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