Monthly Archives: July 2008

A wet little Cole. Wonder where she came from? Well, I’ll tell you.

She was living in her apartment with no furniture save for an air mattress and all her belongings being shipped overseas. Then they kicked her out (in reality, housing came and must have decided the place was fine, so we handed over the keys) and she spent countless hours (more like 5) wandering aimlessly through the slums (having breakfast and reading at the library). Then she was forced into tiny accommodations without climate control (a room at the Misawa Inn; no A/C) with a crazy alien (Ryan).

And now she’s tortured by medieval devices (really slow computers) because the sadists (lodging personnel? Services?) don’t believe in magic (wireless networks).

In reality, I’m not horrible. The room was surprisingly ghetto and I’m disappointed but I’m sure you all know how critical I can be and anything is better than nothing, really. Our room isn’t even in the main building; I’m not sure if that makes it any worse but it seems like little more than a glorified dorm room (same set up and everything) with furniture supplied.

It is quite hot but – they’re so sweet that – they left fans in the closet. Only 1 of them didn’t work! They were also really thoughtful to leave us complimentary items like coffee and shampoo but those are complimentary only for the first night’s stay and after that any items we silly travelers have “forgot” are available for purchase at the front desk, or so says the signs everywhere. It’s quite rude.

The shower is really nasty. I mean, it’s not horrible but it’s not hotel quality by any means! The metalworkd used to have gold on it which has worn off and looks all nasty. The showerhead shoots you with water, not a nice spray, and although there is a knob to adjust, it goes from painful to fatal. The tub fauce also is connected to a pipe which sticks out from a hole in the wall so there’s a gap between the wall and the faucet.

On the plus side, there’s a kitchenette supplied with some dishes which will make life a little easier, and we have a dozen TV channels (that’s 11 more than we had in the apartment) to flip through discontentedly. I also have some Netflix we can finished up (which reminds me, I need to put my account on hold).

Interestingly enough, right after we got into the room yesterday, we lost power because of a lightning strike! When does that ever happen?

So Ryan thinks my blog sucks these days or something. Whatever. d= I do think it’s suffered a bit from me being busy with some others projects, some of which are more secretive than others.

The moving stuff has also kept me busy periodically. I am not officially living in a stuff-less apartment – no furniture (we invested in an air mattress), no dishes, no computer, no good fan, no TV (and no DVDS to go with it). Needless to say, I’m pretty bored.

I can only spend so much time on the laptop. A) because it sucks. B) Because it’s uncomfortable to use and C) because I don’t have my stuff on here I can only do a little shallow e-mail checking and web surfing – nothing that I get really busy with.

I’ve been playing a lot more DS – I got back into Nintendogs. I also just finished a book and have a few more to keep me busy. It’s not enough though. Luckily, this is only for a few days until we go to the inn which will at least have a DVD player (and furniture!) to keep us busy. It’s also within walking distance to pretty much everything on base and most things right off base, too.

The getting ready was a little frustrating. My sleeping schedule is not conducive to happy days. I had been up for some time when the movers showed up around 8:30 – although I swear the guy said some time between 11 and 3 – and they only took about 2 and a half hours to wrap everything and move it to the truck. It was definitely fast but, then, I suppose it is their job!

Unfortunately, some things were packed that I didn’t intend to be (plastic silverware, duh!) and that shouldn’t have been (we were told no spices so I put them aside but they packed them anyway) and some things didn’t make the cut (most cleaning things). One of the thing I hate about moving is that you seem to have to throw away so much perfectly useful stuff because it doesn’t necessarily pay to move it and it may not be expensive or hard to replace but I still hate getting rid of stuff I paid for. I like to use things up to the last drop.

That’s all for now folks.

Time is really winding down. We’re officially without bedroom furniture. I came up with the bright idea of using an air mattress which we are now doing so we’re not on the floor.

Either tomorrow or the next day they’ll be coming for a smaller shipments of goods. Clothes (which we’ve already separated for the most part), dishes (which I’ll split so we have some to use here and some there) and my computer are the biggies.

These things should show up slightly faster than the rest of our stuff, only I don’t think it’s enough time to make much of a difference. They estimated 45 days for the “express” shipment and 50 for the regular stuff so I don’t think it pays to make a big deal about stuff that will only be there 2 weeks earlier and that’s still a month and a half we have to wait. But maybe it won’t matter because we don’t know how long we’ll be waiting for a house anyway.

After that stuff, we just have to go through the stuff and figure out what we’re packing in luggage or what we’ll need that we will mail ourselves because we’ll still need it after they pick up our stuff – like the air mattress and blankets, etc.

So right now I’m doing dishes and laundry in the washers and just waiting. I’ll try to give a call early tomorrow morning to see when TMO is coming, hopefully Tuesday.

It’s just another one of those “hurry up and wait” situations.

It’s been very rainy this last day for which I am grateful. Both the temperature and humidity has dropped considerably making my apartment much more comfortable. Soon, I will not be quite so favoured when it comes to weather. Every time I am hot here I think “How the hell am I going to handle Texas?”

We leave in less than a month now, and plans are certainly well underway. I’m starting to stress about packing and moving and sleeping on the floor and flying and everything else, especially since this is my first time.

Anyway, the second edition of Weekly WrapUp will be posted shortly, check it out!

and using very bad puns. You see, about 3 weeks ago, there appeared some signs in the elevators instructing us lowly inhabitants that on the 24th of June there would be no hot water for several hours and that in the beginning of July they would be doing work that involved replacing 2 water heaters. No biggie. I thought it was smart to put these signs in the elevator.

June 24 came and hadn’t realized it so I tried to run the hot water to no avail. It coughed at me, perhaps released a spray of water, I recalled the date and was content to wait it out. No biggie.

But after the water was supposed to be back, to the point of 12 hours later, we were having issues. Initially, turning on the water did nothing. Then it released grossly yellow water in a fit of coughing. Out of the bathroom sink came something that appeared to be some sort of seal for the faucet. It came out in several smaller pieces and then finally one big chunk. I do not think this is “normal.”

Eventually, after running the water from all sinks (the kitchen faucet seemed like it was about to fly off but it has a history of doing that), which at first meant coughing fits that made the surrounding areas quite wet with yellow water, the coughing and discolouration stopped and we appeared to have normal water.

Almost.

The issue we continue to have is that our hot water is not working very well. You cannot wash your hands in hot water in the bathroom unless you turn the water on 5 minutes before you even realize you need to use the facilities which is just silly and wasteful.

The shower/tub is another thing altogether. Our solution so far is to turn the water to the hottest setting, letting it get hot and gradually turn it back down to comfortable. Turning it to comfortable from the beginning means it doesn’t get hot at all. Sometimes this doesn’t work, though, and it just stays scalding hot. I’ve found that, occasionally if I turn the cold water-that-should-be-hot off and then back on, it works. It’s all guesswork.

The kitchen tap takes a bit longer to become hot but doesn’t seem to have any of the more serious issues of the other 2.

To add insult to injury, they expect us to give them 2 more days – for a total of 8 hours – where we cannot use hot water because they’re swapping out steam something or anothers. Hell, I’m not even sure what they did the first day!

I guess I can’t complain. I can’t even use hot water now so maybe I won’t even notice the difference.