Paul's Infrequently Updated Blog

The situation with our furnace just goes on and on. Yesterday, the guy comes and fixes the sensor and puts in a new fan motor. So, we think it is fixed. Now we discover that the furnace is leaking. We are going to have to call the office, again, and wait all day to get someone to come fix the stupid thing. Of course, this is all in addition to all the other stuff that either does not work or is broken.

Meanwhile, the crap at school just gets worse. I am walking down the hall this morning when some woman comes out of one of the cafeteria doors and demands why I was knocking on the door. Excuse me, but I was just walking by and never touched the door. I was pretty rude to her but only because she was being rude to me.

As the day goes on, the kids become an ever more big pain in the ass. My 8th period is just aweful. To cap it all off, I am supposed to have my tenure observation next week. To most teachers, this is a big deal but I am somehow having problems getting even the slightest bit interested in this observation. I am sure I will figure something out but right now I feel pretty ambivalent.

As you know, where we live is dump. The latest trouble comes involves our furnace/boiler, which decided to stop working Wednesday night. I call at 5:45am Thusday morning to let the Rental Office know and, by the time I returned home from school at 3:20pm Thursday, the furnace is still not fixed.

I ended up calling the office, giving them a very nasty message on the answering machine. I then call the company office in Yonkers and, 10 minutes later, a guy shows up to take a look at the furnace. He spends about two hours letting out air and bleeding the system, which gets us heat and hot water.

This “fix” lasts just two days because this morning we once again have no heat and hot water. I spent two hours working on the furnace and finally got it working. I left a message with the office and they finally showed up in the afternoon to look at it. They now tell me two parts need to be replaced, a zone valve and the pump, which will be fixed tomorrow. I do not intend to hold my breath waiting for this.

After the last two weeks at my job and the continuing problems where we live, I feel that staying here is untenable. I am not going to go into details right now because I am tired and I am going to go to bed. There will be more tomorrow.

So, we finally got the ceiling “fixed” last month in our crappy townhouse. I say “fixed” but what I really mean is that the maintenance people came and put sheetrock over the hole in the ceiling. This totallly ignored the fact that water was still leaking from the bathtub upstairs when anyone takes a shower. Sure enough, water is coming though the sheetrock and a big crack has once again appeared in the ceiling. For the honor of having water spill over my kitchen floor everday, I pay $1050 per month in rent.

Even though we pay on time every month, and in the summer pay ahead of time, for the past three months the bastards that own this dump keep sending us notices we owe them money when we did not owe them a thing!! After phone calls from both Irene and I, it looks like we have the problem sorted but I am still waiting for next month to see if the nonsense starts up again.

Before we forget, lets remember the closet door that don’t close, windows that blow cold air into the house, the boiler that breaks down at least once during the winter, and the garbage that is left spread about outside. Let’s remember that, if you are ever stupid enough to want to move to Poughkeepsie, NY, (aka Poughshitsie) do NOT move to Cherry Hill Townhouses.

Okay, so we just had another Open Day for parents at school. I never see the point of these events. The only reason I for doing it is to allow the parents of your kids to see who you are. Parents follow the kids’ schedule and they get to see you for ten minutes. That gives you enough time to talk about the course and requirements and that’s pretty much it.

The thing that sucks is that the day is broken up into two sessions, one in the early afternoon and one in the evening. What really sucks is that I go home for a few hours in the afternoon before going back at night. By the time it is over, it is very late and I am so tired plus, I have to get up next day to go back to school. Oh…and Open Day is also a school half-day so I have to teach in the morning. Overall, it is a pretty crappy day and I am glad it is over for another year.

As you may know, we live in a townhouse in Poughkeepsie. We have lived in this particular place since we moved to the area in August 2004. At first it seemed okay. There were a few things I did not like but the place had recently been taken over by new mangement that said that a lot of the problems were going to be fixed.

Since that time things have gone steadily downhill and, since February, very rapidly downhill. That was when they fired the lady who worked in the office who we could see if there was a problem. For several months, we have been having problems with our kitchen ceiling because water leaks from the bathtub upstairs whenever someone takes a shower. The problem is that the bathtub needs to be re-caulked but the cheap bastards here kept saying the water was coming from somewhere else.

In the meantime, a big hole developed in the kitchen ceiling where all the water was dripping down. I finally figured out where the water was coming from and caulked it myself. Hopefully, it will fix the problem but the point here is that the lazy bastards that own this place never do anything. We have not seen anyone from the management in 2 weeks.

Meanwhile, the whole complex looks like crap, with garbage everywhere and kids running the streets. All the neighbours we talk to feel the same way that we do. It totally sucks but we are stuck here for a while yet. I expect this place to get much worse in the coming months. I already hate everything here and this is just one more thing to piss me off.