UPDATE (2:30pm): I still haven’t seen the top man in the office, but some other high-level guy I’d seen before showed up with one of the below-mentioned Tweedles today, and said that, yeah, it’d really be better if we moved upstairs, as the place we’re now in is about to be torn apart to figure out what the hell is causing the recurrent tank leak above my closet.

The good news? They’re going to be sending some guys over to “help” move the stuff upstairs.

The bad news? Moving is a pain in the ass, we’ll have one fewer room, and it’s probably got to happen in the next week or so. Gaaa!

But at least I wonder be discovering my clothes, instruments, and towels waterlogged at random intervals anymore. You might still want to skip down to the stuff about our cat, and accompanying pics. (And new cat news.)

Original Post: Pursuant to what I discussed in this recent post (the new water leak in my apartment) I called to arrange for the promised Monday morning visit to my apartment to figure out what the hell is causing the repeated leakage.

After my class, I canceled my office hours and hurried home. Nobody showed up. I called the office (as I’m supposed to deal with the Housing & Facilities office through my department on weekdays) and was told that, yeah, they weren’t coming.

“They wanted to know what the problem was.” I suppose that repeated water leaks into my apartment and the fact I had to spend a third day washing all my clothes and moving all the unsullied clothes into the living room doesn’t really, er, “count” as a problem. “Oh, they said you can move upstairs if you want to, though.”

Great. Of course, the last time they were here they said it wasn’t really evident whether the water leakage was coming from the roof or the upstairs apartment, but hey, why don’t I just move on up there and hope that a few weeks later, they won’t be tearing the bathroom apart to fic the problem.

(Though, of course, that would involve work so perhaps I am silly to imagine them ever doing that.)

Anyway, the secretary told me they wouldn’t be coming until 2:00 pm. After we cleared up my confusion — I thought I had class at that time, but it’s at 3:00pm today — then I pointed out this would only give them a single hour to “figure out” where the water is coming from, and make sure it’s not coming from upstairs. Because I am not having us move up there until we know that no repairs are necessary upstairs, and I am also not going to go for an unspecified amount of time with our living room bookshelves doubling as my closet:

After a second call, it was made clear that they would not be coming until 2pm, and that if necessary (ha!) they would come back at 4pm. I think I’m going to at least insist that they do so and move all the crap we don’t want out of that upstairs apartment. (Furniture.)

As for the move, I was already not feeling like moving all my crap when this first happened, and now, I really, really don’t feel like it. But since it’s probably going to end up being necessary unless I want to wash a third of my clothing every few weeks and rely on two Physical Plant guys to do no more than stop the leak temporarily, Lime and I have decided we’re going to just spend the week boxing up our stuff — that is to say, mostly books and papers — and pay a couple of people to move it all upstairs on the weekend. (We would have to anyway, since there are a fridge, an electric piano, and an ungodly number of bookshelves involved, and the cost of such a gig is so affordable I’d rather throw the few hundred bucks at someone than do it myself, and waste all the time that I need to get my real work done.)

We’ll be reduced to one smaller closet between the two of us, plus maybe a hanging rack in a storage room, so it’ll also be a good chance for us to go through our clothes and get rid of stuff we no longer wear anymore, too.

I’m trying to see the positive in all this. I like the place upstairs, actually: the whole place is more recently renovated than where we live now, the kitchen is a lot nicer. There are fewer rooms, though — meaning the living room will have to double as my office — but one then, I also have an office just five minutes away on campus, and I can always pack up my PC and head over there if I need quiet time to do some writing. As well, Lime is thinking of using it for her studies, which will save her riding the subway to a study room — and paying the fees for such a room in future.

Last thing: our cat is now becoming quite a handful. Also, her name may have changed. She was first called Peanut, and then Lime thought maybe Clara would be a better name. At the far end of a long list of other names, we’ve fallen into the habit of me calling her Peanut and Lime calling her “Buffy,” mostly because we’ve just started watching the DVDs — I got the box set from YesAsia — and, well, the cat is a little like Buffy. A bit dorky, a bit loveable, and at moments quite violent.

Mind you, when she’s calm, she’s quite lovely:

But it often turns into this:

And no, she’s not rabid or anything. It’s just play, for her, and she doesn’t mean to cover our arms with scars, but she’s just in that stage of growing up, and I kind of goofed by playing with her with my hands, so that now, she thinks bitey play is okay. Er, should have read that Cat Psychology book a little more carefully, I guess.

Anyway, Lime’s been asking around and a lot of people have said cats are much calmer if they have a play partner, so we’re thinking about it. I know a lot of people who read this site have a thing for cats — I was shocked, shocked, I tell you, but it seems true — so I wonder if anyone has two cents to throw in on that topic? (We know that if it happens, we’ll get another female, and around the same age. That’s all we’ve figured out so far…)