Hazards of a new apartment.

Mmmmm. I'm currently indulging in my secret love... Fudgee-o's (err, perhaps not so secret anymore, huh?) I've gone through 2 1/2 boxes since coming up here, and I've only been here just over three weeks. On the topic of how long I've been here, I'm starting to get some flack from a few different people about not updating the blog yet. But I have some very good reasons... 1) I had no internet at home until 6 days ago, and I really didn't feel comfortable updating the blog while at work. 2) Internet hook-up came the day after my phone was hooked up, and really, I've been using the phone a bit! :D 3) I've worked 4 shifts in the last 6 days and I've been dead-tired for the two days in-between my working shifts. 4) Um, I know there's a really good, knock-you-over-with-a-feather-you're-so-amazed-at-it, final reason I haven't updated... did I mention these cookies taste reallllly good? So good that I'm willing to pay 7-8$ a bag for them? Ahem, er, you probably want me to stop blathering right about now and get on with things...
So let's see, I left you all hanging right about the time I moved into my new apartment. I could not tell you how many square feet it is if my life depended on it, but I can tell you it's larger than Laurie's, larger than Oma's, smaller than Grandma's. If you took the kitchen at my parent's and cut off the width of the counter on one side of the kitchen, added on our full living room, the spare bedroom, the bathroom and another room the size of the bathroom, plus the hallway... that's how big it is. Did that make sense to anyone? I'd show you pictures, but, um, first I had to unpack the stuff I brought with me. I got that done in a few days. Then I worked for a few days and was too lazy to take pictures, then more stuff arrived, and the place became a pile of boxes. I can't take any pictures in here until I get a couple more pieces of furniture (like a desk and a craft/sewing table) to move stuff from boxes and piles into the furniture. I'm planning on going to garage sales on Saturday. You guys can hold me to that promise. Give me two weeks to put at least a couple pictures up, no matter the state of the apartment.
I'll fill you in on some of the hazards of a new apartment. Because I've discovered new is not necessarily better! First, is the fact that the phone has never before been hooked up. So instead of a simple phone call to people to get myself a number and start paying for my phone, I had to pay a technician to come down and set things up. The day of the appointment was scheduled as "between 8am and 5pm", so I set my alarm for 8, thinking, "I don't want to be in my pyjamas when he comes." The alarm went off in the morning and I turned it off, rolled over and went back to sleep... "there's no way he'll be here before noon." I finally got up, got dressed and ate breakfast (instead of my normal, which would be to eat breakfast still in pj's). I made stew from scratch... still no one. I set myself up with some food I need to process (more on that another time) while watching one of my dvds. As soon as I hit play, at 4pm, he knocked on the door. What timing! He came in, hooked some gadget to my phone jack, and left. I waited a bit, then went back to work on the food. Twenty minutes later, he came back in, did some more stuff, and started complaining about the fact that none of the phone lines in this building were wired properly. Proceeded to take apart all three phone jacks and left again. Came back with some other equipment, fiddled around with everything, and finally left around 5pm. There went my whole day! I had to work that night, and I didn't even get time for a nap because by the time he left, it was time to cook the corn on the cob (dare I mention the sticker price on three cobs? let's just say it's close to the price of my cookies!) make the schnetki (similar to biscuits) and pull the stew out of the oven. Yes, I made myself a small feast, but it fed me for the next three days, so it was totally worth it!
Oh, and before my phone was hooked up, this same guy said that the last one he came to hook up, he got downstairs and found the boiler had leaked all over the floor. I remember that day! I was lazy, and decided I didn't need to shower between getting home from a night shift and crawling into bed. I woke up early afternoon, because it was my last night shift and I needed to switch over to days. I decided once again I wouldn't shower yet, I'd rather do that before bed that night. I noticed the place was cold, thought maybe the temp outside had dropped and I needed to set the temp a bit higher to compensate. (yes, I know if I set it for 20, it shouldn't need to be set for 22 just cause the temp outside went down to 0... but that was the only reason I could come up with at that point for the chill in the air) When I washed my hands, I couldn't get the water to warm up. (on my first day here, the same thing happened, except the water completely stopped if I moved the lever type tap over to the hot side... I looked under the sink and fiddled with the knob on the hot water pipe, and suddenly I had hot water... they had left it off!) So anyways, I knew from experience, that I definitely had the hot water RUNNING, but only cold water was flowing. I tried the kitchen sink with the same results. Suddenly it started to dawn on me... The heating must be through the hot water pipes! I thought at one point they might be electric heaters and the heating would be reflected on my electric bill. I'm so glad that's not true! So anyways, by that evening, my apartment was too hot and I had to turn down the thermostat, and I was quite glad I hadn't attempted a shower earlier when there wasn't any hot water!
And the piece-de-resistance? I woke up one night at 2am, in the midst of a gorgeous rainstorm. It was slamming against the windows, and I needed to use the bathroom. I left my bedroom and heard water dripping... but it wasn't coming from the bathroom, or the kitchen, the only places it should ever logically be coming from. I followed the sound to the puddle on the radiator in the living room and the soggy carpet underneath. The blinds on the window above the radiator had a steady stream running down them, dripping in a couple of places onto the window sill and then dropping onto the radiator. I yanked the blinds up, to see just where the water was coming in, wondering if the window hadn't been closed all the way. But no, the bottom 2 feet or so of the window is where it slides to the side to open up, and the water was coming from the very top of the window frame. Dripping onto the blinds if they were down, or sliding down the length of the glass if the blinds were up. There's a small ledge where the two different parts of the window meet, and this point is about 3 feet off the ground. In order to catch the drips I needed something to lean right against the window, above this point, but be absolutely flush to the window. I grabbed an endtable, slid it as close as I could to the window, pulled the garbage bag out of the rectangular garbage can, and tried propping the can at an angle against the window. Caught a bit, but not nearly enough, and I had to flip over the towels I had just placed on the window ledge to soak things up. I started brainstorming. I had no tape, but I did have tape still stuck to some of the rubbermaid totes, so I broke off lengths of that, and used the tape to tape ziplock bags to the window to direct the flow of water into the garbage can. But before I could get the tape to stick, I had to hold a small towel against the window above to catch the water flow for a bit and frantically wipe the window dry below that point to stick the tape before the water seeped through again (in mere seconds). I figure it was all pretty good thinking for the middle of the night, even if it was a strange-looking contraption! It caught most of the water from that point on... probably only about 2 cups of water, plus more that got past and soaked into the towels. So I called the manager the next day, from a payphone, and he said he'd call someone about sealing it up the next day. I didn't hear anything about it, and so it leaked again this last weekend. (I figured out if I leave the blinds halfway down, most of it will drip nicely off the blinds into the propped-up garbage can!) I've gotta call tomorrow to find out what's going on with sealing it up!
Anyways, it's bedtime, so I'll tell you more another time.