Do I pwn my house, or does my house pwn me? Only time will tell.
Right now, we’re roughly at a draw. It keeps hucking stuff at me, and I keep parrying and dodging.
Me: “So House, it is down to you, and it is down to me.”
House: (fux0rs phone line)
Me: “Is that all you got?!”
House: (breaks hot water tank)
Me: “Bring it bitch!”
—–Two representative stories—–
Story #1: Phones
Oh yeah, it didn’t end there. We scheduled a service call for “between 8 and 12″on Monday. Anticipated time of arrival, 9am.
At 2pm, I called to see where the serviceman was.
At 2:05pm, I was told that they couldn’t release that information to me, because I was not on the account. Fortunately, thank god, I got a spitfire this time. Who put me on hold while she called hubby, and had him confirm she could release info to me. BAM. I like this girl. If you’re ever calling Bell, ask for Ally. She is /on/ it. She was back in minutes, to tell me that the serviceman was running late, but she was calling his manager to get him over here asap. Like I said. Ally. She’s the man.
At 2:30, the serviceman rolls up. If he hadn’t been driving the truck all by himself, I would have sworn he was abut 15. Which would not have been far off. As he was, in fact, a student.
Hello? Bell sends students out unaccompanied on random calls? Seriously? Whatever.
So Dougie checks our phone line. Can’t tell from here. So he has to check the main line, in the main building (not in our house, but out back). Sorry ma’am, I have a master key, but someone has installed a new lock on the building.
W.T.F.
As a brand spanking new condo owner, I have /no clue/ who installed the second lock, where that person might be right now, or who to call to begin to find out.
But I am a weasel of big brains.
Quick deep scan of the condo book turns up an apartment unit where the “customer service office” is located. About 5 minutes walk away. Magic. I tell Dougie to take a milk break while I zip down the street to the “office”. Ring doorbell. Ring doorbell again. Guy in his comfy pants comes to the door. Looks rather baffled to discover that his unit is listed as anything official (I think maybe he was playing videogames when I rang). Fortunately, he is very very nice, and when I ask “alrighty, well who would you call?”, he gives me the phone number of the superintendent. Magic again.
As I boot it back up the street, I call the super from my cell phone. The rather surly man who answers explains that he is very sick right now, and can’t even stand up, and yes he did install a second lock “because people were stealing from me”. No he isn’t onsite and can’t come by. No I can’t come and get the key from him. No, no one else has a key. Oh no, wait, there is one person, and she lives nearby, but she’s at work right now. When will she be back do you think? After 5. Right.
I get back, and ask Doog if he can come back after 5 today. Yes he can. Great.
2 minutes later, cell phone rings. Sick super calling back to ask if the Bell guy has left. No, he’s just about to drive away. I run out into the street, and throw my body on the hood of his truck. “Don’t go!”
Sick super is sending his neighbour, the sometime stand-in super, over with a key. He’ll be here in about 15-20 minutes. I put my hand over the reciever and ask the Bell guy if he can stick around for 15 minutes. Sure, no problem (<-at this point I’m beginning to understand how he came to be running so late…). Sick super gets shirty with me, and says “no, I didn’t promise 15 minutes, tell him 20”. Bite me.
Sometime stand-in super shows up. YAYES! He, it turns out, is rather lovely, and very helpful.
And as I’m being super long-winded, I’ll truncate this middle bit. Let’s just sum it up by saying that there was much in and out and around and back in the building and back to the jacks, and a significant amount of sometime stand-in super actually /coaching/ Dougie, Bell Guy through solving the problem.
They’re here until 4:45. Yeah, scroll up. It did indeed start at 2:30. That’s a 2hr service call for a dead phoneline.
And after it all, what was the problem? What was wrong with our phoneline? Well, dear reader, I’ll tell you:
The previous owner cut it.
Oh, that’s right. They physically severed the line in the back room. Not doing what a normal person would do and just call Bell to virtually disconnect the line. No siree. These people don’t take chances. Snip. Snip. No phoneline for you.
Fuckwads.
Dougie sorted it, and was on his merry. Unfortunately in the course of doing that he apparently also just got rid of the jack in our back room. Marvy.
So. Now we have a phoneline again. Though we’re minus one jack. Really House, did either of us win on this one? I got my phoneline, and you lost a feature. Was it worth it? Was it?
Story #2: Water
Our hot water tank is flaky like the 1980s treat. On night one we discovered that the fault light went on every time we had a shower. But that’s not too bad, because you hit the reset button and it works again. Get a repairperson over soon.
But yesterday morning, when husband went to have a shower, he discovered that both life and water heaters only have so many resets. After much, much coaxing, we got it working well enough that he could de-stink himself and go to work.
That evening, not wanting the same experience, and having to go onsite in the morning, I tried to have my shower. My foreplanning must have pissed House off. Because this time, it waited until I had shampoo in my hair, and then THWACK, it cut all hot water off, and gave me a blast of cold. Which, no matter how many dripping trips down the hallway later, I was unable to fix. Awesome.
Then there’s a bit here about not having the complete info from the last owners, including info on the hot water rental, discovered by more rifling through folders and endless stacks of papers.
But it ends, for now, with booking a service call for Thursday afternoon.
So, House. This round is up for grabs. Are you feeling lucky? Are you?
:goes shopping for Red Bull.