Posted on: May 17th, 2009 I’ll give YOU a fucking citation.
I used to live in a shitty apartment. The thing about shitty apartments is… you don’t have a yard to speak of. Now I live in a town house, the thing about about town houses is, they have yards… if you want to call it that. It can’t be much bigger than 30′ x 30′ if it’s that big.
2 weeks ago “code enforcement” rolled through the neighborhood handing out warnings for people who hadn’t cut their grass yet. They came to my house and informed my wife that we had 48 hours to cut the grass or we’d be penalized. The penalty for not cutting the grass is up to $1,000 and up to 60 days in jail. I don’t know about anyone else, but I think that’s pretty fucking ridiculous. If grass was meant to be cut it would cut itself, wouldn’t it?
So we’re in a fucking panic, we don’t have a goddamned lawnmower yet. The dude across the street will do it for $15, but fuck him, I’m not paying fifteen dollars for some yahoo to come over here and cut the grass for 2 minutes. It’s also interesting that code enforcement came through just 1 week after he put his fucking flier on the door. Luckily my wifes friend can get her hands on a weedeater, and she came over (while I was at work) and chopped through the shit in a couple of minutes, crisis averted.
Of course, that’s not a permanent solution, so we’ve gotta get a lawn cutting solution of our own. That same friend of my wife knows some dude that has an old piece of shit mower that he’ll sell us for thirty bones. It’s nothing fancy, standard 20″ cutting deck, he changed out the spark plug and put some oil in it… I think he painted it too. We got it on Friday and I cut the grass when I got home from work. It took me longer to realize that I had to pump the fucking primer bulb more than I had, that it did for me to cut the grass. Then, since there’s no way to the “backyard” except to go through the house, I had to make a fucking lawnmower sled with a garbage bag and drag the thing through the house and out the sliding door to the patio. Fortunately there’s no grass in the back, so no cutting there.
Fuck you code enforcement, how can you tell me I have to cut MY grass, eh?
Air conditioning, here in the southeast United States it’s kind of a necessity. In the summer (and this year, early spring) it gets humid and hot as a motherfucker (motherfuckers are very humid and hot). This year, however, we’ve already had 90+ degree days. Wouldn’t you know it, we throw the switch on the A/C unit and the fucking piece of shit just hums and buzzes away. Fucking landlord said it worked like a champ before we moved in here last October. Anyway, the fucking thing doesn’t work now so my wife calls the landlord up and tells him as much. She tells him we know a guy that can look at it and tell us what the problem is. He reluctantly says “ok” and we get the dude out here to check it out. As it turns out we need a new dealie outside (compressor or some such shit) 1300 dollars he tells us. The landlord probably shit himself when we threw that number at him, he suggested that we ask for a used one. HVAC dude says he has one, but he doesn’t guarantee that it’ll work, 450 dollars. The landlord gives us the go ahead and he sends the money via Western Union early the following day.
It takes the dudes something like an hour to install it, and it’s pure profit for them, not like they paid for the used one. They probably pulled it out of some house that was getting a nice brand new one. Whatever, it doesn’t matter, I’m not paying for the fucking thing. They leave, and I notice that the fucking furnace/air condtioning thingie in the house is leaking. There’s water coming out of everywhere in the thing. My wife calls the dudes back and they’re like “oh shit, the what have you is broken inside the whatnot, the best thing you can do is turn it on for a little while until you get cool and then let the water go away.” It didn’t seem like a very good plan, and it wasn’t!
They explained that we need a new “coil” and that they’d keep their eyes out for a used one, since it had become clear the landlord is not interested in replacing bad parts with new ones. They called the next day and said they had procured one, and that they would install it for 250 dollars. The landlord said go ahead and pay for it ourselves, and we could deduct it from the rent.
The dudes come out a few days later and install the thing and everything seems alright, no more leaking! Wee-haw! But wait, there’s more!
The thing is cutting on and off just randomly, it won’t stay on. WHAT THE FUCK!?!? It’s annoying the fucking piss-hell out of me, I don’t know if it’s the thermostat or what the fuck. We dealt with that for a little over a week I think and my wife called the dude up and explained the problem. They came out this past Friday and had to replace some circuit board thing (with a used one!) and now it works fine, finally.