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February 10, 2005

Ah, The Joys Of Apartment Living

It's 8:55am on Thursday. I actually went to bed early last night, well, 12:30am, but that's early for me. About 1:45 this morning the car alarm went off on one of the thug mobiles that was parked not too far from my bedroom window. Woke me up and then I had a heck of a time getting back to sleep.

I have not gotten used to the old joys of apartment living. When I moved in here the place was less than what I would call clean. I had a list of things to get fixed, including the fun and safe fact that the sliding glass door didn't lock, and that both the heater and air conditioner didn't work. Last week the garbage disposal quit working and this week the sliding mirror door in front of the washer and dryer fell of the track.

None of these compare to Friday January 21st. I was sitting in my living room, working on homework on my computer and my chef's uniform was sitting in bleach in the washing machine. At 12:06 my electricity flashed off. Oh great. I went to the breaker box, everything was fine. So I stepped outside to see if the power outage had effected the entire building or just my apartment. I saw a maintenance man and called over to him. He went to the main breaker boxes outside and said that my electricity had been cut off by TXU, he said that usually meant for non-payment.

Well the fun thing about this is... All of my utilities are paid thru my school, so I don't even know the account numbers to be able to call TXU to find out what is going on. I called the school and the RAs that live in the apartments and no one could seem to find the director of housing. It took my mother calling the President of the School before they got him on the phone.

He told me that TXU said they didn't cut it off and for me to call maintenance. I guess he didn't get the part of the message that I had already called maintenance. So after about three more calls they determined that they "accidentally" turned off my electricity instead of my next door neighbors. This determination was finally made about 1pm. I was then informed that TXU has some stupid "24 hour window" policy where they can take an entire day to turn your electricity back on. So I immediately called my chef instructor and told him I wasn't sure if I would be able to make it to class in uniform.

Now, I've been better about doing laundry long before the time I need to wear something, but keep in mind that this was the first day I actually could use my washer and dryer. Sears had just come out the day before (right before my 1pm - 10:30pm class) and changed the plugs on my washer and dryer so that the previously 4 prong plugs would fit into the 3 prong outlets on the wall.

I decided I wasn't going to sit in my apartment with no electricity all day, especially since Dallas broke a record for highest temperature that day. I drove all the way to Plano, went to Saturn to see if they could complete the voluntary recall repairs on my VUE and then drove home. The electricity was still not on. It's now 3:45pm, I have class at 5:30 and my chef's uniform is still in the bleach. Then I decided to go eat dinner at Cheddars, I hadn't eaten all day long and I didn't want to open the refrigerator and let the cold air out since the electricity had now been off for over 3 hours. Not that I could cook anything when I got it out anyway.

When I arrived back from dinner, the electricity was still off. I made one more phone call to the housing director and he called back and said they were on their way. I decided to take a nap on the couch, not much else I could do. About 4:55 someone knocks on my door, tells me my electricity hadn't been shut off. I look around and give him a "how stupid do I look" glance. I walk with him over to the main breaker boxes and he shows me how the redtag was on my neighbor's box not mine. Apparently trying to cover their rears... Guess they didn't know that I could tell that he had moved the redtag to the correct box before he came to my apartment.

I then called the apartment manager and the maintenance man who I had been dealing with most of the day. They came over and watched the TXU technician attempt to blame my 5 hour ordeal on a faulty main breaker that "they could have fixed hours ago." I mean please. I may have been born in the afternoon but it wasn't That afternoon.

As soon as the electricity came back on I ran back to my apartment and moved the washer immediately to a rinse cycle and then threw my uniform in the dryer while I took a shower. And what do you ask was I awarded after my fun day with TXU? A Migraine that's what. After changing clothes into still mostly wet clothes, I put a migraine patch on my forehead and drove as fast as I could to class.

I was pretty proud of myself that I was only 15 minutes late. With my migraine medicine (may cause dizziness) and patches on my face, I received permission to actually use a stool to sit down during class. We had a huge amount of preparation to be done that day and I sat down while I cut up about 7 pounds of onions. Luckily by the time came to start cooking my headache was better and I put the chair away. After class I came home and fell asleep on the couch watching a movie.

Ah, The Joys of Apartment Living.

Posted by FutureFoodTVStar at February 10, 2005 09:21 AM

Comments

Posted by: Nessa at February 11, 2005 11:20 AM