Well, I ended up doing a lot more socializing than I intended too (had a friend pick me up, we went to her house, watched a movie – I finally got to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, now to see number three – and then my friend got sick enough so she didn’t feel well enough to drive so I stayed overnight, and so on) so I haven’t been hanging on my computer like some sort of internet vampire. So I haven’t had a chance to thank everyone who has donated to the Pathetic Bleggy Blogathon to Help Me Out. What can I say… everything is definitely helping. It’s 19 days and counting to M-Day – that is, Moving the Hell Out of Here Day – and not a moment too soon. Because let me tell you:
I have had a dripping sound in my air conditioner – it’s central air – behind the filter for at least six months now. I have told the apartment management people about once every two weeks, give or take a week, ever since I first noticed it. They have promised each time to send someone, but no one has ever come. Since I am never home (owing to the endless hellbus rides to and from work) except late at night, early in the morning, and on weekends, and no one apparently will come out on a weekend, I have even given them permission to enter my apartment when I am not there. But Mr. Drippy still drips, and this evening I discovered that now water is visible inside whatever the hell you call that place behind the filter and the grill that covers the coils and things. And the filter, which I changed just a couple of weeks ago, is already filthy.
That’s not all. My friend was here doing her laundry (she’s the one I’m giving the washing machine to) and we noticed there was water all over the patio. I thought it had rained and flooded (in this state it can rain in one neighborhood and be bone dry one block away). Then she discovered that the carpet next to the wall that separated the outside storage place where the washing machine, dryer, and the apartment’s hot water heater are all located was soaking wet and obviously had been for at least the whole day if not longer. (I haven’t been home since before noon yesterday. I could swear it wasn’t wet there then. The legs to the end table that was there were wet on the bottom but they weren’t swelled up – they are wood – or extensively water-danaged and there was no mold growth. Yet.) I had noticed some water, and mold – which may have destroyed some old video tapes from the 80s that I had in a cardboard box there – in that same place a few months ago and thought that somehow water was leaking from the washing machine and getting in under the wall. I had cleaned up the rug and it had dried, and no more water seemed to come from either the washing machine or anything else.
Anyway, we ended up pulling out the washing machine, and ascertained that owing to the lack of rust, the dryness of all connections to the water pipes, and the location of the pooling water – under the dryer, which was next to the apartment wall and underneath the hot water heater – that the water must be coming from the water pipe leading from the hot water heater into the wall. I can only think that that is so because a) I had not used the washing machine all week and b) I do take hot showers every day. But – I wasn’t home last night, so something is leaking worse. Oh joy. So I am going to stay home and pester the office until they at least get someone over there. I want it on the record that I alerted them. I know they are already probably going to keep part of my deductable to replace the goddamn cheap cream-colored carpet (that is impossible to clean anyway) because the cat threw up on it during the hurricane. So I am expecting that. But busted hot water pipes in the walls are not my fault and god knows what sort of mold and crap I and my cat have been breathing in all this time, no wonder my sinuses are fubared all the time. Grr. Ain’t life grand? 
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