Sunday: Leave car lights on for a couple hours (accidentally of course..). Check to see if car will start and it does!
Monday: Get in car to go to the store and when I turn the key, the dash lights go blinky-bazurk and car will not even attempt to turn-over. We jump it with Ryan's car later to see if that will work and it does! We drive it around the block and are satisfied with our results.
Tuesday: Get in car to go to the store (because Monday's attempt failed) and car is more dead now than ever. Won't even show the dash lights.
Wednesday: John (our new mechanic who is just like Rabbit in NC but he won't let us call him Rabbit) comes over, determines it is the alternator so we buy a new alternator. He installs it. Car starts.
Thursday morning: I have a Mary Kay appointment at 10am. I go to start my car and you could hear crickets chirping it was so quiet and dead. Thankfully, my uncle-in-law Evan who is in town rescued me by letting me borrow Grandma D's car to do my appointment - I was about 25 minutes late....
Thursday evening: We go buy a new battery. We had the old one tested and it was toast.
Friday: Get in car to go to the store (because Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday's attempts were thwarted) and the car starts!
So that's where we are now. Lots of time, patience, irritation, and money later, I think the car is working now. John's theory is that my battery and alternator were ready to go at any moment so leaving my lights on for that couple of hours just expedited the fun. Then, the strain on the battery over the coarse of the week from having a faulty alternator ultimately crap-fried the battery so it all needed to be replaced.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Maintenance Wars Update and Addendum
Update: We got a new dishwasher! I'm currently running the first load so we'll see if the dishes come out clean. The guy (Mike) who normally comes to fix all the aforementioned (and also the latter here) problems didn't come. Instead, we had the privilege of Ramone the supervisor coming to address the problem on Monday and then Jeremy installed it on Wednesday. I think I like the Ramones and Jeremys of the world - they certainly were better at communicating with me for what to expect as far as what and when things would be done. Very nice. Very nice.
Addendum: I failed to mention in the "April" section of my previous post that we also had issues with the shower in the master bathroom. The water pressure was super low so they came and fixed that. Then, as a result of fixing the water pressure, the shower head dripped constantly so they came and fixed that. Then, a few days later, the water pressure was low again so they came back and fixed that.
Addendum: I failed to mention in the "April" section of my previous post that we also had issues with the shower in the master bathroom. The water pressure was super low so they came and fixed that. Then, as a result of fixing the water pressure, the shower head dripped constantly so they came and fixed that. Then, a few days later, the water pressure was low again so they came back and fixed that.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Maintenance Wars and Wildlife
Today is beautiful! It was about 70 and sunny when I took Grover for a long walk down to the water. On our way, we saw our first rabbit at Cherry Creek and also a yellow bird that I think is an American Goldfinch...:
Again, these images were lovingly and illegally taken from Google Images.
Ok so for those of you who are following the saga of our need for maintenance in this apartment, I thought I'd give a run down of things past and present.
April:
a. Refrigerator: Leaking massive amounts of water from the area between the freezer and the fridge.
May:
a. Sewer back up: Flooding in the apartment coming up through the floor due to sewer back up for entire building. Only our apartment was affected by the flood. Also, seal under the toilet is replaced.
b. Carpet wet from flood: Carpet cleaners came twice to suck up the water and spray anti-cootie stuff all over the affected areas. Total water volume exceeded 5 gallons that they removed from the apartment floor.
c. Linoleum in bathroom wet underneath: Maintenance wouldn't listen to me, so this didn't get addressed.
June:
a. Toilet leaking: Toilet with the seal that was replaced now leaking. Maintenance shuts toilet off and we are unable to use the toilet for a week while we wait to have it replaced.
July:
a. Toilet replaced: Got a new toilet, however new toilet is a different shape than old toilet so the floor is now exposed. Need to get linoleum replaced.
b. Linoleum replaced: Guy who replaced linoleum made a point to tell me how wet it was under the linoleum. See May Bullet c. All it took was an entire toilet to need replacing in order for them to do something about the water under the linoleum. However, that bathroom looks 100% better with the new floor so hooray.
c. Dishwasher makes dishes dirty: Our latest problem has actually been a problem the entire time we've lived here but until now it was in the shadow of bigger problems like floods and stuff. Dishes go in semi-clean and come out really dirty with brown gunk and black specks of who knows what on them. They also have a gross clear film. Needless to say, we don't use the dishwasher. I resolved to stop using it when I realized I handwash 80% of what comes out of it anyway, so I might as well skip the loading and unloading steps and just handwash everything to start with.
I'm still waiting for someone to actually come and look at the dishwasher. I look forward to the day that I don't have to deal with the maintenance people every other week. I think in my entire renting life (2004-2009) I didn't make nearly as many maintenance calls as I have in the past three months of living here. It's really amazing actually. And by amazing, I of course mean irritating and exhausting.
All in all, the maintenance people have been pretty good about responding to calls. Lately though, it seems evident they are tired of me and my apartment and they are starting to drop the ball a bit. Well, I'm tired of them too but we didn't choose this place because we wanted a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom, soaked floors, with a leaky fridge, without a working dishwasher kind of apartment. So they must come fix it so I have a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, with dry floors, a dishwasher that washes and a working fridge. Unfortunately, dropping the ball means they hear from me more often than if they would just respond promptly and work efficiently. Too bad for them. :)
What will break next? More to come I'm sure...
Again, these images were lovingly and illegally taken from Google Images.
Ok so for those of you who are following the saga of our need for maintenance in this apartment, I thought I'd give a run down of things past and present.
April:
a. Refrigerator: Leaking massive amounts of water from the area between the freezer and the fridge.
May:
a. Sewer back up: Flooding in the apartment coming up through the floor due to sewer back up for entire building. Only our apartment was affected by the flood. Also, seal under the toilet is replaced.
b. Carpet wet from flood: Carpet cleaners came twice to suck up the water and spray anti-cootie stuff all over the affected areas. Total water volume exceeded 5 gallons that they removed from the apartment floor.
c. Linoleum in bathroom wet underneath: Maintenance wouldn't listen to me, so this didn't get addressed.
June:
a. Toilet leaking: Toilet with the seal that was replaced now leaking. Maintenance shuts toilet off and we are unable to use the toilet for a week while we wait to have it replaced.
July:
a. Toilet replaced: Got a new toilet, however new toilet is a different shape than old toilet so the floor is now exposed. Need to get linoleum replaced.
b. Linoleum replaced: Guy who replaced linoleum made a point to tell me how wet it was under the linoleum. See May Bullet c. All it took was an entire toilet to need replacing in order for them to do something about the water under the linoleum. However, that bathroom looks 100% better with the new floor so hooray.
c. Dishwasher makes dishes dirty: Our latest problem has actually been a problem the entire time we've lived here but until now it was in the shadow of bigger problems like floods and stuff. Dishes go in semi-clean and come out really dirty with brown gunk and black specks of who knows what on them. They also have a gross clear film. Needless to say, we don't use the dishwasher. I resolved to stop using it when I realized I handwash 80% of what comes out of it anyway, so I might as well skip the loading and unloading steps and just handwash everything to start with.
I'm still waiting for someone to actually come and look at the dishwasher. I look forward to the day that I don't have to deal with the maintenance people every other week. I think in my entire renting life (2004-2009) I didn't make nearly as many maintenance calls as I have in the past three months of living here. It's really amazing actually. And by amazing, I of course mean irritating and exhausting.
All in all, the maintenance people have been pretty good about responding to calls. Lately though, it seems evident they are tired of me and my apartment and they are starting to drop the ball a bit. Well, I'm tired of them too but we didn't choose this place because we wanted a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom, soaked floors, with a leaky fridge, without a working dishwasher kind of apartment. So they must come fix it so I have a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, with dry floors, a dishwasher that washes and a working fridge. Unfortunately, dropping the ball means they hear from me more often than if they would just respond promptly and work efficiently. Too bad for them. :)
What will break next? More to come I'm sure...
Friday, July 1, 2011
Wildlife at Cherry Creek
The last few times I've been to Cherry Creek State Park (the park across the street where I walk Grover), there has been an abundance of wildlife I hadn't seen there before. For those of you who are wildlife nerds like me, you'll enjoy this..:)
All of these pictures were lovingly and carefully stolen from Google. I know a lot more wildlife than what I've seen exists over there, but I'll just post what I've seen with my own eyes..
Birds
Red Winged Blackbird
We saw several blackbirds attacking a hawk. Perhaps the hawk was trying to eat their babies? The hawk was pretty laid back, just flying in circles lazily while it was being pecked all over by these three smaller birds. It was probably a lot like when the little guy in the movie tries to be a hero, punches the huge guy, and the huge guy just smiles at him.
Hawk
Meadowlark
Blue Heron
We like to see this guy because when he's out, he's usually fishing, and that's fun to watch.
Magpie
These birds are beautiful to watch fly with their black and white contrast. Ryan says they are gross birds (like they are the carp of the bird world) but I love watching them!
Pheasant
This is what we think we saw a silhouette of in the tall grass. Grover was locked into something in the woods and we kept hearing this scuttering sound. As we slowly approached the sound, thinking it was a muskrat or a mouse or something, I see this HUGE shadow dart away. I think I screamed. My first thought was that it was a small dinosaur. Then Ryan said "Oh it's probably a pheasant." I'm still not sure.
Don't even act like it's not a distinct possibility!
And of course you have your everyday goose, robin, and mallards putzing around...there are also these little brown birds but who knows what they actually are.
Ok moving on from birds!
Mule Deer
I saw a doe and a young buck - this picture looks almost identical to the buck I saw. The doe was pretty far away and didn't care about me and Grover at all. The buck I spotted because he was standing in the tall cattails and I thought I saw a shape of antlers in the middle of it all. I wasn't sure until he turned his head and then Grover and I proceeded to slowly and quietly approach him to get a better look - all the while I'm hoping he doesn't decide to attack us like the deer in those youtube videos. He bounded away about 4 giant deer bounds and then stopped to eat - he didn't care much that we were there so we watched him for a while.
These pictures also add to the evidence that Grover is part deer. AND if you've ever had the privilege of watching Grover bound after a squirrel, then you know he has the moves.
I just saw this today. The snake was probably three feet long? Apparantly snakes are pretty common over there according to a guy I talked to about the snake - he said he sees one every time he goes over there. Thankfully, this snake was very docile and is a non-poisonous snake anyway. I think the only poisonous snakes there are the rattlers.
Sorry to anyone who just got the heebie jeebies from this picture :)
That is all for now. My Marty Stouffer must come to a close. If I see more or remember more that I've seen, I'll post it!
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