29.5.11

There are Klingons around Uranus

Life has been biting me in the ass so much in the last year that I barely had time for this blog.

Not to say that I will have more time for it now, but just figured I'd post something.

So.... something! ha!

11.1.10

Rerun from my old blog page..

Back in the day when I was knee high to the Empire State building, I lived with my Grandmother who was a building Super. The building was located in the ritzier section of Montreal (up on the hill, and right downtown), so some of the tenants were rather, eccentric. When I saw some of the crap my Grandparents had to put up with, it certainly didn't make me aspire to be a building Super when I grew up.

When my Grandfather passed away, my Grandmother realized she couldn't do the job by herself, so that left the landlord looking for a new Super. He asked me if I would fill in, until he found somoene. Well, this is a live-in job, so I ended up moving back home, in a sense. The job had perks though, free apartment, free cable, phone, hydro, and a salary. I didn't expect to stay more than a year, but the landlord enjoyed having me there as the people already knew me (some of them even watched me grow up), so they felt safe and secure knowing some complete stranger wasn't wandering into their apartments.

My duties included, renting out apartments, collecting rent, painting and cleaning empty apartments, maintenance of the building (floors, windows, glass doors etc), kickstarting the cantankerous boiler in the winter, dealing with tenant issues, etc.

Here are some of the tenant issues I had to deal with. Remember what I said about some of these people being eccentric.

There was this lady on the ground floor, who took the cake for "weird" complaints. She also talked in this breathless voice and fake accent to try and sound more posh I guess.. "Oh Deeeeeeeebbie, there is this dreeeeeeeeeeeeeadful nooooooise coming from my terraaaace.." Turns out it was the Central A/C from the building behind her. "Oooooooooooh Debbie, that woman upstairs flushes her toiiiiiiiiiilet too looooooooooud.." Hello?? Ooooooooooooooh Debbie, I think the woman next dooooooooor is defecating on my teeeeeerrace..."

She was easy to deal with compared to the pre-Alzheimer's patient on the 6th floor. She would knock on my door sometimes and say that she went shopping and look at all the wonderful stuff she found. I thought she had walked in and raided someone's apartment. Turned out it was her own apartment. She had everything laid out in the lobby like a museum display. Another time she knocked on my door and when I opened it she had a jar of marmalade in her hand. She then asked me "Why am I holding this jar of marmalade?" I had a taxi driver ring my bell on another occasion, because she had called for a taxi, got in and gave her home address as where she wanted to go. The taxi driver tried to tell her she was already home, but she insisted that she wasn't. I told him to just drive her around the block once or twice and then bring her back, and it worked. The whole time this was going on, I kept telling the landlord that this wasn't right. He got in contact with her family to try and do something, and let me tell you, they took their sweet time. So I kept an eye out on her. Considering she knocked on my door to let me know what she was doing most of the time, it was a pretty easy job.

The worst part about this job was having to clean up after some people who went out of their way to make a mess. One time the toilet in the laundry room was broken, so I put a lock on the door so no one would use it. Two days after that, someone decided to take a diarrhea crap in a bunch of empty boxes outside the elevator door in the basement. I guess they couldn't wait to get back upstairs to explode in the comfort of their own bathroom. But sheesh, at least clean your own shit up! I didn't notice it right away, but the lock on the bathroom door had been broken. I went in there 3 weeks later to finally get around to fixing the toilet and it looks like whoever had the runs in the boxes, filled up the toilet in here beforehand. Except now it was 3 weeks old. I won't get into major details about the age rings in the toilet, but let's just say I have a strong stomach, but it was enough to make me want to yell at some ants.

Another daily chore was collecting the garbage from each landing, bagging it, and putting it in the garbage hutch outside. Now, you'd think with daily garbage collection, people wouldn't let garbage ferment and grow new life forms in their kitchens would you? Wrong. I went to pick up a bag of garbage, and thought to myself, how strange that someone would throw a bag of knitting needles out. Well as soon as I touched the bag, those knitting needles quivered and fell back into the bag. It was a bag of full-grown maggots. I guess they ran out of rotting meat to eat in the bag and they were trying to get out. You gotta wonder how long that bag had been sitting in their kitchen. This looks like a job for Grissom from CSI!

Now that I've thoroughly grossed you all out, how about paint colours? The landlord gave people the option to pick and choose what colour(s) they wanted their apartment painted. I guess he figured if they are paying that much rent, he could afford the extra paint. There was this fashion designer who decided he wanted his entire apartment in Canary Yellow, including inside of the drawers and cupboards. I almost went blind painting this apartment. Especially when it came to doing the kitchen and bathroom in high gloss Canary Yellow. It was even worse when he came to inspect it and decided that while the Canary Yellow looked "darling" on the paint swatch, it was much too bright, could we do the Banana Yellow instead? Joy, another 3 days of blindness, but since I got paid by the hour (extra) to paint, my pockets were happy.

There was another lady who moved in, who decided she wanted all her rooms different colours. While they were labelled differently on the cans, this is what I called them. For the living room, we had Pistachio Green, for the bedroom, Pepto Bismol Pink, the dining room, Mortuary Grey, the hallway, Caramilk Beige, bathroom and kitchens, Puke Yellow (kinda bile-like). This was the same woman that Terrace Lady complained was coming over from her terrace and defecating on hers. She didn't want to believe it was cat shit. It was much more dramatic to complain that an old lady was coming to crap on her terrace than the neighbourhood Tom.

I was at this job for just over 6 years, so you know I collected a helluva lot more stories to tell. I think I might run out of space if I had to do it all in one blog.

20.12.09

It's the most wonderful time of the year.....

.....

Why is it that Xmas seems to bring out the worst in people? It's like it becomes a competition to see who can ram the shopping cart up your ass faster and harder than the previous, who can jack the parking spot you're about to back into, and how fast can you run through the mall (visions of old OJ Simpson commercials come to mind) to get the gift that really mattered but because of high demand and low stock, someone else has beaten you to it?

The joy has been taken out of the season by shopping maniacs! Don't even try to go to Costco during the month of December.. You have to make your own parking spot because half the population of the planet is in there buying out 5 gazillion rolls of asswipe because you know with the holidays, you just might run out.

Isn't the stress of trying to find the perfect gift bad enough without having some irate shopper beat down on you?

Normally I like to complete my Xmas shopping well before the December 24th deadline as in the week before Christmas there's generally nothing left on the shelves and everyone and their mother, sick or healthy are packed into the malls like sardines in a can, which generally means if I venture into one at this point, I'll most likely get sick. It took me a month and a half to drag out of my sister what size her daughter takes, and even then my other sister had to tell me.. now I can't even get out of my sister what she wants for Xmas, or my brother in law and I still have one niece and nephew who I have yet to buy for. Ugh. I've decided I'll just throw some money at them and they can go deal with it themselves.

Christmas celebrations began a week ago, as I went to Ottawa to have an early Christmas with my family there.. The kids were happy with their presents (as my son put it, "it's the best christmas ever!!"). This weekend I let them open their gifts at home, since we're on the road driving to New Jersey on Christmas Day. Last year I let them open their presents on Christmas Eve and the poor little buggers didn't have enough time to truly enjoy their presents and they spent most of the vacation saying.."I can't wait to get home so I can play with....." So now they have a week to get it out of their system.

Oh well, back to packing up gifts..

And that's a wrap!

20.9.09

The curious case of..

Back, from another absence.. although smaller this time..

We have been working on a new product at work (to be released to the general public sometime next week) so work has been insane, plus I had a kid from Madrid with me for 2 weeks, then ended up with another for an extra week.. so I was a temporary tour guide as well as workaholic for the last 3 weeks. Of course all this wouldn't be complete without throwing a cold in there too. I felt horrible last week, but couldn't take any time off due to the boss being on vacation and me being in charge and of course the impending release. Ack.

Of course with all the paranoia about swine flu, everytime I coughed or sneezed people were wondering if I was going to infect them or not, so I spent a couple of days walking around snorting and oinking.. :)

With my new found downtime, I finally managed to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons last night and was totally surprised by this movie. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did, but it was a great movie..

Now that I have caught up on laundry and housework, I'm going to be a dedicated couch potato today. Let's see what other movies I can catch up on.

6.9.09

Lying about your age..

..has now taken on new heights.

I was browsing some weird 50's ads on one site and clicked a link accidently that lead me to a site called ShopInPrivate.com. Well, being the curious individual that I am, I browsed around the site and thought I had seen everything until I came across this.

Anal Bleaching Cream

It's purpose is to lighten up your exit (which apparently darkens with age) so you can look younger all over.

Buy some today! No point in telling people you're 35 when your backdoor clearly states you're 50!

5.8.09

I'm baaaaack..

After three glorious weeks away from Montreal and then 2 weeks spent trying to catch up to everything that went on while I was gone.

What's the point of having a vacation, if they are just going to save all the work for you when you get back? What about mass distribution? Here, you do this, he does that and when she comes back she can just pick up and follow along. But, noooooooo..

So it was a lovely three weeks, and since I left on a Tuesday afternoon - NO BORDER WAIT TIMES! Yes! It was the fastest border crossing every.. Hi! Where you going? How long you staying? Are these all your kids? Ok, have fun! Vrooom.

The the guy working the toll booth at Harriman was checking me out. "Do you need a receipt m'am?" ME: Nah, I'm allright. Toll Booth worker craning his neck to stare at my legs (because I'm wearing shorts) "OH yeah, you're allright.." Gee thanks I feel much better now!

Spent the first few days down there taxiing Mom around, because she wouldn't be Mom if she didn't save up every little errand she has for the very first day I arrive. My sisters or brother can't drive her for some odd reason, so the task falls to me, every summer and every Christmas. Then help Mom around the house (it gets saved for me). Then on Sunday it was off to Wildwood for 6 glorious days lying on the beach doing sweet F-A. The place we stayed in was a great location, however the service sucked. The pillows were all yellow stained which was very obvious through the paper thin pillow cases, and I didn't even want to think about what the mattress looked like. I managed to get some cleaner pillows and another set of pillow cases for all. The towels were big enough to cover a baby's bum, so drying off after a shower was a workout. It was like polishing a car, but minus the Turtle Wax. We went up to Atlantic City for a day and strolled up and down the Boardwalk for 8 hours. At one point we left the kids in the Amusement park and ran across the way to Trump's Taj Mahal to lose some hard earned money and see where 3/4 of the retirement population hang out.

Then back up to North Jersey for another week of playing Mom's Taxi! Yay! We did take some time out to go over and take the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island Cruise. In all the time we've been living there, we've never done that. It's always a novelty to play tourist in your home field. In my case I have two home fields so I'm always playing tourist somewhere. I highly recommend the Cruise. At 12$ a pop, you get your money's worth, just as long as you don't spend $200 in souvenirs like my Mother.

"But Mom, we live like 20 minutes from here, what do you need souvenirs for?"

"Shhhh now help me find a souvenir for your brother!"

We also got to see the Queen Mary 2 sailing out of New York harbor bound for Southhampton. It's quite an impressive site!

Towards the end of the week it was back down to the Shore again, only to my sister's Shore house in Brick where we have our annual neighbourhood beach party. Over 500 people showed up and the new band that was hired kept people dancing all night.

The only thing I didn't get to do was go over to Central Park, but really go in to NYC around the July 4th holiday? I'm crazy, but not certifiable. So Central Park will get saved for Xmas..

I'm already planning next year's vacation. A one month road trip of the Southwestern US. With the kids. I think that's close to being certifiable.

18.6.09

No Doubt....

..they were great!