The Carrot and the Stick

We never did get a definitive answer on whether we had legal standing to deny the borough's code inspector access to apartment.

So on Wednesday the 15th the inspector showed up as promised. Here's our maintenance guy Ralph letting him into the neighboring apartments:

A few minutes later, Kevin let the guy in without issue but kept a camera on him the entire time and made it crystal clear that we weren't thrilled about letting a government agent and a perfect stranger into literally every room of our apartment even if it hadn't been smack dab in the middle of Kevin's work day and Riley's school day.

Ironically enough, the only "issue" the inspector found was that Riley's smoke detector didn't have the outer lid over its internals. (It fell off years ago. We still have it but it doesn't stay attached, so Riley keeps it in her junk drawer).

Little did he know that Kevin had just gone around and put batteries back into all our smoke detectors that morning, and we'll be taking them all right back out again now that the inspection is over!

Thursday evening, we watched The Mummy Returns.

And then on Friday Kevin texted to tell me he'd just watched Hoodrat's new furniture get delivered, and it looks like she's trying to turn her apartment into a Barbie Dream House.

Here's her new dining-room table:

Then he pointed out that of course the delivery truck would have some lame vandal's tag spray painted on it.

Meanwhile my boss pulled all of us into the office at work and told us there would be mandatory overtime for the next two weeks, including mandatory Saturday shifts!

I promptly pulled him aside and made it clear that I already work an average of five to six hours of overtime each week as it is, and I will 100% NOT be coming in on Saturdays on top of that.

He was quick to assure me that he already knew how much I work, and he said he would have come and found me if I hadn't found him first. But he had to include me in the meeting for the sake of appearances so that it looked like everyone was in the same boat.

Be that as it may, I still ended up working until 7:00pm that evening. (I'm supposed to be finished around 2:15pm). And I even got locked in because everyone else had already left.

So then later on when the janitor came, he assumed the building was empty even though all the lights were still on (and my car was still parked right in front of the door), so he shut off all the lights after he finished up and was heading out.

And of course that scared the heck out of me! So at that point I realized what was happening and went to catch him before he drove away, but I ended up tripping the motion sensors and setting off the alarm.

So I ran to the front of the building to disable the alarm, and then I called my boss to give him a heads up in case the cops called him or showed up in response to the alarm.

But luckily I closed up shop and got out of there without an issue.

Later that evening, Kevin mentioned he had never seen the first Mummy movie, so we watched that.

Then on Saturday the 18th Taaro came over to hang out with Riley.

I didn't realize Kevin happened to pull up the stairwell cam when it alerted him to our presence. So here's a video of Taaro, Nina, Kenny, and me coming up the stairs:

We made a pizza for dinner and I baked an apple crisp with Jill and Terry's apples for dessert :)

Then Kevin and I watched Apocalypto.

On Sunday we headed over to Catherine and Ron's house to celebrate Steve's 40th birthday.

But first Kevin and I made the decision to call the garden finished for the season and clean everything out.

He tasked me with harvesting the last of the tomatoes and our herbs:

While he started filling trash cans with compost from the pile at the back of the yard, and lugging them up to the garden to mulch with:

Meanwhile we've had a volunteer carrot growing all summer that Kevin kept insisting probably wasn't even doing anything since it was so hot.

But as I made my way closer and closer to that section, I could see the top of the carrot poking out of the ground!

So I grabbed it!

And then Kevin told me to get cracking on the herbs so he could start dumping the cans of compost:

Then it was time for Steve's birthday.

He'd requested London broil for dinner, but that wasn't good enough for Liv; so she forged her own path to some Cheerios instead.

Then suddenly there were deer!

Then we sang "Happy Birthday," Steve blew out his candles, and we all had cake:

Monday the 20^th, Amazon fat-fingered a DNS update and took down about 60% of the internet—including Riley's school:

On Tuesday Kevin snapped this picture of parking lot and sent it to me, lamenting that it's apparently as close to an autumn hike as we're going to get this year:

Then he went over to Joe's to get some work done, and they popped over to Catherine and Ron's to pick up some free lumber from the old deck:

Having procured themselves a hefty pile of old pressure-treated wood chock full of arsenic and God knows what else, Kevin insisted that they immediately start kicking up as much toxic dust as they could!

So Joe broke out the circular to hack off the ends with the rusty screw holes, and Kevin used a wire brush on a drill to rip out most of the moldy soft spots in the cut boards:

Now they just have to let this stuff dry out for a few months...

...and then they can probably build some coffee tables out of it and have people pay them for the privilege of bringing this stuff into their living rooms!

Wednesday evening, we watched The Last Witch Hunter.

And then on Thursday Kevin baked a taco stromboli braid for dinner and an apple struesel pizza for dessert.

Start with some veggies and some ground beef:

Then add more veggies. That's Jill and Terry's peppers and corn, and our tomatoes :)

Smother that bad boy in cheese:

And wrap it up, paint it with some butter, and pop it in the oven.

Then roll out your pizza dough, cover it in a healthy layer of sugared cream cheese, pour on seven or eight of Jill and Terry's apples, and bury it all in oats and cinnamon streusel:

By the time you get through all that, the stromboli should be ready:

Slice it up and scarf it down:

And by the time you get through that, your pizza should be ready:

Slice that up and scarf down as much as you can:

But you'll probably have to acknowledge that you're only human and you can't possibly eat a whole stromboli and an entire dessert pizza:

If you're fortunate enough to have neighbors you actually like, they'll probably be more than happy to take a few slices off your hands.

So we gave some of the leftovers to Jeff and Lillian :)