Monday, April 16, 2007

Half-a-Life

[whining]
This whole thing is starting to get to me. I feel like I'm living a half life. I live in half of a duplex, we're half moved, we're half unpacked, only half of us has a job, and I'm about half crazy.

I'm not homesick, although I do miss knowing where everything is, I'm just tired of being "in between" everything in my life right now. In time, I will find my comfort zone but for now I float through space not knowing which way is up.
[/whining]

[rant]
I really hate having to rent. The place, as I believe I already mentioned, is not ideal but the roof over our head doesn't exactly leak, either (at least, I hope it doesn't). My problem is that someone else owns and controls my space and it can be infuriating getting even the seemingly simplest thing taken care of. Let me give you an example. There are others but this is the most extreme.

The light fixture in the bedroom where we sleep seemed a bit dim when we moved in. I pulled the globe off and discovered that there were only 40-watt bulbs installed. I double-checked the rating and replaced them with 60-watt bulbs.

Right after replacing the bulbs, I flipped on the switch and the lights flickered. It stopped very shortly after but I investigated anyway. It turns out that a previous tenant had replaced the light switch with a dimmer switch. I wiggled the switch and managed to get the lights to flicker again. I planned on just replacing the switch but, remembering that I rent now, I made note of it to call in for maintenance.

For the past week or so, every time we turned on the light, it would flicker slightly for the first couple of minutes then go steady. I kept telling myself, "Oh yeah, I have to call that in." but never seemed to do it.

Last night, I noticed an odd smell in that bedroom. I called Shelly in and she agreed that it had that "electrical" smell. I did some feeling of the walls and sniffing around and finally discovered the odor coming from the light fixture.

I immediately turned off the breaker feeding that light and called the office. It being Sunday, the answering machine referred me to the emergency maintenance number. I called the emergency maintenance number and was referred to another number. I called the super secret secondary emergency maintenance number and... left a message. Thank God there wasn't water spewing everywhere or anything like that.

About ten minutes later, I got a call back telling me to shut off the breaker (which I had already done) and that they would try to get an electrician out but he couldn't promise anything because it was Sunday evening. At the least, he would get someone out on Monday. I could live with that.

8:00 this morning, I again called the emergency number and left a message asking if there was an ETA on the electrician. I then immediately called the office and our property manager answered. I explained to her that my difficulty at this particular time was not that involved. I explained about the electrical burning smell, the light fixture, the fear of a fire, throwing the breaker, etc. She asked a few questions then said she'd get back with me.

I never heard anything else from the maintenance people but our PM called back about an hour later. She told me that she was waiting to hear back from the owners. She had faxed them some quotes they had gotten last summer to replace the electrical meters and do some wiring work. [GREAT! I'm living in a deathtrap!] I told her that this had little to do with the electrical meters and that I was worried about a fire starting if I turned the breaker back on.

I spoke with Shelly a little later and she wasn't pleased with what I had to report. She called the PM and chewed her out, recounting the electrical burning smell, the light fixture, the fear of a fire, throwing the breaker, etc. She threatened that if someone were not dispatched to the property today, we would consider it a break in the lease and start looking for a new place to live.

Apparently, that didn't concern the PM much because I called her shortly after 11:00 am and asked for a status. "I'm still waiting to hear back from the owners..."

That was all I needed. I had been pleasant up to that point but I unloaded on her. I flat out opened up - and those of you who know me understand just how scarry that can be. I told her that I was operating with partial power in the residence because I had turned off a breaker for fear that the electrical problem would cause a fire. I recounted to her that she had been told that there was a serious fire hazard at least three times throughout the morning. I then told her that I wanted a call back within a half hour with a timeframe for the arrival of a maintenance person or I would be calling an electrician myself in an hour and would take the cost off my rent. She backed down like a scared puppy and finally agreed to dispatch maintenance.

45 mintues later, I had a call from an electrician they work with saying he would be on site within an hour. He recounted to me that he knew where I lived because he had worked on the panel when the other side of the duplex went dark a few months ago. I told him I had only been here a little over a week but that I now understood a little more of the big picture.

When he arrived, he first pulled the dimmer switch. Even I knew it was wired weird because it involved electrical tape and no wire nuts. I snapped a picture - check it out (click on the picture to make it bigger).



He determined that the switch had gone bad and replaced it. When he switched on the light, it was still flickering a bit so he tested the outlet just below the switch. It had some sort of internal short and was old anyway, so he replaced that, too. The flickering stopped and he called it good. We walked around looking for the GFI outlet so he could test it but I couldn't remember where it was. Just before he left, I went back into the bedroom and the smell was back. He pulled the globe off the fixture and one of the bulbs started flickering like a live wire. After a quick visual inspection, he decided that needed replacing, too. He's coming back tomorrow with a new fixture. I have tape over the switch so we don't accidentally turn it on before he gets back. I took a picture of it, too.


See that black wire? It's supposed to be brown.

My question is, why did I have to get angry and yell at our PM to get someone from maintenance to our property?
[/rant]

[rave]
Boise / Idaho is really starting to grow on me. In the last couple of years, I have become a bit of a beer conn cona conni lover. You can walk into any grocery store around here and find all kinds of different beer. The kind that in Oklahoma you would need to go to a liquor store to find - if you could even find some of these. One of the Albertson's stores even has a walk-in beer/wine cooler in the middle of the store.
[/rave]

I think that's about enough for this post. If you've made it this far, congratulations. You win large amounts of cash and prizes - minus the cash and prizes.

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