uegrgh.. just waking up

uhn... issues with oc.... still sleepy... coffee coming in... the sky's so dark I feel like it's 5:09 again, and I'm just trying to stay asleep.

mostly sunny, partly breezy and mild

excellent day for a trip to the beer garden.lots of spaten, cheeseburgers, and a sly trip home on the 60 bus over the triboro.

I even gave the cat a bath this morning and he's not even pissed about it. he sure was dirty though. Now, if I can just not do the laundry ever again, I'll have had the perfect weekend...

what's your favorite beergarden? for me it's the aforementioned czech hall in astoria. any takers? I'll also accept public picnic spots or campgrounds.

Manuel is the man

the place is fixed. much cooler, no hot wall. the intercom has its old noisy "feature" (I can hear anyone else using it as a not-quiet echo) but it seems to be ok otherwise. I had no power except for a mysterious extension cord coming in my window keeping my fridge and fan on, and some hastily hung utility lights. I felt like I came home to a movie set for most of last week. I bumped into the super yesterday and he said he found the leak, fixed it, and was calling a painter to come and fix my kitchen wall.. the paint was all bubbly and gross and scary. I thanked him and he said, "thank god there wasn't an explosion" (!!!)
okay I'm not scared anymore. yikes!

adventures in apartmenting...

I dunno who knows what in this, so I'll start over. My intercom makes noise, my kitchen floor and wall are extremely hot. There's a brown goop that melts out from the circuit breaker box.

Well, let me deal with the noise first. it's the most annoying part. It used to be only when someone else was using it- but since there are about a hundred units in my building that's pretty often. it buzzed a little. about a month ago it started making noise all the time. not very loud but annoying. I could push one of the buttons and it would shut up for awhile. but then it didn't– so I stuck a dry sponge on there, rubber band'ed some plastic wrap on top and wrapped a towel around a long flat piece of wood, and leanded that up against it. I know I said 'leanded', but the solution was just as "geto" as the verbage. I tried getting ahold of the super but he was conveniently never around.

For the other problems, I stopped washing dishes barefoot in the morning and once in awhile took a bleachy sponge to the wall. In retrospect I do remember (and I just saw it about five minutes ago) every once in awhile seeing a drop of water coming from the breakerbox but never thought it was anything other than odd that my breakers would be sweating.. hell it's hot in here. I'm hot. it's always so hot in here I rarely wear clothes, unless my neighbor comes over or I'm leaving. It's literally 91 degrees and 72% humid where I am sitting right now. It would surprise me if the chairs and shit WEREN'T sweating. My cat sweats and that's impossible too. tangent.

The intercom got really annoying and I had some trouble sleeping without earplugs. I told the super last friday about the intercom making a racket. Since we never connected with a time he and I would both be there, the next time I bumped into him (last monday eve) he said he would call the "intercom people" and they would take care of it. two days later there was a sign in the lobby claiming the intercom was out of order for a day or two. that's when it stopped making noise. whew! what a relief. But today I came in and it was making noise again.

Well, I walked across the hall and asked him to come over and have a look. He was on the couch and got up slowly, hobbled to the door and I said I could come back, but I wondered if he could take a look b'c the thing was making noise again. A few minutes later he comes over (I chucked the cat into the bathroom) and looks at it, and says there have been problems in the whole system, and something about lines being crossed or linked or something. He borrowed a nearby screwdriver and popped it off the wall and then sticks his fingers in the hole. he says he feels moisture in the wall, and that's when I start putting pieces together. I said, well hey look at this electric switch box two feet away on the wall- there's all this brown gunk (and now that I think about it, water) oozing out from the bottom, has been doing that since shortly after I moved in, and the paint is bubbling up around it.. looks gross. As the wall and floor have been extremely hot for almost a month, he says oh my god, there's a leak upstairs. this is very bad. he starts counting out loud and tells me that apartment 24 (or was it 26?) is leaking water and that this is very very bad. he'll get started on the leak right away and come back to look at the electric box and the wall and the floor tomorrow. Maybe the apartment will cool down a few degrees too, huh? I won't hold my breath. Still, I feel lucky that he's actually interested in fixing it.. my neighbors say he is the best (we'll see).

catchupwork

just went back and reposted a whole bucket of posts from the blog I've been using.. I like this one better, because I don't have specific readers, the same three people aren't always telling me their opinion (which is good I guess but it's always the same three people). It's less expressive than myspace but whatevs.
I think I got most of the dates right.

cool or spooky...?

two nights ago I went to Inwood Hill Park (where that jogger was killed in broad daylight abaout a year ago) with a pal and we found chickens... chickens which had been part of a ritual sacrifice, their necks slit open across the rocks. the bodies were stuffed into black plastic garbage bags and left along the sides of the path...

this was a moment I was happy not to be an adventurer, to have stumbled upon the scene long *after* it took place.

I've heard since they practice santeria up there...!