The Resumption

Update - This is a LONG post that wasn't intended to be a long post but grew in the writing. Sorry.

This isn't a call for pity, but currently I'm juggling two kids, the new puppy (see previous article,) moving, the end of the school semester and . . . and . . . a second job, so please be patient with me. Hang in there.

Thanksgiving was nice enough, I suppose. Julie had to work so, since her parents' Thanksgiving dinner couldn't be rescheduled, we had Thanksgiving lunch at my parents'. Then, as the father of the grandchildren, I was required to drive them the Julie's parents that evening, which was fine I guess. My ability to be a wall-flower there is greatly magnified by having the children there. I can just fade into the background clutter and change diapers occasionally when needed. But that was all for Thanksgiving. Nothing spectacular.

The new dog is a pain in the . . .

I've been playing World of Warcraft excessively, which tells me that I probably should not renew my account after this month. I think it signifies a new level of laziness when I'm too lazy to even try to really push further into the game and would instead just rather fish all day . . . in the game. Some people play games to escape their mundane lives and become something more than mundane - something heroic - but no, the characters I play are lazy even in THAT world.

The new dog is a pain . . . .

The thermostat beside my cubicle is telling me that it is 60 degrees in our office today. This may actually be the first time on record that I've ever gotten cold here at work and now today I'm freezing. FREEZING! 99.9% of the time it is balmy and humid in here, but today is actually frigid. So it goes . . . nothing to be done.

I did start at Barnes & Noble Florence again yesterday after two years, for the holidays only (seriously, for fun) and strictly p/t. For those of you "not in the know," I worked at Barnes from 2002 - 2006, starting at a p/t bookseller and ending as the Cafe Manager. After two years, it appears that nothing has changed there -even all the managers are the same but for one who is "new," though I already knew her because she managed another store before coming to Florence - except for the fact that apparently B&N stocks porn on their center aisle now. I also checked out Steve Martin's (yes, the comedian) new book Born Standing Up and it's very good.

Okay, it's not porn but it IS the Sports Illustrated "Painted Swimsuit" book which is . . . well . . . it's porn, but you know, it's the classy stuff. The upshot of this is that now whenever I pass the fairly large display of these, I have to laugh hysterically.

The new dog is a pain . . .

I'm really cold.

We're almost done moving now, so that's pretty good. I'd be lying if I said we had really been putting a lot of effort into it. We've had two real "moving days" and will have another this Friday as the last major push to get everything out. After that it'll just be unpacking and doing the dreaded exit walk with The Adversary, Dawn our complex manager. She and I aren't friends. Her boss knows about this.

In fact, if anyone wants to know about how things have been at our apartment complex since we told them we wanted to move out, see below. This was an email that I sent last Wednesday to the complex manager's boss who, to-date, has seemed fairly reasonable.

Hi Cara,

I'm writing to you again because, frankly, I find it impossible to work with Dawn. I am not cc'ing her on this email because I do feel that there is some enmity between she and I at this point and I'm not really sure where to turn. I don't think my needs are unreasonable.

The last time you and I spoke, things seemed reasonable. I thought our resolution for being able to leave our lease early was fair and had no complaints about it. The day that you and I spoke, the new mainentance man was sent out and walked the apartment with me to address our immediate concerns, etc. He said he would order a part for the sliding door that was needed to fix it (this is really trivial to me, so long as its noted that I reported it in as timely a manner as possible) and since it was storming outside that day he said he would hold off on recharging the Freon in our AC unit until it was less dangerous. Since that time, I've also reported that the fan-light pull string broke in our master bedroom fan and it isn't something we can fix ourselves.

Unfortunately, the air conditioning has still not been fixed to-date and I've left messages with the staff at the office twice regarding the A/C issue and fan-light pull and it has yet to be acknowledged by anyone, either verbally or to fix it. Again, the light is more an inconvenience than anything else, so long as it is noted that I did report it as a mainentance issue that needs to be addressed at some point since the primary lighting in the master bedroom is obviously gone without it.

The A/C problem though, honestly here, is ridiculous. We've gone for 4 weeks now without air conditioning. I have allergies. My wife has allergies. My children have allergies. Not to mention that now that it is wet, I'm probably not inclined to opening what few windows our apartment has to let some air in. I've spoken to Dawn yesterday as well as today now and, while acknowledging the the issue over the phone with me and assuring me she would send someone out yesterday, there was still no contact regarding any tentative resolution to the issue. When I called her this morning, she told me that it would be that while it would be in the 70s today, it would be in the 40s over the weekend. She recommended opening some windows. I pressed her for a timeline to fix the issue and she told me that if the unit needed to be replaced, it would probably not be so until the spring and that she was certain that there would be no resolution on this at all until after the weekend.

This is egregious! What if we weren't moving at the end of the month? I find it extremely hard to believe that it would be the stance of Mid-America Apartment Communities that I should simply open my windows whenever it got warm for the next six months. Dawn also said that she had been in several empty apartments today where A/C's weren't working, and she felt very nice in those apartments because the weather was still cooling off at night. I would note here that those empty apartments do not have people living in them, people running dishwashers in them, cooking in them, washing and drying clothes in them. . .
No, I think the crux of this issue lies outside the normal, reasonable area of landlord / tenant relations. I think this is coming dangerously close to negligence on the management's part. You are reasonable. Dawn is not. Personally, I don't remember any clauses in my contract saying that I would be forced to keep my apartment at a certain temperature range. I thought that was up to personal preference. . . . further more, based upon the Mid-America website, I was distinctly under the impression that the office and maintenance staff were helpful, prompt and friendly, but that appears to decidedly not be the case. I'm left with no assumption then but to wonder if, when faced with this type of smorgasboard, do-what-you-want-however-you-want-to adherence to the landlord / tenant agreement on the management's part, exactly which parts of the agreement am I allowed to break? Actually, I've never broken any rules there. I've paid my rent on time. My family has been quiet. We've kept our apartment cleaned and maintained. We haven't had parties. We don't have extra cars to take up more than our fair share of parking spots.

No, it appears that the unfortunate truth of The Paddock Club, Florence Kentucky is that once you scratch the surface and get past the facade that is so well maintained in order to draw new renters into the community, you're confronted by incompetence and apathy, coupled with an unwillingness to invest any more money into the units than is absolutely essential to keep them from catching fire and / or falling down around the tenants.

(I loved writing that email because it gave me the opportunity to use to word egregious. Note the addition of egregious to my list of words to the right.)

To summarize the above if you were too busy to read it. If you know anyone who is looking for an apartment, just tell them to avoid The Paddock Club, Florence Ky.

That is all for now. More later, I think.