Thursday

Sometime last week (was it Tuesday?), maintenance arrived at our apartment again. It's been a while. After many early adventures with building maintenance, lately they've begun to leave us alone. It's only because I ask them to fix stuff when we leave town--even when nothing's really broken. We've traveled frequently over recent months, providing time for crews to completely overrun our apartment, morning to night, day-in and day-out, without interruption. Their ladders and drop-cloths and piles of greasy and inscrutable little pieces have remained scattered about between activities without consequence. Their desire to tinker with our landscape, tweaking our whatnot, gets satisfied before our return. Due to this perfect system we rarely see them. But. We didn't go anywhere over the recent Labor Day weekend. They must've been jonesing for some opportunity to knock; finally their mounting tendency toward compulsive tinkering tipped into relapse Tuesday (or so). In fairness, it's possible maintenance dropped in because housekeeping noticed the dining room AC unit leaking into our bookshelves and called to have it fixed. Whatever. Starting last whenever, they’ve been in the apartment every afternoon (except Sunday). That first day they erected ladders and dropped cloths before turning the unit off and telling me they'd return tomorrow. They've said this every day since (except Sunday). Once they took the unit away with them. Once, they cut a large hole in our ceiling, covering it with empty rice sacks. Currently, that hole has been drywalled but remains unpainted; lightless overhead sockets stare emptily. Normally, I'd expect this hilarious episode to end by Tuesday (or so). Normally, the crew might then attempt switching their attention to other units, further into our territory. I'd try to stop this, but they may never even finish the dining room: that unit resumed dripping today. [Cavin]