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