, "Your call is important to us. Thank you for waiting." I finally had to hang up because I got to work. Then I tried to get an agent on chat--there were no agents available to help me. Wait a minute, what about the blurb on the internet that said 24/7 assistance?
I finally got a hold of them on my way home from work. I don't like to have conversations on the bus, but I had no option. After talking to three reps, I learned that according to them, my order didn't go through. "But wait a minute. Your automated system told me my order status" (which was, your order is open and should have been resolved yesterday, it just wasn't) "and I got the equipment in the mail, with a confirmation letter." No, they insisted (and yes, the rep had an accent, which I only mention to illustrate that whoever was handling this was not local and had never seen anything about me, so of course she is not going to be able to help me much. She can only do so much), your order didn't go through and we have to create a new account.
Now, I was getting just a bit mad. They botched the initial setup of my internet a year and a half ago, on a weekend when I had a paper to write that required use of the internet (I had to compare internet sites). And, now I had another paper due that required looking at policies online, and they had botched my internet. Again. I was not thrilled. And they were assuring me that they were the best company for my needs?!
Feeling out of options, I set up a new account, with the promise that my internet service would be up on Monday. As the rep confirmed the order, she said, "Alright, we have your account, and it will be activated on Wednesday." Taking care of the customer, right to the end. Go team.
Ten minutes after I hung up, I got a phone call. It was Ernesto, an internet technician (who was definitely local). He apologized that my internet hadn't been activated the day before, as promised. There was a problem with some equipment, but they were repairing it, and my internet would be activated by the end of the day. And it was. Because there was never anything wrong with my order. Someone just failed to let their other hand know what the heck was going on.
My reward? I get to call back and cancel the new account they set up for me. I'm so lucky!

Farewell to the Puddle

Due to the fact that the seasons are muddled, and January thinks it is May and is raining instead of snowing, I am forced to change residences. Because, yes, yet again, the Puddle is puddling. Oh, not severely, just wet carpet, hardly noticeable, but it is causing the Apartment Manager a great deal of stress, which causes me stress. And although it seems silly to move for 3 1/2 months (which is the extent of my foreseeable future), and to have paid movers (courtesy of the Apartment complex) move me one building over, the only argument for not moving is that changing my address will be a hassle. And, really folks, let's face it. Not much of an argument.

Still, it is with some regret that I bid farewell to the Puddle and all its moist glory. It was like my tropical home away from my tropical home. (Note to self: Don't move to the tropics). But I guess that's what I get for finally putting up bookshelves...

And, an update

I got home from FHE not too long ago, and was moving the couch so the carpet around it could get some air and dry, and lo and behold, I found a frog in my apartment.

I felt kind of mean putting it in a jar to take it outside, especially since he was such a little guy and wasn't really going to escape my hand. But on the bright side, by putting it in the jar, I was able to get a picture.

He has now been safely relocated to the outdoors. At least, the relocation was safe. I don't know how safe the outdoors are. And, I can now add catching a frog with my bare hands to my list of accomplishments.

Welcome to the Puddle--Galoshes available at the door

I like rain. I like watching it. I like walking in it (although, admittedly, lightning is kind of problematic). I like thunder, I like lightning (mostly watching it). Rain is great. What's not to like about it?

Well, ask a stupid question...I found out this week that I'm not such a huge fan of rain indoors. You know the kind of thing. Rains six inches in one night (a delightful display of thunder, lightning, and downpour, I might point out), and runs out of places to go, so the rain decides your apartment would make a great place to hangout. I definitely was not expecting to slosh to my alarm clock to hit snooze on Thursday morning, but what else can you do when your entire apartment is sitting under almost an inch of water?

On the bright side, though:
I got to go puddle jumping in my house. How often does that happen?
I finally decided what to do with all those boxes I've had stashed away, taking up closet space. (There's really only one thing to do with wet cardboard. Recycle).
I finally have good motivation to take things to get dry cleaned. (It was really just my formal, which was long enough to touch the floor and get wet. But if I'm taking one thing to be cleaned, might as well take it all, right?)
I had the brilliant thought to not leave my computer sitting on the floor. (Envision choirs singing here).
I have a great name for my apartment now. (The Puddle. I like it).
I have discovered that humidity really does amazing things for the natural curl in my hair.
It's a really great story to tell.
All I had to do was call the office management, and they dealt with the cleanup, mostly.
It makes that renter's insurance I've been paying for seem totally worth it. (I mean, it was worth it anyway, but still. Now I know how it can come in handy).
Free carpet cleaning. Ish.
I have a greater appreciation for dry feet. (My feet weren't properly dry until roughly 6:20 on Thursday. Bless you, my tevas).
I have great motivation to go do things. Or maybe I should say, a very handy excuse. The logic goes something like this: "I really should hem those pants. But...there's no dry place to try them on, and nowhere to work on them, since everything that was on the floor is on the table at present. So, I might as well go to Rochester with Emily and Sister Dunn." Automatic justification for playing and not getting things done. (Cut me some slack, it's summer and I had a very hibernative winter. I need to play!)
Every day, I get to think about how blessed I am, because even though my apartment flooded, it really wasn't a disaster. I didn't really lose anything of value, and even though I am kind of bored with the dampness of my place, it's drying out, and in a week or two, I won't even remember. I mean, really. What is there to complain about?

That's all for this time. Stay tuned for more from the Puddle.