first day of nikki family christmas
officially today, when we get jianjian's presents to us and then go to the penguins hockey game. i am excited, but am not even entirely sure how to prepare myself. also, i am not ready for christmas, having not wrapped anything for the little [name redacted]s, though at least i am ahead of mom in that i have actually gotten them something.
So, mom and I ended up coming home late late monday night instead of tuesday after work. Monday evening, it was something.
It probably started earlier that day, when mom drove past on her way to pick up her scones and called me to say that there were firetrucks and stuff outside my building. I road down to the lobby, ostensibly to check my mail, but more to find out what was going on, and someone said something about a transformer blowing. Still, we seemed to have full power, so i figured people were just parked outside ours, or something. anyway, mom arrives, parks downstairs as usual and then we decide to go to the mall.
I put on impractical shoes (but not as impractical as last time! thank god!!), and we went to the mall and used the victoria's secret gift cards and got mom dinner because i had plans with rocksizedheart, Krisztina, and Tego. Then, having completed our tasks, we walk back through the overpasses and the national science whatever building to my apartment and find it strangely dark.
The mezzanine level door still opens with the key though, and it's bright in there, so we shrug and go in. And the elevators don't work. yappari no power.
I need to meet my friends soon for dinner, and while my shoes were fine for walking to the mall on dry ground, they weren't exactly ideal for crossing a sidewalk of slush and snowbanks (as usual, the snowbanks were fine. it was the slush that got me), what with the peeptoe and all, so I wanted to go upstairs, drop my stuff off and change my shoes (also get the cookies i'd been planning to give rocksizedheart) so we cut through the hilton lobby and then outside past the garage entrance to our lobby--the back door inside wasn't working because yappari no power. But there were firefighters inside who said we weren't allowed to go up, but we could chill in the condo lobby or the hotel lobby.
The hotel lobby was nicer, so we went back there for a bit, mom interrogated some people for info, I called Krisztina to tell them we had not power, we got a little bit of the food that had been put out that we were told we could eat, and then, essentially, i went to wait for rocksizedheart at the metro.
mom vetoed chilling at K&T's place while we were at dinner, so i think she stayed in the building to see if they'd let us back in. we went to uncle julio's (which was tasty) and everyone else exchanged gifts (i'd coincidentally already exchanged with everyone else separately). sometime during dinner mum texted to say they were letting people in very slowly, and that one of the lifts was working. K&T very graciously offered to let us crash at theirs, but first i needed to get back, and pack some things.
We were waiting to use the elevator (people who needed medicine were a priority), and then mum saw that the door to the stairwell was open. It's outside, across the little 15 minute parking area, incidentally. I didn't know where the stairs came out. We used our building key to get in, and then climbed the 20 floors to mine.
I couldn't find my flashlight in the dark (lol irony), but I did know where i kept matches, and a couple of candles, so i packed very poorly by candlelight. It occurred to us that mom's car was locked behind an electricity-powered gate, and maybe we couldn't get it out (that night or the next day) and we kind of thought, if we can get it out, let's just drive home. (though in all reality, the apartment was still warm, we probably could have just stayed there the night if we'd wanted).
More packing in the dark--i had a suitcase, and a bag I'd take if we decided to go crash at K&T's. We noticed that there were lights on in the apartments on the other side of our building, which meant they'd gotten power back, but we def still had none. Mom takes some stuff and goes down to see if she can get in her car, with plans to call me about the status, and if she could get it out, I'd take the rest of the stuff down the stairs and we'd go.
Mom had an epic time, tracking down and hounding building managers and building tech people and then staying with them until they helped her find the next one or they did what she wanted. Eventually she gets to Gary, and they go down with another guy, and he starts pulling on this pulley (that he had to climb on a upside down garbage can to reach. fire hazard anyone?) to manually open the parking gate...to find that someone, probably the firefighters, had cut off the bolts and hinges to the gate in a failed attempt to open it, and had basically broke the whole thing. Like, it fell down off the bar when they tried to open it while still blocking the entrance. Now it was really a fire hazard (or if some car had tried to go out after power was restored, it probably would have fallen on it), and mom stuck around so they wouldn't give up and say 'let the garage people deal with it when they get here' because apparently it's managed by a different company. She also helped out, and eventually they got it open enough for a car to go through. One of the two guys helped mom by driving it out the very narrow gap, and then they were def like 'ok, not our problem anymore'. Then mom called to tell me that the firefighters had left, which meant the building wasn't sealed anymore, so we really could use the elevator, and came up to help me carry our stuff down.
We left my apartment around 10pm, and were definitely on the road by 10:30, and got home to wv around 3am. I'd called my super earlier, during the pack in the dark period, to ask if i could work from home because we had no power and she said yes, so I worked from home yesterday which mostly got me out of cleaning. Strangely enough, we had no traffic on the road the entire way. go figure.
So, mom and I ended up coming home late late monday night instead of tuesday after work. Monday evening, it was something.
It probably started earlier that day, when mom drove past on her way to pick up her scones and called me to say that there were firetrucks and stuff outside my building. I road down to the lobby, ostensibly to check my mail, but more to find out what was going on, and someone said something about a transformer blowing. Still, we seemed to have full power, so i figured people were just parked outside ours, or something. anyway, mom arrives, parks downstairs as usual and then we decide to go to the mall.
I put on impractical shoes (but not as impractical as last time! thank god!!), and we went to the mall and used the victoria's secret gift cards and got mom dinner because i had plans with rocksizedheart, Krisztina, and Tego. Then, having completed our tasks, we walk back through the overpasses and the national science whatever building to my apartment and find it strangely dark.
The mezzanine level door still opens with the key though, and it's bright in there, so we shrug and go in. And the elevators don't work. yappari no power.
I need to meet my friends soon for dinner, and while my shoes were fine for walking to the mall on dry ground, they weren't exactly ideal for crossing a sidewalk of slush and snowbanks (as usual, the snowbanks were fine. it was the slush that got me), what with the peeptoe and all, so I wanted to go upstairs, drop my stuff off and change my shoes (also get the cookies i'd been planning to give rocksizedheart) so we cut through the hilton lobby and then outside past the garage entrance to our lobby--the back door inside wasn't working because yappari no power. But there were firefighters inside who said we weren't allowed to go up, but we could chill in the condo lobby or the hotel lobby.
The hotel lobby was nicer, so we went back there for a bit, mom interrogated some people for info, I called Krisztina to tell them we had not power, we got a little bit of the food that had been put out that we were told we could eat, and then, essentially, i went to wait for rocksizedheart at the metro.
mom vetoed chilling at K&T's place while we were at dinner, so i think she stayed in the building to see if they'd let us back in. we went to uncle julio's (which was tasty) and everyone else exchanged gifts (i'd coincidentally already exchanged with everyone else separately). sometime during dinner mum texted to say they were letting people in very slowly, and that one of the lifts was working. K&T very graciously offered to let us crash at theirs, but first i needed to get back, and pack some things.
We were waiting to use the elevator (people who needed medicine were a priority), and then mum saw that the door to the stairwell was open. It's outside, across the little 15 minute parking area, incidentally. I didn't know where the stairs came out. We used our building key to get in, and then climbed the 20 floors to mine.
I couldn't find my flashlight in the dark (lol irony), but I did know where i kept matches, and a couple of candles, so i packed very poorly by candlelight. It occurred to us that mom's car was locked behind an electricity-powered gate, and maybe we couldn't get it out (that night or the next day) and we kind of thought, if we can get it out, let's just drive home. (though in all reality, the apartment was still warm, we probably could have just stayed there the night if we'd wanted).
More packing in the dark--i had a suitcase, and a bag I'd take if we decided to go crash at K&T's. We noticed that there were lights on in the apartments on the other side of our building, which meant they'd gotten power back, but we def still had none. Mom takes some stuff and goes down to see if she can get in her car, with plans to call me about the status, and if she could get it out, I'd take the rest of the stuff down the stairs and we'd go.
Mom had an epic time, tracking down and hounding building managers and building tech people and then staying with them until they helped her find the next one or they did what she wanted. Eventually she gets to Gary, and they go down with another guy, and he starts pulling on this pulley (that he had to climb on a upside down garbage can to reach. fire hazard anyone?) to manually open the parking gate...to find that someone, probably the firefighters, had cut off the bolts and hinges to the gate in a failed attempt to open it, and had basically broke the whole thing. Like, it fell down off the bar when they tried to open it while still blocking the entrance. Now it was really a fire hazard (or if some car had tried to go out after power was restored, it probably would have fallen on it), and mom stuck around so they wouldn't give up and say 'let the garage people deal with it when they get here' because apparently it's managed by a different company. She also helped out, and eventually they got it open enough for a car to go through. One of the two guys helped mom by driving it out the very narrow gap, and then they were def like 'ok, not our problem anymore'. Then mom called to tell me that the firefighters had left, which meant the building wasn't sealed anymore, so we really could use the elevator, and came up to help me carry our stuff down.
We left my apartment around 10pm, and were definitely on the road by 10:30, and got home to wv around 3am. I'd called my super earlier, during the pack in the dark period, to ask if i could work from home because we had no power and she said yes, so I worked from home yesterday which mostly got me out of cleaning. Strangely enough, we had no traffic on the road the entire way. go figure.