Tuesday, July 2, 2002
Considering Ludditism

Quoting... Dostoevsky: "It's rude to live past forty, it's indecent, immoral!" -from Notes From Underground Fang said I probably shouldn't be reading Dostoevsky these days, lest I mount a bell tower with a rifle. Crying... For 36 hours straight, well, during waking hours anyway. In Central Park, on the bus, in the subway, on the great steps of the Met (but hey, I finally went to the Met, hurrah!). I also cried in James' beautiful apartment overlooking the park. I'm thrilled he's getting back into music, but a bunch of poems people wrote for their weddings was not what I needed to hear at the moment. He said he'll burn them onto a CD for me, so I can cry whenever I want. Later that same night, I cried at a friend's caberet performance, because most of the songs were romantic in nature. There was even a little girl singing "Maybe" from Annie, which is a favorite of mine, but talk about tear-jerking! At least that led me to pop in the Annie soundtrack, from which "N.Y.C." popped out at me. N.Y.C. you may think that I'm square But damn! I come...a-live! . . . N.Y.C. too busy, too crazy Painting... Not just tiles, after a few visits, I broke out. I painted a fruit bowl, a light switch plate with a graduated blue sky and cityscape that says "Livin' for the City," and a fish spoon rest I will probably use as a soap dish. Surprising... Not...My celebrity match is Dylan McDermott .

still trying to get the last 1/3 of my data backed up, so I can send the laptop in for repair. I could have accomplished this with the last battery I bought, but I was trying to back up system files and some of those included the CD burner, so it was in some weird, infinite loop. The battery ran out before I could delete all the troublesome files. It just goes on and on. Last Tuesday night, I forgot to turn off my toilet after I flushed, so there was a mini-flood, causing the overwrought Brit downstairs to give me a ring. It flooded our rooms shortly after I moved in and she was just starting to get over her hostility toward me in the past few weeks. That first flood happened overnight, so she and the maintenance guy came into my room at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday. I was in bed, naturally. Later, I discovered she'd been bad-mouthing me because I was "sprawled" across my bed. What else should I be doing at that hour?! She should not have even been standing there, yelling at me. It's not like it was the joy of my life -- my room flooded as well. The maintenance guy's solution was to just turn the water off on my toilet. For months, I've kept it on the lowest setting I could so that it flushes most of the time. The most irritating part of the whole thing is that I noticed my toilet didn't stop running and sometimes would fill to the top of the bowl. I put in a work order, explaining the problem shortly after I moved in last fall. Of course, they ignored it and my subsequent calls. Not only could all floods could have been avoided, but the workers also act like I've done something wrong. Last Tuesday night, I promised the Brit I would put in another work order on Wednesday. I didn't have a chance. I used the bathroom when I woke up around 9. There wasn't enough water pressure for it to flush, so I turned the water up a bit. As on Tuesday night, I forgot to turn it back down after I flushed. I fell back to sleep until lunch time (two meals are included in our rent, I prefer to sleep in and have lunch and dinner). The next thing I know, I heard water running. There was about two inches of water on the floor and it started to run out of the bathroom into my room. I called the front desk and asked them to bring up the wet vac. They transferred me to the maintenance supervisor. He didn't answer the phone and there was no machine. I called back. They transferred me again. This time he answered; I explained the situation, includingthe fact that it was no doubt flooding the room below. I also asked him to bring the wet vac. He did not. I kept asking him if someone was coming with the wet vac, but he just stared into the toilet tank, as if the answer to the great mystery of life was swirling in the water. He said the water was already there, he had to figure out the problem first. You see, that's where we disagreed on what is and isn't an emergency. My room flooding is bad enough, but the months of hostility and bad-mouthing from the uptight Brit are just too much. Again, do they all think I enjoyed my things getting ruined and my room smelling like a swamp for 3 days? I'm just glad it was terribly hot, or the carpet might never have dried. The toilet works again and I don't have to keep turning it on and off. It only took three floods to get the repair done correctly (the floater and other parts in the tank were rotted, which I mentioned in the original work order!). Just to add insult to injury, the workers knocked over my mouse and stomped on it, so I couldn't finish my client's web site for a few extra days. I'm about ready to give up all the technology and go live in a cave. [Next entry: "(Re)applying Myself"] [Index] [archives] [bio] [Wish List]