Yesterday was another weird one. To begin with, I spent the day at home failing to communicate effectively with my building's new maintenance dude. If you're a longtime reader of the Yellow Blog (may God have mercy on you), you will be familiar with the episodic delights of renting at my place. There was the (first)
time the kitchen ceiling caved in, the saga of
the mini geyser which threatened to carry the building and sidewalk away with it, and the multiferous and sometimes frightening
plumbers and
a/c repairmen we have exchanged hostilities with over the nearly 10 years that I've lived there.
Last week, the property changed hands. I was relieved to learn that the new Slumlord had decided not to raise our rent (yet) or convert the building to condos (which DID happen to the building across the street and is always a threat). Less encouraging was the reappearance of the occasional and apparently unvanquishable water leak above the kitchen only a week after the new management took over.
This time the leak seemed to be coming from a sink drain as the discharge carries the distinct odor of dishwater... and occasionally beer. It's not the sort of unpleasantry one wants to occasion the breaking of the ice with one's new Slumlord but... well... there are so few things we actually get to choose for ourselves in this world. I am going to reserve judgment on Slumlord 2.0 for now. It's hard not to sound dismissive when you're telling someone whose kitchen is being peed on by the apartment above to expect a stranger to come look at it "sometime tomorrow".
"Sometime tomorrow", of course, became "all day Wednesday" as the new maintenance guy and I spent the hours, taking the kitchen apart, staring at things and attempting to exchange observations with one another although he speaks slightly more English than I do Spanish. (Menckles, by the way, is fluent in Spanish but was uselessly away at work. I'm the only one with a pointless enough job to take off on a moment's notice)
One thing that I do appreciate is that the new guy actually tried to figure the problem out where his predecessors had a tendency to downplay its severity. We even have a reasonable expectation that the source of the leak has been isolated and repaired this time... although I have had this impression before and have been mistaken. Time will tell, I suppose. Frankly I'm just happy to still be living there after all this time as these little incidents always end up entertaining me as much as they inconvenience me in the first place.
Meanwhile, since I spent the day cooped up in the house, I was in place to witness something I haven't seen before. The Walter Cohen High School Marching Band was out in the neighborhood practicing for the Carnival parade season which is suddenly upon us. Here they are coming down Carondelet Street.
Meanwhile, in the French Quarter,
a much more ridiculous parade was taking place.
Sidney Torres is, indeed, this generation's Al Copeland. Again... never a dull moment.