I went to the German consulate this morning to pick up my passport. I'd had it sent there rather than trust the post office, and then somehow overlooked the email saying it had arrived. I checked last week and learned they had it, then didn't get up early enough on Friday to be sure of getting there before noon, so went over there this morning. I only had to wait a few minutes, I think because I wasn't going to need much of the secretary's time: she asked my name, then compared my face to the passport photo, and handed me the passport.

On my way home, I went to the JP Licks in Coolidge Corner to get my free birthday ice cream. Sweet cream is one of the flavors of the month, which made me happy. I got a cone rather than a cup, so I could eat ice cream while walking back to the green line stop. I realized partway home that I'd been walking more quickly than usual, with fewer pauses, for most of this outing. It wasn't deliberate, but was probably useful exercise.

I'd put in a maintenance request with building management yesterday, asking them to turn the heat up, since it's been chilly much of the time since they replaced the boiler. A maintenance person showed up while I was home alone, so I got to be the one to walk around the apartment while he pointed a "heat wand" at various places in the apartment, and got readings mostly around 72-74 (F, which is around 23 C). He told me he'd turned the thermostat up a degree, but those numbers mean the apartment is warmer than the legal minimum (68 F during the day, 64 at night).

covid masking )

When Adrian asked me for help baking less than an hour later, I said yes, and then the thing she'd asked me to do seemed suddenly complicated. I told her that, and she got Cattitude to do it the thing instead, but I was surprised and a little dismayed to be out of focus that early in the day. Adrian pointed out that I'd gotten up early to go downtown (the German consulate is across the street from the Back Bay train station), but I think the unexpected dealing with the maintenance person had a lot to do with it. The consulate, supermarket, and ice cream shop also involved dealing with people, but I expected and planned those.
After three days of applying and re-applying a skin "healing cream," my fingers are basically back to normal. In particular, typing doesn't hurt my fingertips, my hands just generally look better, and I'm not carefully avoiding touching anything acidic (like oranges). Now I need to remember to keep using this lotion (though not a dozen times per day) even when nothing hurts and there's no obvious damage.

This is I think a recurrence of a problem I'd had in previous winters, possibly made worse by the couple of days of using space heaters while we waited for them to fix (replace) the boiler.

Also, we had someone come today to remove the air conditioners from our windows and carry them down to our basement-level storage area. This is the same person who put them in the windows when we first moved in (we never got around to removing them last winter, which was a mistake, because having them in the windows let cold air leak into our apartment). He again arrived later than he had originally said he would; he may just be over-optimistic about Boston traffic.
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
( Nov. 2nd, 2023 03:49 pm)
ETA 9:05 p.m. I can now hear the heating system, and the space seems to be warming up again.

I may have spoken too soon. The radiators are now barely warm, and I am cold. We have turned the space heater in this room back on. I don't know what's going on, but we haven't heard from either the management company or the maintenance person since lunchtime.

We have heat! The building has an entire new boiler, and we had the delightful side-quest this morning of trying to figure out why we couldn't get the power in this room back on after something overloaded the circuit. The answer turned out to be that the ground fault interrupter in the bathroom also controls the circuit in this adjoining room.

The side quest involved having a maintenance person come in to look around (which worked, he identified the problem) while I sat in my bedroom with the door closed, because he thought that pulling his shirt up over his face was adequate masking to protect me. We have masks, Adrian offered him one.

Also, I dropped off my ballot after lunch today, and came home via Trader Joe's, to restock our supply of interesting dried fruit, specifically, mandarins and Montmorency cherries. (We do get other dried fruit there, but plenty of stores stock raisins, dried cranberries, and dried apricots.)

However, the tips of my left thumb and fingers hurt as I type, so I think it's time for an NSAID and something that doesn't involve a keyboard.
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Three things: heat, the Boston city council election and the ballot drop box, and the farmers market

The building heat is broken, and it was cold last night. I sent in a maintenance request after breakfast this morning, and a couple of hours later a maintenance person knocked and told us that there was a problem with the boiler, and they had sent for someone to fix it.

A few hours after that, someone knocked to tell us that the problem wouldn't be fixed at least until tomorrow morning, and offered to lend us space heaters. At my suggestion, [personal profile] adrian_turtle accepted two (they offered three, "one for each bedroom"). We had by then gotten out the two space heaters we own, and hadn't used (or needed) since we moved in. We have mostly been sitting in the study, when not doing things in the kitchen (cooking, making tea, washing the dishes from lunch) or exercising: [personal profile] cattitude did some VR gaming with Patricia, and I've done three sets of PT exercises.

I took the trolley to Copley Square today, in order to drop off my absentee ballot for the city council election. When I got there I discovered that the drop box was closed for Halloween. The sign was ambiguous, so I went into the library and asked the information person whether she knew whether the drop box would be available later, but they hadn't told her. So I called 311, and learned that the boxes will be usable again from tomorrow around noon through Election Day, so I will go back sometime in the next few days (or ask Cattitude or Adrian to do so).

While I was in Copley Square I went to the farmers market -- the chance to do that is why I decided to drop off my ballot today. I got a loaf of bread and a slice of a "chocolate loaf" from Hi-Rise Bakery, plus three Macoun apples from one vendor and an unexpected small box of raspberries from another. Those three apples were the only unbruised and unblemished apples in a half-full box; it has not been a good year for local apples, and the Macouns have been small, but tasty.

ETA: This election is for city council, four at-large seats and one for each district. Both the candidates for the district seat seem reasonable; I voted for the challenger (Jacob deBlecourt) rather than the incumbent. For the at-large seats (eight candidates for four seats) I eliminated the two anti-vax candidates quickly; one is also an insurrectionist. That left six people, which came down to three I like and one who seems OK. In the end I voted for Louijeune, Mejia, and Santana, the three I was sure of, and Murphy as my fourth vote, because I really wanted to vote against Vitale and Nelson (they're the anti-vaxers) and Nee-Walsh after she said that Black Lives Matter had set the cause of Civil Rights back by fifty years.
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
( Jan. 20th, 2023 03:15 pm)
We just renewed the lease on our apartment, for another 12 months. They're increasing the rent by 4%, which is less than I had expected, given recent inflation and that our rent includes heat and hot water, and the price of energy has gone up by significantly more than 4% in the past year. We're seeing that in the electric and gas bills (we have a gas stove).
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
( Mar. 15th, 2022 04:24 pm)
[personal profile] adrian_turtle, [personal profile] cattitude, and I have signed a lease on a new apartment! We still need to landlord to sign it, but at this stage I'm confident it's going to happen. (A couple of other things have fallen through.)

It's in Boston, specifically in Brighton, which I keep having to tell myself is not at/near a beach. We'll be moving in June.
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
( Feb. 22nd, 2022 04:13 pm)
The realtor just told [personal profile] adrian_turtle that the place I posted about a few days ago had been taken off the market. That most likely means someone else is applying for it; she asked him to keep us in mind, if it becomes available or he sees something similar. And we will have to resume looking.

*feh*
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I made an appointment for [personal profile] adrian_turtle and [personal profile] cattitude to look at another apartment in Somerville, this afternoon. They liked it enough that we have asked for a rental application. [personal profile] cattitude urged me to look at the topo map before deciding; I poked at mappedometer, and the elevation graph shows a 1/16 slope up to Highland Avenue, and 1/25 down to Summer Street. [Those are relevant because there are useful buses on both streets, the 88 and 90 on Highland and the 87 on Summer.)

I'm saying "I think" because the landlord could turn us down, or we could look at the lease and find something problematic enough that we need to back out, as happened with the first place we looked at, several weeks ago.

Meanwhile, I talked to my mother this afternoon, and asked about the email I sent her about ten days ago, asking about where her parents had lived, and when my grandmother became a German citizen and, later, when she and my grandfather were naturalized as US citizens. It turns out that she'd written a nice long reply to my questions, and accidentally sent it to herself instead of to me. I now have lots of information, a couple of questions for our contact at the German embassy in London, and maybe one for my cousin Anne. (This is for German citizenship.)
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
( Oct. 7th, 2019 10:18 pm)

The bathroom window has been defective--couldn't be closed all the way--since we moved in. The landlord originally said that he was going to fix it, and then that he was ordering a new window frame. I texted a couple of days ago, asking when we could expect it, and got no answer.

As I wrote to [personal profile] rysmiel,

You'll like this: the handyman was here doing something with the electrical setup, and we went downstairs to find out what he was doing, and then I asked about the new window frame. He told me that Paul (landlord) had been here yesterday and closed the kitchen window from outside [but hadn't bothered to tell us]. We talked for a couple of minutes, and I noted that I'd like to be able to open as well as close the bathroom window, because there might be more warm days before next spring. He said he thought he could fix it for us, and after a couple of trips into and out of the apartment, had done so.

I have no idea why Paul didn't have him try this two months ago, nor whether this is a permanent solution. But for now, my bathroom window is actually closed.

The "something" with the electrical setup is also unclear. Or rather, we know what the problem is, but not what they're doing about it. The problem is that the spiffy new electrical bpx is in violation of the latest electrical code, because of its location relative to the basement stairs. I can see the point, but it's not clear whether they're going to move the box, or some of the stairs. (The old box would also have been in violation, but the older hardware was okay by the older code.) So, more noise, and more people coming in and out at unpredictable times.

redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
( May. 21st, 2019 07:43 pm)
[personal profile] cattitude and I looked over the draft lease, and then I emailed the realtor with a couple of issues, and a bunch of questions: "I don't like this clause about possible rent increases, with blank lines in it" is an issue, and "how will we handle snow removal?" is a question. She emailed the realtor, and then called me with satisfactory answers to our questions (including that the clause we don't like won't be in the final lease).

So, [personal profile] cattitude went over to her office and gave her checks for (a) the security deposit, (b) first and last months' rent, and (c) the pet deposit. We should be getting the actual lease tonight or tomorrow morning, to be signed electronically using Docusign, and then we can relax for a little while before thinking about exactly when we want to move.

We have the current (Somerville) apartment through the end of July, and the lease on the new place in Belmont starts July 1, so we have some flexibility. I have an editorial project with a July 5 deadline, so the second or even third week in July would probably work better for having everything packed up, and taking ourselves and the cats over to the new place.

Also, after several days of sore left hip and knee, I was feeling enough better yesterday to go down to Davis with cattitude to do some shopping, and that went well enough that I went shoe shopping today and walked about a mile, including walking around the Copley Square farmers market and stopping for lunch and then to buy a cheesecake. (My phone says "1.4," but its "miles" are closer to kilometers.)

Tomorrow I hope to sleep late (having been up since about 5:30 a.m. today), get some editing done, and take things easy physically.
The real estate agent emailed the lease to me at about 7:00 this evening; I sent her a quick note acknowledging receipt, and we'll look it over tonight and/or tomorrow morning and then get back to her. I know it's a draft lease because it has "DRAFT" in gray across every page.

I have read most of it, and will look at all the details after dinner. We will need to talk to the landlord about written permission to put in window air conditioners. I also have a couple of questions, about the details of paying for fuel oil and the fact that we and the second-floor tenants will be "jointly responsible" for snow removal, which means we may need to talk to the upstairs tenants about that, well before the first snowfall.

(This took long enough to get here that we had time to start worrying about why we hadn't seen it sooner; neither I nor [personal profile] cattitude got much sleep last night, in part because our ways of dealing with stress seem to be clashing.)
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The landlord of the Belmont apartment has approved us, with the addendum that he wants a written statement that we take responsibility for the cats; I told the real estate agent I am fine with that, and if there's specific wording he wants, please send it along.

Then they want us to write a check for the security deposit; everything else, the landlord likes to do electronically, meaning we have to find out how to do that with either [personal profile] cattitude's bank or my credit union (or possibly ask both, just in case).

If all goes well--meaning there's nothing problematic in the lease terms--we will go to the real estate office in Belmont sometime next week to do all this, and find out when we will be getting the keys, and start the process of putting utilities in our name, etc.
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One, the new screens have been installed. That took maybe ten minutes in the middle of having the plumber here, and was mostly a matter of keeping [livejournal.com profile] julian_tiger out of the way so he wouldn't leap out a window.

The plumber was here for about three hours, during which he made a hole in the wall, and inspected and replaced the shower fixture. And, after I pointed out to him that it had not been fixed yesterday, took a look at the sink, couldn't fix it either, and agreed that it should be replaced.

Then I had to talk to the super, who replaced more washers and said he would order a new sink. Unfortunately, that requires a work order to be signed by his boss. In the meantime, he asked that we not use the bathroom sink.

Replacing the tiles in the bathroom also requires a work order, because they have to get a tiling person in, ETA but the super just called to say this will happen next Tuesday. In the meantime, the hole is covered by a plastic bag held on by duct tape, but we can use the shower.

My cynical guess is that sometime in the next several days, the super will call and tell us that he can't get his boss to okay the new sink. If so, I will resume using the bathroom sink, and try to figure out what to do next. One possibility is to call 311 and see what if any legal recourse we have. Another is to call the management company and point out that we aren't paying for the water, they are, and that it's probably cheaper to get in a new sink than to keep paying for the wasted water. (I am reasonably certain that conservation arguments would fall on deaf ears here.)

I note that having these people in and out all morning has not been exactly restful.

[updated after a call from the super]
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
( May. 9th, 2012 03:12 pm)
A few years ago, our apartment building got new windows. The good side is, they're double-glazed and fit better than the ancient ones they replaced. The problem is, they have nylon screens.

Nylon window screens are not very compatible with cats. And either a lot of my neighbors have cats, or there are other things damaging the screens. There were enough complaints that the landlord promised to replace the screens.

I think that was in 2010. They got as far as having someone come in and find out what needed to be replaced. Then nothing happened, and nothing happened, and the Tenants Association eventually made enough noise that something appears to be happening.

A couple of weeks ago, someone came in to see which windows needed new screens. Last week, someone from the window company called to ask if I could be home either Friday or Monday. No (I was going to be out of town). They asked for yesterday, but couldn't promise it would be morning, so we agreed on today. I was told someone would be here between 9 and 4.

At 3:05, the phone rang, and I was told that someone was on his way, and they were calling tenants to make sure of access. That's also when I found out that the man is here to measure the screens, and take them away with him. Apparently having had someone in to note which windows need new screens doesn't tell them enough: they don't know, or didn't tell the window company, how big the various windows are. And/or they plan to reuse the frames.

This means I am going to have to spend another day stuck at home. (Since I am job hunting and doing a bit of freelance, and [livejournal.com profile] cattitude has a full-time job, I'm the one who does this, because I can more easily free up a day.) Or maybe ask the super to deal with it. Also, the guy who is currently here removing and measuring things doesn't know how long it will take to get the replacements, and is acting as though he is under orders from the people back at the office not to say anything that might commit them to anything, ever. He did tell me the new screens will also be nylon mesh, so I am making no bets on how long they last.

I am glad of the slide-in metal screens we bought when the mesh first got badly torn; it means I can have some ventilation without worrying about the cat jumping out or wasps getting in. With those, I can either open the window a tiny bit, and hope no flies get in, or open it wide and maybe get too much air.
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