Putting the Ain't in Maintenance

Our October is going to get pretty action-packed in about a week, but it's off to a pretty slow start so far.

So Long, Egyptian

I noticed that our distant neighbor who Kevin calls "The Egyptian" (even though she's Latino) seems to have moved out with her two elementary school aged sons. That's actually kind of a shame since they kept to themselves and were quiet neighbors except for the kids whining over who got to carry the iPad whenever they went from the house to the car or vice versa.

Beyond that, none of us had ever said more than hello to each other.

I guess Leon and Ralph will be getting started on a half assed remodel of her apartment and we'll have new neighbors again in a month or so like we did at the end of last month.

Welcome, Hood Rat

For those of you who may have forgotten, I had to call 911 on our newest neighbors back on September 26th when they came close to getting into a fist fight with each other as they were in the process of moving in.

We haven't had any further issues from them aside from some unwanted noise now and then when the three kids are running around. And luckily we only share our kitchen wall with them so we don't have to hear them at all except sometimes when we're cooking or eating.

Also, it's only the mom who actually lives here with the kids. Not any of the three men who helped her the night she moved in.

And despite usually being quick with a nickname for just about everybody, Kevin has had three days and still hasn't come up with one for her, so I have named her Hood Rat.

Funnily enough, we've been checking our parking lot security camera periodically at night to check for any sign of Seymour Butts (our neighbor Nicole's dad who likes to crash with his daughter and his son in law for months at a time). We haven't seen any trace of him, but we did see an odd car pull up in front of our door just after 9:00pm on the first of the month.

It turned out to be a grocery delivery for Hood Rat.

We got a video, but sadly we have audio disabled on that camera since it's inside our apartment.

What a circus it was though!

The two guys delivering the grocery order were speaking something like agitated Turkish to each other while they rummaged through their car that was packed to the gills with God only knows how many other people's orders that all seemed to be mixed together.

Then when they tried to make the delivery as per the usual "leave it on the porch, snap a picture, and be on your way" routine, Hood Rat opened the main door, motioned to her stairwell, and demanded that they carry everything up the steps to her front door on the second floor.

But, half the stuff they tried to bring, she turned away and insisted it wasn't hers!

So the two delivery guys are scrambling back and forth between the car and her second floor apartment, and then they're setting other people's food on the ground next to the car every time Hood Rat tells them something isn't hers.

Meanwhile they're bickering with each other in angry Turkish. And this went on for five minutes while they sorted through what had to be a $600 grocery order.

Time Sink

On Thursday the 2nd Kevin was at Joe's working on their furniture projects. And after Riley and I had dinner and I washed the dishes, I found standing water in the cabinet under the kitchen sink.

I called the emergency maintenance line to report it, and I couldn't even understand whoever picked up first. So then I called back and got Leon, but he said he was over in Trenton and would come out at 10:00 tomorrow morning.

So on Friday the 3rd I was of course up at 5:00am at work by 6:15.

But Kevin got up around 8:00.

Made coffee.

Had breakfast.

Got a shower.

Read some news.

Made more coffee.

Sat around waiting for 10:00 to roll around.

Watched our parking lot camera as Ralph and Leon zipped all around the apartment complex to countless other apartments between 10:00 and 11:00.

And then we finally called the front office to see what the !@#$ was actually happening. We got some woman named Christy instead of the usual Kayla, and she was PISSED to hear that maintenance hadn't considered our leak an emergency the night before!

She assured us that Ralph would be "right over" to take a look.

But I've been working crazy overtime lately and had already hit my 40 hours even before I clocked out the previous afternoon. So with this being Friday, I decided to cut my day short and leave work just after noon.

And even with an hour's drive home, I was still back at the apartment well before Leon finally came out at 2:15 to look at the sink.

He replaced the kitchen sink faucet, though. And the dripping has stopped for now:

I made ravioli with meat sauce for dinner, and then surprisingly Kassie's parents said she could come over for a sleepover with Riley.

On Saturday morning, our neighbor Ruth lugged half a dozen trash bags full of God knows what down the stairs and then left them just outside the main door

I got pictures:

And Kevin got video:

Elbow Grease and Lethal Weapons

It had also been a week since we called 911 on Hood Rat and company, which meant that the incident would finally be published in the Morrisville police blotter. (They run a week behind.)

So Kevin pulled it up to see if it had "Muscles's" real name:

Kevin just looked at me and shrugged.

Dude's got like six first names and four last names. That could literally be its own paragraph.

What does he think, he's a Game of Thrones character?!

Then we "hacked" him, by which I mean Kevin just copied and pasted his name from the blotter into DuckDuckGo and found his Facebook page:

And then Kevin spent half an hour turning Muscles's profile picture into a movie poster:

Stromboli

Later that evening we whipped up some stromboli for dinner.

Roll out the dough:

Top it with sausage, diced tomato, and home grown basil and oregano:

Smother it with cheese:

Roll it up and cover it in butter:

And bake it at 425 degrees until it's golden brown:

Then eat it!

Smashing Pumpkins

On Tuesday the 7th Kevin had lunch with his mom and went over to check on the garden.

Sadly our volunteer pumpkin plant in the compost pile is dying, so he cut off the two small pumpkins so we can at least use them as decorations for Halloween:

Then we cheated and splurged for Bambino's for dinner:

Someone's Getting Sued!

The rest of the week was quiet until Friday the 10th.

When I got home from work and came inside, I saw a piece of paper stuck in Keith and Rosie's door downstairs. I recognized it as a court summons and realized they're being sued by our landlord!

Kevin and I totally didn't take a picture of it, because that would probably be a felony. But if we had, it would have looked something like this:

Apparently the landlord is suing them for "recovery of real property", which usually refers to unpaid rent but can also be for the cost of damages to the apartment.

We also got a notice that Morrisville Borough is coming out Wednesday and Thursday to conduct "annual" inspections... which is a first for me, and I've been living here for 15 years!

And yet:

Kevin especially is not thrilled.

He's already on the internet looking into local and state laws to see what recourse we have in denying the inspector entry next week.

I'm just glad that he'll at least be here when it happens so Riley won't be home by herself with a stranger letting himself in!