Slumlord Update

Things, as usual, are not well here in our shanty on the wrong side of the streetcar tracks. On Friday, I logged a complaint with my slumlord's voicemail about the following issues:

1) The rot in the front door frame has nearly progressed to such a stage that locking the door is becomming less and less a tangible reality. Sure, we can still turn the deadbolt and do so out of adherence to ritual, but I imagine it wouldn't take more than a halfhearted shove from a mildly anemic four year old girl to free it from its moorings. This is not exactly an ideal situation in our neighborhood. Yes, the crackheads are friendly but, as they say, tall fences make good neighbors.. or in this case just a door... that you can close.

2) The a/c isn't really cooling the appartment very well, or at all really. This is a real problem because, well, do I really have to explain the summer here in the tropics? No I don't. Good because just thinking about it puts me in a bad mood. We still let the air run, but only so as not to cheat Entergy out of their hard earned monthly payment. We have given up on setting the thermostat below 80, mostly because of the ugly way it laughs at us whenever we do so, but also I get tired of the sound of money burning for no purpose.

3) Those ceiling tiles in the kitchen are, once again, beginning to bow ominously. Last time the ceiling collapsed, the slumlord had the tiles replaced, and explained the leakage thusly, "The people above you must not be using their shower curtain." The kitchen has flooded three times in four years and this is as far as he is willing to go in pursuit of this matter. It gets old.

So today, the slumlord's surly lackey was dispatched to investigate our air conditioning. His conclusion: "Well, I see you have it set to 80. When you do that, the air in the room won't get any cooler than 80." I tried to explain to him that it was set that way because the lower settings do nothing other than increase my electric bill, but he held fast to his position. Finally I allowed him to leave before we actually came to blows over the issue. He set the thermostat to 72 and said, "You'll see, just let it run." This was three hours ago. It is still damn hot in here. Consuela wants to start witholding the rent until these problems are fixed, but I am pretty sure that the goodly management would rather evict tennants than actually fix the appartment. I hate moving but am quickly losing patience.