This couldn't have been more blatant yesterday mid first draft post about my apartment when I became fed up that I was simultaneously seeing my breath and shivering. I marched my lowly intern ass over to the residence life director so she could give someone a piece of my mind for me. So I came back to my apartment and kept writing, affirming that "I'll monitor the conditions and fill you in." My cell phone rang and it was the res. life director saying that she called Carlos, the man on duty, and he told her that there was no temperature register in my apartment (why would there be?) and that my neighbor's sensor controlled both hers and mine. Seeing that I was in her apartment just 20 minutes prior, I noticed the space heater and the comfortable, livable conditions in hers before turning around towards my door to enter a tundra environment. Now, I'm no scientist, but if the space heater was keeping her place at a toasty high-60s and the temp. register was in her apartment, then the sensor wouldn't tell the 1800s-era heater in mine to kick on, ergo making my exhales visible and turning my appendages black with frostbite.
What she also relayed to me via Carlos was that I needed to put my storm windows down. There couldn't have been a swifter metaphorical kick to the balls with a boot reading: 'Rookie'.
Wow... Unbelievable, Alex, really. Here you were, shooting your mouth off that you have the coldest apartment on campus, reusing the joke numerous times: "I think these windows have been here since the school was established, Hardy-har-har!" and you didn't even KNOW what storm windows were.
And yes, in a moment of weakness and shame, I have to admit that for the past 22 years I have been blissfully unaware of storm windows and their function. Why would I need to bother myself with such trivial matters anyway? I wasn't a homeowner. I didn't have mortgage payments or need to worry about whether or not the furnace should be cleaned. Amateur mistake.
After I hung up the phone, I went around to all seven ancient windows in my apartment and took the arduous task of snapping the SWs into place; a process that involved countless expletives, letting even more frigid air into my the apartment and several nearly pinched fingers.
The Buildings & Grounds guys came the next day and installed a temperature sensor. Thanks to those guys, I now have a better understanding on how my apartment is heated.
When you stroll through my door, you come into the minuscule living room. I turned this once bare, furniture-less space into an actual room that could accommodate other humans; and I did it without spending a dime. Veteran move. I'm writing this sitting on perhaps the ugliest two-seater pullout couch in the history of furniture. The once vibrant cream fabric has, over the years, morphed into more of a dust rag brown; it r
eminds me of milk mixed colored with a touch of potting soil. To make matters worse, the dirty cream couch has been smattered with the ugliest indigo blue and diarrhea brown flowers that snake their poop-colored vines all the way around the couch ending somewhere around Hell. It's the first time I've ever seen a pullout this small. Though I haven't used it, I feel bad for the test subject. And I know exactly who it will be, my father. Sitting down, I couldn't fathom another human sharing it with me, unless that person is a midget or four year-old. So I imagine sleeping on the mattress would be a lot like taking a nap on a kindergarten cot as an adult.We shall see.
The other fixtures of the L.R. include a moderately sized coffee table from my grandmother's house, two bookcases, a fold-up table (with two chairs) that I was given by residential life, and a big, blue velvet couch that either belongs on the Pee Wee Herman show or in Prince's family room. It was given to me by another new faculty member who moved here from Lowell with his wife and two small kids. This was one of those things he and his wife were not on common ground with; she wanted it out, he couldn't bear to let it go. So he was happy to haul it out of his musty basement and give it a new home. As we were carrying it out of his truck he pointed to spots on the couch, vomit stains courtesy of his toddler children. Ah, the memories.
The centerpiece of the room also happens to be the thing I struggled with comprehending until recently. It is, of course, the life-giver, the de-thawer; the heater. This lengthy, coiled iron mass sits under the two windows facing the dorms. With a wooden tabletop built on it and four white pillars designed to house the metal gate separating it from the outside world, this fenced-in peculiarity both befouls the living room ensemble and acts as a TV stand. Sidenote: the TV was free too, swiped somewhere from campus in my early days here; it's probably the only TV/VCR combo still in use today.
Until recently, I thought the heater was punking me, honestly. I'd come in from a long day at school into conditions similar to the summit of Mount Everest. But did me coming in from the cold trigger the heater to sputter to life, hissing warmth into my apartment to ensure I wouldn't perish in a hypothermia-enduced coma? No. It just sat there, looking ugly, taunting me day in and day out. The reason why I thought it was pulling an elaborate prank because it would come on at the most random times, not when temperatures are at their lowest (i.e. NIGHT), but when I'm not there, like 10:15 in the morning. Makes perfect sense...
Now with my storm windows in place and a new temp. sensor, I'm hoping for some climataic regularlity, but my chances of having a steady, above 40-degree temperatures are about as slim as a black president being elected in the US.
Oh wait.
Moving through the living room, you are a dust mite's throw from the kitchenette, complete with a full-sized sink, dish rack, a scaled down four burner stove top (oven included), the first microwave ever invented and a refrigerator that anywhere else would solely be used to ice large quantities of cheap beer.
Below is a picture:
The kitchenette ends at a door leading to my bedroom, where the gracious previous 'owner' left his full sized futon bed. Add the royalest of royal blue bed sheets voila: Alex's room. Taking a sharp left through another door frame there is a stand up mirror next to the bathroom door, an adjacent mini-hallway leading to, I guess you could call it, another front door and a closet. Situated between the threshold to the bathroom and the clothes closet is the tandem appliances vying for the 'Oldest Thing In My Apartment' award: the washer and dryer. Stacked on top of each other like a couple of senior citizens, these raucous, energy inefficient dinosaurs are what keep me clean-clothed. A nauseatingly yellowish-white, they are shoved as far into the corner as possible. The washer is decent, usually taking a medium-sized load (that's what she said) and finishing within 30 minutes. It's counterpart up top, on the other hand, is not so speedy. The first time I fired that baby up, the blood vessels in my ear drum nearly burst. Outside of top of the line speaker systems able to emit decible-heavy beats, I've never heard a louder appliance.Add the clanging of a loose wrench or hammer, and the dryer at full bore sounds a lot like the engine of an 18-wheeler. So in order to enjoy a TV show and dry clothes in the other room, I need to close the door in the kitchenette to muffle the noise.
This might sound like a laundry list (pun intended) of complaints for what is technically a perquisite of boarding school life, but with the money I'm making, I couldn't afford to live in anything more than a homeless shelter. So while they're allowing me to stay here for free, I'll keep sitting in the ugly pullout couch, using the louder-than-airplane-engine dryer, watching Kazaam on VHS and pumping as much heat into this tiny apartment as physically possible.
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