sick / coffee / kitchen leak
I once again have the weird non-curable cold/flu/allergy thing. The thing that starts with a sore throat and continues to have a sore throat but adds on stuffiness and exhaustion. The thing that doesn't respond to cold meds or allergy meds or OJ or vitamins or herbs. The thing that I at one point suspected of being related to taking Flonase regularly, so I stopped taking the Flonase and then a few weeks later I got it again so I should safely be able to assume it's not the Flonase, but I still have suspicions. I'm now also suspecting really random things: we changed the sheets this weekend, could it be the sheets? But I had this thing all the time during the spring, and we don't change the sheets all THAT often, and I generally wash clothes with my sheets and I've never gotten sick just from wearing freshly laundered clothes before. Unless THAT's been the reason all along! But why am I not sick constantly then? And we've been using the environmentally friendly detergents all year! Maybe we should switch back to super-chemical-ly detergents! Could the problem be hot dogs? And etc.
Current strategy: F said the doctor once told him to try Benedryl, so we're trying Benedryl. It seemed to work last night--I slept really well, anyway, until I woke up at 4:30 from a dream about two murdered little girls and staggered to the bathroom to take some tylenol for my sore throat.
Marginally related to the Benedryl issue, my office is trying a pilot project with the Flavia and Keurig fancy coffee machines. My office previously had ancient diesel-fuel-producing coffee makers, so this is a welcome change but also probably a bad thing too--I should be able to cut down on Wawa and Starbucks coffee runs, which is good for my wallet, but I think my overall coffee intake will increase drastically. The only real problem with the Flavia machine is that it only dispenses liquid in the approved 4 oz. amount. The people who want 16 ozs. of coffee are annoyed, and the people who just want a big cup of hot water so they can make their own tea are annoyed. I'm trying to think of it as a bonus--this means I can try three different flavors of coffee instead of just one! In fact I may go try the cappucino in a few minutes.
Unrelated to sickness, sleep, or coffee: for over a week now, the ceiling above our refrigerator has been leaking. By "leaking" I mean sometimes it's like a babbling brook in our kitchen--not all the time, apparently only when the people upstairs run the dishwasher or take a shower or something (the water tends to be warm and sometimes foamy). We've called maintenance every day and they haven't figured out how to fix it yet, nor have they been particularly communicative about their efforts to do so, which has been maddening (i.e., did they even show up to look at it?). The other day F called maintenance from the kitchen while the river was flowing and held the phone up to the deluge so the voicemail could hear it gushing. Meanwhile we keep emptying buckets. With this and the fire alarm issue (which did eventually get fixed, at least, but not nearly quickly enough) I can say that I am not overly thrilled with my landlord. There are also several places on our walls where there were leaks after all those big storms in the winter where the paint has bubbled and chipped, and it looks like crap and they haven't fixed it yet, although at the moment I would rank the kitchen fountain as a higher priority. Silver lining we are trying to keep in mind: at least we don't own this place ourselves, so this is better than if we had bought a house and had to fix these problems personally.
Current strategy: F said the doctor once told him to try Benedryl, so we're trying Benedryl. It seemed to work last night--I slept really well, anyway, until I woke up at 4:30 from a dream about two murdered little girls and staggered to the bathroom to take some tylenol for my sore throat.
Marginally related to the Benedryl issue, my office is trying a pilot project with the Flavia and Keurig fancy coffee machines. My office previously had ancient diesel-fuel-producing coffee makers, so this is a welcome change but also probably a bad thing too--I should be able to cut down on Wawa and Starbucks coffee runs, which is good for my wallet, but I think my overall coffee intake will increase drastically. The only real problem with the Flavia machine is that it only dispenses liquid in the approved 4 oz. amount. The people who want 16 ozs. of coffee are annoyed, and the people who just want a big cup of hot water so they can make their own tea are annoyed. I'm trying to think of it as a bonus--this means I can try three different flavors of coffee instead of just one! In fact I may go try the cappucino in a few minutes.
Unrelated to sickness, sleep, or coffee: for over a week now, the ceiling above our refrigerator has been leaking. By "leaking" I mean sometimes it's like a babbling brook in our kitchen--not all the time, apparently only when the people upstairs run the dishwasher or take a shower or something (the water tends to be warm and sometimes foamy). We've called maintenance every day and they haven't figured out how to fix it yet, nor have they been particularly communicative about their efforts to do so, which has been maddening (i.e., did they even show up to look at it?). The other day F called maintenance from the kitchen while the river was flowing and held the phone up to the deluge so the voicemail could hear it gushing. Meanwhile we keep emptying buckets. With this and the fire alarm issue (which did eventually get fixed, at least, but not nearly quickly enough) I can say that I am not overly thrilled with my landlord. There are also several places on our walls where there were leaks after all those big storms in the winter where the paint has bubbled and chipped, and it looks like crap and they haven't fixed it yet, although at the moment I would rank the kitchen fountain as a higher priority. Silver lining we are trying to keep in mind: at least we don't own this place ourselves, so this is better than if we had bought a house and had to fix these problems personally.