I keep forgetting to post
Oh my GOD I’m tired. I haven’t even watched the latest White Collar yet because I was stuck at a SuperVegan meeting last night and then had to go home and do a bunch of work afterward. (I liked the White Collar season premiere, though. It was nice to see the characters again, and I enjoy the banter and obvious OTPness of Neal/Peter. But I’m serially monofannish and my heart is still in the SPN-zone.)
So, all of a sudden, I’m going to Vividcon. And to Lollapalooza. This is random, right? soundingsea talked me into signing up for VVC’s waitlist a while ago, but I never got a response from them and figured it wasn’t going to happen. It turns out my registration got stuck in a spam filter-they were very apologetic and had a spot available based on my position on the waitlist, so I checked into last-minute flights, found an affordable one, and decided to go for it. I also had a voucher for a free night at a category 1-4 Marriott that was about to expire, which I was able to use to get a night at the hotel, so it just kind of seems like fate that it worked out so well.
And then I remembered that Lollapalooza is in Chicago-I’ve been really wanting to go because Soundgarden is reuniting there, but that’s a lot to fly all the way to Chicago for. But it turns out that Lollapalooza is VVC weekend! And Soundgarden is playing Sunday night after the con! I mean, there is no way I can be in Chicago the night Soundgarden’s playing and not go, right? So I bought a Sunday day pass to Lollapalooza. (Lollapalooza ‘97 was my first concert. And Soundgarden has always been “the one that got away”-I was in their fan club as a kid and came this close to getting tickets to see them on their last tour, but wasn’t able to, and figured I’d see them next time, except they went and broke up!!!!)
So anyway. I’m doing that. Anyone else going?
(I know there’s been a lot of controversy around Vividcon lately, and I haven’t been all that happy with the way that some members of the concom and some attendees handled it. But I decided that it wasn’t fair of me to dismiss the entire con based on that-there are friends I want to see, and some of the programming looks amazing.)
***
This weekend sucked. jaydk came over Saturday night and we ate and drank and watched some of her Korean shows and more of SPN S2, and everything was going great until sometime after midnight, when I decided to microwave some soup while the air conditioner in the other room was running. Oops.
The fuse blew.
This has happened twice before, once in the dead of winter (stupid space heater) and once in the sweltering summer (stupid air conditioner). My building was built in 1931 and the electrical wiring is from the 1940s... and hasn't been upgraded since. My entire apartment (fridge, AC, computer, TV, everything) runs on one 20 (amp? I dunno the technical term, but it translates to NOT ENOUGH) fuse, located in the dark, dank, terrifying cellar three floors down. Fixing it requires literally removing the fuse and replacing it with a new one (it's one of these basically). I've been so careful all summer, turning off everything before using the AC or microwave, and I had to screw up on one of the hottest nights of the year, with company over no less. :(
My landlord recently installed a circuit breaker, which still doesn't give me enough power, but which should at least be easier to fix, because you just flip the switch back up instead of having to replace the fuse. So I went into the cellar and flipped the switch. Nothing happened. I tried again. (Note that every try involves going up and down three flights of stairs in the sweltering heat.) I called my landlord, who told me that it must be my fault and that one of my appliances must have a short. I unplugged everything in my apartment. I tried again. Nothing happened. I called my dad. He told me to push the switch down really hard and then pull it up really hard. Nothing happened. I called my landlord again, and he finally said that he'd send an electrician at 8 or 9am, and that he'd stay in touch.
Meanwhile poor jaydk had been sitting alone in my dark, hot apartment for an hour with only her cell phone for company. She incredibly generously invited me over to her place to bask in her air conditioning for a few hours, so we headed over there and arrived sometime around 2am. She even agreed to download and watch the final three episodes of SPN S2, because that's what we were going to watch before the stupid fuse blew, and I'd been all excited about it. So we watched those (very quietly so as not to disturb her roommate) and also part of a Taiwanese cop show she's into. She is a true friend. At this point it was around 5am, and she invited me to stay over, but I wanted to be home to get the electricity fixed, so I left. It took two hours to get home (half hour wait for the 4 train, which ran local, then a half hour wait for the L train, which ran slowly) so it was 7am when I finally collapsed into bed, where I could barely sleep because it was so hot.
I woke up three hours later, at 10am, to find that no electrician had come despite my landlord telling me one would be there at 8 or 9am. So I called the landlord... and got no answer. I spent the next hour calling every five minutes or so and got nothing. This dude knew I had no power and was intentionally not answering his phone. Finally I left a message saying that I was going to call my own electrician and deduct it from the rent, then spent the next 45 minutes calling every local electrician I could find on Google. I finally got one who agreed to come, and then my landlord's wife called me back and said that she'd gotten my message about calling an electrician, but that she had tried calling around and couldn't find any. Which means that they'd lied to me about one coming at 8 or 9am, and were intentionally ignoring my calls until I threatened to lose them money, and they obviously weren't trying very hard to find an electrician because I'd managed to find one using only my phone's crappy web browser.
So anyway. The electrician arrived around 1pm and told me that the circuit breaker had been installed incorrectly. The wiring is still using the old fuse and the circuit breaker, so the fuse is still going to blow like it always did. It'll have to be rewired to go around the old fuse, or it'll have to have a blank in it, or something--I don't really understand. Anyway, so the fuse needed to be replaced, so he spent a half hour digging around in his truck, didn't find one, went off to Home Depot and brought one back. So it was 3pm before I finally had my power back. (THANK GOD.)
And then the electrician, an older guy, sat in my apartment for a half hour telling me how pretty I am and how cultured I am and can I help him with his website and can he call me at home and what do I do for my job and I must be really smart and my parents much be proud and incessantly TOUCHING ME in every way he could get away with ("reassuring" me that my power would come back, shaking my hand about four times, giving me two kisses goodbye). I was trapped in my apartment alone with this creepy sexual-harassment guy and dependent on him for getting my power back on, so I didn't know what to do except be polite and try to get him out of there as quickly as possibly. So finally he left, but HE KNOWS WHERE I LIVE AND WHAT MY APARTMENT LOOKS LIKE AND HOW TO GET IN THE FRONT DOOR. Oh! And he called me at home at 8am the next morning! (I told him I was sleeping and hung up quickly and certainly won't answer when he calls again.)
Anyway, the whole experience sucked. I finally went to sleep at about 3:30pm with the air conditioner back, and slept until 9pm or so before getting up, cooking, and going back to bed. But my internal clock is totally thrown and my weekend was pretty much wasted. And everything in my freezer melted. :(
So, yeah. I wish I could afford to move. I'm going to deduct the cost of the electrician from my rent, and write them a letter pointing out the three electricians now have told me that the building is a terrible fire hazard and needs to be rewired, but I know they're not going to do anything about it.
*sigh*
Originally published at rusty-halo.com. Please comment there or at Dreamwidth.