reeking havok..

So it's a week before Rach's flight to Aussie and a day before Thanksgiving, and the problem apartment decides to smoke up again. Even with 2 air filters running full blast, I had to leave my wife and unborn baby in a certifiable biohazard. I had a sneezing and runny nose all morning dealing with the stuff.. I can't imagine what it's doing to her and our baby. The only concession I have is that Rach has a key to Shea's place to cat sit this weekend, so I told her if it gets to bad to go to Shea's place and hang out with her cats for a bit. I know Shea's not leaving until tonight, but I hope she does go over there this morning, because even I couldn't hardly stand the air this morning, and I'm usually pretty tolerable of stuff like that. But, well.. the way that neighbor must fill his own house with smoke, I wouldn't be surprised if the next odor we smell seeping through our walls is the smell of a stinky lung cancer victim. Of course.. HE has a filter in his mouth the whole time.

I guess I should confront the rest of the tenants myself, since the management is unwilling to do so. I'm sure if I let them know that my wife is pregnant and I'm only looking after her well being, that they'd tone it down for one week. Yea.. I think I'll do that tonight if I get a moment. I went in today to report the smoke again (not that there's anything they could or would do about it) and they were still closed. Oh, well.. I really didn't want to talk with them anyway.

On a side note.. I got our computer case the other day, and the LCD display is coming today. We got it here and are shipping it over because it's a couple of hundred dollars here than it would be in Aussie. So I got the case and loaded it up, and the only hang up? A couple of temp sensors don't work. No biggie, but it's kind of a bummer. Reminds me of the old days when computer cases showed how many "Megahertz" the computer was running at. Y'know the ones that you could program that were ALWAYS wrong. :P

I had a look yesterday at an LCD similar to the one we're getting today and it looked pretty nice. Only catch I could see was the silly little warm up logo. They splash a nasty looking ACER logo on the screen every time you turn it on. Doesn't make me want to conserve energy very much to turn the display off. Maybe I can find a way to get the logo off. Surely there's some kind of a firmware update or trigger or hack or something. As you can tell, splash screens bother me.

Oh, and we got our shipping info in the mail yesterday. I didn't check my mail until late that night, so I was up until past midnight filling out a silly contract form so they could give the warehouse 48hrs notice. I'm sure glad I decided to check my email last night on a fluke. I'm hoping that goes better than this whole stressful apartment frustration. I didn't put down to get insurance for the shipment.. is that bad? (Crosses fingers and toes in preparation..)

Otherwise, I'm pretty pumped about Thanksmas, shipping stuffs off, getting through this week and getting my visa finished up. Speaking of, I haven't heard from the Visa office yet, but the interview clearly went well, and I would expect them to be processing my visa papers as we speak. Still waiting on them to request my passport though, which is the final confirmation.

I can still smell the apartment stench on myself now and again.. I wonder if it's just a ghost smell now, or if I actually am saturated in it.

Oh.. and my Dad stayed overnight at the hospital after they checked him out for blockage.. all is well and he's most likely home now. They put him on some new meds that my folks are pretty stoked about for his diabetes. Some sort of new insulin derived from lizard saliva. Seems like the new doc is really doin' a lot better job of takin' care of my folks than the previous one.. which is really good, because the last one royally sucked. While Dad was is the hospital though, my mom got the call to find that my Uncle Al had passed. It of course raised his BP a little, and was a shock to all of us. Al always seemed in good health, but just goes to show that any of us could go at any time.

I gotta go.
-len

Dancing on the sun..

I just got back from a meeting with my landlord. It didn't go very well.

Bein a landlord myself, I understand needing some sort of compensation for early termination of a lease.. but since when did $1190 become suitable compensation for 30 days notice. To make it worse, we have a situation at the house that's not getting remedied. We cited it in our termination letter, but they are completely ignoring the situation. So I've been doing some research about the effects of second hand smoke before I make the attempt to tackle the higher ups.

So what is the situation you may be asking?

As you all probably know, my wife is 6 months pregnant and pretty much landlocked at the apartment while I'm at work. Shortly after we moved in, we traded our parents beds (single bed for a double bed) in expectation of Rachael's growing needs. When my mother got the single bed she immediately wrote me an email asking what I'd done to that bed.. it wreaked of smoke. I of course just assured her that it wasn't possible because the few times we've been in a remotely smokey environment, we immediatly peel off our clothes and get them to the wash (no exaggeration, literally in a heap once we hit the door).

A couple of months ago Rach herself started telling me that she smelled smoke in the apartment. My first thought was.. oh, she's pregnant - she's just got an oversensitive nose. But when I got home, I could smell it too. I looked and looked to try and work out where it was coming from, but I couldn't find the source for the life of me. After that, it began happening more and more frequently.. until it finally drove us out of the house. I said to myself, OK.. I can't find the source, and doubt they can do much about something like this without knowing how it was getting in here.. but these people at least need to know what's going on and give us some kind of indication if anyone else is having the same trouble. Two of our favorite places to occupy, the kitchen and the bathroom, reeked of soggy cigarette butts. You've probably smelled this particular odor before if you've ever been to the men's restroom in a smoking establishment and sniffed the urinals.

After the mantenance guy (the best maintenance guy in the world, by the way) came by and tried to find a hole to plug, he told us that he had no idea where it was coming from and that all he could do is set a bucket of sand outside the adjacent apartments and request a note be posted by management.. we called up mom and requested all the air cleaners she could find. We got two, one that she thought was broken and another smaller one. We got the large one fixed up in no time (yay for Mr and Mrs fix-it) and had them running full boar in both rooms (kitchen and bathroom).

This morning Rach woke up (after we'd set the air cleaners back to low, days before, to save energy) and the bathroom reeked again. We kicked it up to high, and it wasn't even thinned out again until after she was done getting ready to leave the house. What I think I should do is get something in writing that the landlord refuses to accomodate our request to reduce the early termination fee regardless of the environmental concerns for my family and myself. Perhaps I should get an email address for the manager's boss instead of the phone number. Once they've replied, I can use that as documentation to hold them liable in case anything happens to the child. Something that says that they understand our concern for the welfare of our family, but refuse according to their policy to allow us the accomodation of leaving the premesis without penalty regardless of the health conditions.

I think that would finally be worth $1k. A constant reminder of the get-rich-quick no matter how we screw the common man mentality. Anyway.. that's my rant for now.
-len

looking in tuit..

I have a card at my desk at work that my wife made ages ago. On one
side, it says..
"The heart has reasons that reason does not understand" ~Jacques Benigue
Bossuel

It really kind of flowed with what I was thinking this morning about
subliminal thought. I was just thinking about how intuition has an
uncommon knack of being right on. It's almost as if someone more knowing
than yourself is passing you information for the big test. I also got to
thinking about the activity of our brains when we're at rest. Even when
we're doing nothing, our brains could be taking in every bit of
information and comparing it to what we already know.. calculating
possibilities. And that's where the heart comes in.. is the heart
something more than an organ.. is it that little bit of risk and reason
that gradually becomes attachment?

I'm sure the ideas that are running through my head are less than
intuitive.. more of a conscious amalgamation of questions of life.
Whether it is full of pixies whispering in your ear, or neurons firing
out of control.. I suppose they're both a little magical in their own
way. Like a drop of rain.. left under a microscope. A whisper of h
-len