Eric’s Ephemera |
eric hoefler's posterous |
We've signed a least at Malvern Manor. Things seem nice, cheaper, and with more to offer than our current location (like parking and a washer/dryer). We'll be spending the weekend packing all of our stuff (again), but this time, movers will show up Sunday afternoon to do the actual heavy lifting. More updates when we're re-settled.
This year, I spent Thanksgiving in Moline, Illinois with my girlfriend's family (well, her mother's half of the family). I was already in Illinois, delivering a training in Chicago for work, so they picked me up from the O'Hare airport on Saturday afternoon. We visited with a cousin and her husband in Chicago that night while waiting two hours for pizza at Giordano's. The pizza was good, but not necessarily two-hour-wait good.
Afterward, we drove three hours to Moline and crawled into her grandmother's house at 1 a.m. The thing that surprised me the next morning was how similar a small midwestern town is to a small southern town, minus the accent. On Sunday morning, we went to a potluck early-Thanksgiving dinner at the church, and I felt like I was back in Colonial Heights fifteen years ago having a potluck dinner at Swift Creek Baptist. The food tasted the same (with that same thick, white, turkey gravy), the people acted the same (very polite, mostly friendly if a bit reserved, mostly older), and the town even looked the same (modest houses closely spaced through the different neighborhoods).
When we weren't eating (and we ate a lot ... see the list below), we were mostly playing games (dominoes and cards). As for the food, some interesting choices:
We've had nothing but trouble in our current apartment, and have been cold and uncomfortable since moving in. We've decided to break the lease and pay the penalties for the hope of something better. More details when things are final.
Long lines, rain, and early-morning vandalism didn't keep us from
voting. Besides the long line (which is, really, a good thing), we
didn't encounter any problems or see anyone else having difficulty.
On Saturday, Thuraya and I finally got out of the house. We were mainly doing some job-hunting for her, but I had read in Richmond magazine about the Brunswick Stew Festival happening downtown at the 17th Street Farmer's Market and wanted to stop by. She'd never had Brunswick stew, and I wanted her to try it since I had grown up loving the stuff. They had around ten different stew-making stands, each one offering $1 samples. We tried a few and also split a BBQ sandwich. A yummy, sunny, Fall afternoon.
So, our landlord is supposed to supply the heat in our apartment. We have no control over the temperature, no access to the thermostat, and big, old-fashioned radiators in every room. The first night of the cold weather (around the 14th) we had no heat, but by the next day, the place warmed up to about 68 degrees. We figured it was just the transition from hot to cold weather and everything would be fine.
The following week, we woke up on Wednesday morning to a cold apartment. Apparently, the landlord was "resetting" the thermostat and timer the night before and "forgot" to turn everything on again. The handyman fixed the problem later that day and the temperature was fine again … until today.
This morning, we woke up to a frigid 58 degrees. This is bad news for Thuraya, who just recovered from pneumonia.
Through phone calls all day, the best answer I got was "we don't know why that happened but it's on now." When I talked to the landlord in person this evening, he tried his best to ignore my inquiries about his plan to find out what the problem is and fix it. Finally, I told him that I didn't appreciate him being "dismissive" and that he needed to correct the problem. Still, the best he could offer was that the heat was "on now." I asked what we should do if we wake up in the middle of the night to another cold apartment. His answer: call me the next morning. My response: no, I'll be calling you in the middle of the night.
Richmond requires all apartments to be at least 65 degrees at all times, so now we're collecting evidence (in the form of pictures of the in-room thermometer) just in case a lawsuit is in my future.
(Also, see the "non-working fire escape" that's been under repair for a week now. They also secured, from the outside, the back door that leads to the fire escape in order to "protect" us from going out that way and using the fire escape while it's under repair. This is, of course, illegal and a serious safety hazard.)
Apparently, this is a tradition around here. I missed the main event, but I was out grabbing some food later and saw a few straggling zombies myself.
Just up the street a few blocks is Ellwood Thompson’s Local Market, a grocery store that focuses on locally-grown foods. They have lots of things you can’t find at a typical grocery store, including jars of fresh herbs that you bag yourself, and are reasonably priced for the services they deliver. Of course, I wouldn’t go there for the average grocery stock-up (we’ve got Ukrop’s across the street for that), but they’re good for specialty items. My current favorite specialty item: Buffalo Bill’s Pumpkin Ale. It really is like pumpkin pie in a bottle. Now that’s yummy stuff.
It’ll take a few years, no doubt, but I might be around to see some of the benefits of this plan, which was approved tonight. Pretty exciting.
Here are a few pics of the place before we cluttered everything up with our stuff. Right now, we're living out of boxes, with the exception of a few necessities: my office, a few dishes, the bed, the couch, and of course, the TV (Verizon FIOS equipped).
This is where I share updates on what I'm doing ... for anyone who might care.
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