Words about winter pull you inside the cold

[sovay]

I feel like the intellectual content of this journal has crashed. On the other hand, I feel like my intellectual content has crashed: the apartment situation is taking up so much of my time. I woke this morning around seven-thirty when I couldn't sleep through the snow anymore, left a message for Somerville's Inspectional Services around nine o'clock and didn't really fall back asleep afterward, got out of bed around eleven-thirty, ate rice cakes, worked for Nokia, called the city back around three in the afternoon and spoke to an actual person who was horrified when I described the issues with our windows and promised a building inspector would call me tomorrow morning. (The same building inspector, in fact, who left a stop-work order on derspatchel and ratatosk's front door last fall when it turned out the incredibly disruptive and shoddy construction on their second-floor porch had been undertaken without a permit. I do not know if he will remember me, but I recognized the name at once—I was the person he spoke to, because I was going up the front steps just as he was getting out of his car to identify himself to the household and it was just as easy for him to hand me his card.) If I do not hear from him by a reasonable hour, I'll call again: we need this situation resolved, or at least we need to start resolving it. It's still snowing out there. I am pretty much living in the common room because my bedroom is too cold to occupy outside of the bed with five and a half blankets on it. It's got nice couches, but that's not the point. We can't unpack because we don't know if we're staying or house-hunting. My books are all still in their boxes, my clothes in a heap of bags. And I like where I am right now, geographically: I like walking into Ball Square, I like being twenty-five minutes from Davis; I like the variety of buses available to me if it's late or the weather is bad and I like that gaudior already knows how to drive here. I have donuts I can walk to easily, which hasn't been true for me since the bakery whose name I remember as Do-Si-Donuts (I am torn between hoping I've gotten that wrong and hoping that really was it) closed in Arlington Heights. There is a used book store at similar distance—a small one, but their science fiction section is great and they have already furnished one book with uncanny timing. I don't want to move again, but I don't want to stay somewhere I really can't live, either. I made grilled cheese with ham for dinner, because it is comfort food. If this week goes on the way it began, Friday will necessitate noodles and cheese.

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

Noodles and cheese is excellent comfort food, though I hope you eat it because you like it and not because you need it.

[sovay]

Noodles and cheese is excellent comfort food, though I hope you eat it because you like it and not because you need it.

Thank you. At this point it may be both.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Fingers crossed for your actual, horrified person's well-remembered building inspector! (Which sounds like a Russian comedy, for Russian values of "comedy.") May he descend with wrath and orders!

Meanwhile, noodles and cheese are prescribed.

Hope you can going on living where you are, in reasonable comfort.

Nine

[irisbleufic.livejournal.com]

So basically the heating is non-existent and things leak? :(

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

The furnace works great. It's making lots of hot air and pushing it right out the windows. Unfortunately, the heating system was designed to heat a medium-sized apartment, and cannot begin to cope with heating Winter Hill. (I don't even think it could heat Spring Hill.)

[sovay]

So basically the heating is non-existent and things leak?

The heating works, but the windows are so poorly weathertight—i.e., not at all—that it bleeds right out. The rain and snow haven't come in yet, but I have no confidence that they won't. There are places where the windowframes are so minimally affixed to the walls that it's possible to get fingers behind them. There is nothing sealing around the frame of the door to my bedroom and drafts come in both windows. The back stairs are warmer than my room. I am really, really hoping we can get the inspector in here tomorrow.

[edit] What adrian_turtle said.

[selidor]

Oh grief. Wishing you warmth and a speedy resolution. Basic comfort comes well ahead of trying to string thoughts together.

[gwynnega]

Glad you were able to speak to an actual person who was suitably horrified. I hope things proceed quickly with the building inspector.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Okay, this answers my question from last comment. Hope it gets sorted and that you get to stay. That landlord should be ashamed of themselves, though.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

A moment of silence, hats off, for the Do-Si-Donut and its square-dancing bakers. And the sour cream doughnuts of yore.

[sovay]

A moment of silence, hats off, for the Do-Si-Donut and its square-dancing bakers.

I thought you weren't local!

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

I pray that the building inspector brings down the smack on the landlord, speedily and soon.
But noodles and cheese still sounds good.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

PS: And at least you're still getting the Nokia stuff done!

[sovay]

And at least you're still getting the Nokia stuff done!

I need to stay employed!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Are you going to be at Vericon at all?

[sovay]

Are you going to be at Vericon at all?

I don't know. I want at least to hear Sassafrass perform, but I have absolutely no idea how this weekend is going to go.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you were able to speak to an actual person who seemed to understand the gravity of the matter.

I hope the building inspector will get back to you soon and will be very helpful. I wish you all possible good luck.