Vengeful Cynic

Interaction with My Slum-Lord

So The Zombie* and I have had a variety of inane conversations and she's convinced me that she's really not the smartest woman. Here's the most recent:

So I left notice on Friday with the Zombie that we're moving out at the end of the month. When I got out of the lab on Friday afternoon, my cell phone had a message on it. I checked it, and it was the Zombie telling me that they wanted to show my apartment and that I should call them back to confirm. Well, obviously, my apartment is a mess and I don't want it shown, so I called back and got a busy signal. So this morning I called back again, left a message with their answering service and gave her my office number (not for the first time) for them to call me.

The Zombie: "So, we're showing your apartment at 11 am this morning... is that okay?"

The Cynic: "No, I would rather that you not do that."

Z: "Well, you should have called us back on Friday when we called your cell phone... it's scheduled now."

VC: "Wait a second... So you can schedule my apartment for showing unless I call you up to tell you I don't want to?"

Z: "Well... so long as you're there, you have the right to refuse, but I already scheduled the showing."

So at this point I guessed I'd have to go home and turn them away at the door or... *shudder* clean, so I lobbed the long-ball.

VC: "Look, if you show my apartment, you'd best be sure you're covered legally, because I WILL call a lawyer"

Z: "Well FINE then, we just won't show your apartment. You'll be gone at the end of the month ANYWAYS!"

*click*

Yeah... I think she just hung up on me. I'm just puzzled as to what the crap she's thinking... as if living anywhere besides in these crappy apartments is a punishment or something.

----------------------

*So, when my slum-lord wears her makeup, she looks like a zombie. I know from various conversations with her that she can't be older than 40, but the amount that she's smoked makes her look 65 or so and she has stringy, dirty hair to accentuate the look. Thus, I refer to her as The Zombie.

The Trials of Attempting Property Ownership

Yeah... I know, I haven't gotten back to the Moore wedding. I'm really not sure how to write significant pieces of it in order to keep it meaningful and accurate while at the same time refraining from over-editorializing and potentially writing things that I might not want to have published to the open Internet. Bear with me.

So Anna and I are buying a house. And part of buying a house is having a home inspection. So I went on my home inspection with the local Crazy Jamaican Home Inspector. I definitely recommend the guy so long as you don't mind that he's not really big on punctuality. He's very thorough, but very stereotypically Jamaican with respect to punctuality and attention to things like dates and times.

Anyways, we found a couple of issues with the house... nothing deal-breaking, but it turns out that the owner before the current owners was something of an aspiring home handy-man. Except that he sucked at installing toilets, electrical outlets and REALLY sucked at installing dishwashers and soldering copper piping.

The Toilet - When you grab it and try to swing it back and forth, there's about an inch that it comes up off of the ground and probably 45 degrees of motion from one extreme to the other. Oh... and it leaks to the basement. Fortunately, it leaks onto replaceable drop ceiling tiles... but it's still a problem.

The Electrical Outlets - He failed to ground any of the outlets that he installed in the garage.

Copper Piping - So when soldering the copper piping above the hot water heater, he failed. There are probably half a dozen pinhole leaks that have led to a bed of copper oxide roughly half an inch high on top of the hot water heater.

The Dishwasher - The capstone of the whole experience. So when he installed the dishwasher, he apparently noted a lack of electrical service under the counter. No matter, there are outlets on top of the counter. So what did he do? He drilled a tiny hole, cut off the end of the plug, fished the cable through, spliced the end back on and attached it to the wall. Except, apparently he also sucks as splicing, because the plug has since melted to the point where there is significant copper exposure. Seriously, I'm surprised nothing's caught fire yet.

All in all, I'm very grateful for the home inspector, because while there's a lot of things that I caught on my own, there's a much longer list of little things and significant but subtle things that I would have never noticed. And if anyone's buying in Cedar Rapids, talk to me... The Crazy Jamaican is sure to drive your Realtor nuts, but he's damned good at what he does.