Lucky Room #013

[sim_flex_x]

This summer I received a letter in the mail confirming my room assignment for this year. I talked to the two girls I was to be living with, got to know each of them a little, and was looking forward to my new life at college. Two weeks before school was to start, I received another letter informing me I had been moved to a different room (room #013) with two different roommates. I called "New Jersey" and talked to her for about 7 minutes about who was bringing what, only to learn that not only were both of my new roommates sophomores, they had also requested to live with one another. Suck.

Well, "New Jersey" seemed nice enough, even though many people I talked to told me that those on the east coast tend to be kind of "snooty". I received an e-mail from my other roommate, "Kentucky", later that week saying how she looked forward to meeting me, and she signed it "your friend". This comforted me because I now felt as if they were going to be nice and they wanted me to be their friend.

Welcome week came and went and on the day before school started, my new roommates moved in. "New Jersey" seemed to have a bit of an attitude, but she seemed nice enough, and "Kentucky" seemed to be down to earth, and after seeing her movie collection, it appeared as if we would get along just fine.

As the days rolled on an incident occurred which perturbed "Kentucky" immensely, however, she was perturbed at me. It turns out some guy called our room looking for her, and I told him she did not live here. I remember this phone call and the name he requested sounded nothing like "Kentucky", and yes, I did tell him that no one by that name lived in our room. Apparently this was a bigger deal to "Kentucky" than anyone could possibly imagine, and so, after that day, the friendship that started in an e-mail, died.

As for "New Jersey", one weekend during the month of December we began talking and found we shared the room with a common enemy and we quickly became friends. Yet all good things must come to an end, and the second week of this new semester sent "New Jersey" back home, and now I live only with "Kentucky".

So, what does this all have to do with lucky room 013? I live in the basement of my building. The basement rooms are approximately two years old, so one would assume they would be in fairly good shape. ... one would assume.

There's no air conditioning, of course, but we were lucky to have cooler rooms than those on upper floors. With the window open, fans blowing, and air flowing in through the hole in the wall, it was usually tolerable. Ah yes, the hole in the wall. Upon returning to school from a weekend at home, I found "New Jersey" sitting on her bed and my computer up off the floor. Apparently the massive amount of rain Indianapolis collected during September flowed into our room through the hole in our wall which formed about four inches off the ground. Our rug soaked up most of the water, but there was a nice puddle where my computer had been sitting, for at least two hours, soaking up the rain water.

I was not happy. "New Jersey" went and told someone, but it was Labor Day weekend or something, so no one was at work, and they wouldn't be until Tuesday. They offered her a mop, and she declined the offer, disgusted. So when I discovered the surprise flood, nazi bitch mode kicked in, and I went on a hunt to find someone with enough intelligence to know that a hole in a wall is bad.

First "New Jersey" and I went to the front desk, (I'm pretty mad at this point). We tell the girl behind the desk what happened and she tells me that there's no one working so there's nothing she can do, but would I like a mop? I replied, being as nice as I could, "A mop is not going to fix the hole in our wall. We need someone to come and fix it, and we need them to do it NOW." I feel kind of bad for her, she didn't know what was going on, but still, honestly... a mop? How will that stop the steady flow of water which is overtaking our room? So the front desk was no help. We came back to the room, "New Jersey" cracking up the entire way about what I said to the girl. We sit on our beds, staring at each other for about ten minutes when I decided there had to be someone on this campus that can do something, and if not, at least there's someone I can yell at. So, where else to go but BUPD, our loyal campus "police men". "New Jersey" and I grab our umbrellas and wade through the flood to their office. Unimpressed already by this school in general, I was overjoyed to find five men sitting and standing around a table... smoking cigarettes. As if they had nothing better to do in the world. Well, I was about to inform them otherwise. I explain to them my problem, and they could not have cared less. Something about it being flooded everywhere and they're trying to get a hold of people to come in and take care of it. At this point I looked around the room and I didn't see a phone anywhere. I guess someone was out back sending up smoke signals or something because these guys sure weren't doing anything. So I made my point very clear to them that there is a defect in our wall and it needs to be fixed. They told me they'd get right on top if it. Yea, right.

Eventually they came and filled the hole with some caulk. I checked it today, it's starting to flake away...

So this hole + rain= a butt load of problems. First I had to carry my desk top across campus (so about ten feet) and up three flights of stairs, with the help of a friend (I thank you kind sir), so that the school could make sure the rain didn't damage it. I had to argue with a secretary for a while about whether or not the school was responsible for damage. Of course she said they weren't, but I pointed out that its the school's fault there's a hole in the wall of the building, so she eventually went and talked to someone who knew a little bit more about life in general than she did. After a couple of trips back and forth with the desktop, they assured me my computer was fine. And they should be glad it was, because if it wasn’t, they would have been buying me a new one.

Another issue was our rug. We have the biggest room in our building, and while we don't have wall to wall carpet, we have a big ass rug, which, thanks to the hole in the wall, was COMPLETELY soaked with dirty rain water. So the school took it for about a week, "cleaned" it, and then returned it to us. They laid it down, moved our furniture back, and left. My roommates and I decided to inspect it only to find it damp, smelling like a wet dog, and covered in crap. Not literally crap, but leaves and stuff. So we're mad because clearly, the rug isn't clean. Somehow I was nominated to take care of the entire situation, probably because I can be a psycho bitch if need be, so I call all these people and inform them the rug is not clean, and they can either take it and actually clean it this time, or pay us for the rug and we'll take care of it ourselves. Finally they just gave us the money we spent on the rug, we went and bought some carpet cleaner and took care of the problem. It’s still an ugly rug and has stains on it, but at least it smells better and there's no mold growing...yet.

So this concludes the ramifications of having a hole in the wall...for now…

Now we'll move on to the joys of living next to a bathroom. Aside from the obvious pleasure of knowing every single time someone uses the rest room, takes a shower, or has too much to drink on the weekend (or weekday for some of the lovely ladies I live with), we add on top of this a crack in the ceiling of our bathroom. Yes, a crack in the ceiling, which, surprise surprise, comes from a crack in the floor of the bathroom above us. So, from day one until about Thanksgiving break, there were puddles on our bathroom floor that one had to dodge when entering the bathroom. Not just puddles, these are special puddles. These puddles fell all the way down from the showers above us. Yes, dirty shower water. It was disgusting. We were all pretty mad about this because they couldn't fix it seeing how people take random showers throughout the day. They tried to keep us out by putting up big signs that said "Closed for Cleaning", but they weren't fooling anyone. No one was in there working, and no one was trying to fix it. So we threw away their pretty plastic signs. They finally got the point and had someone come in and look at it.

But while this was going on, something else was happening that no one knew about. The special water from upstairs was finding its way to... can you guess?? OUR CEILING! I walked into my room one day and something drew my eyes to the ceiling panel above my bed. There was a water spot. A big, wet, water spot. So, nazi bitch mode started in again, I called everyone under the sun, and would you believe it, they were down there within fifteen minutes? Amazing. (by the way, the lady in charge of our building, and the lady in charge of campus housing both know me by name now) So this maintenance guy shows up with a ladder, a new ceiling panel, and a bucket. He puts the bucket in the ceiling and puts in a new panel so that it doesn’t drip on my head as I sleep. It really didn’t reassure me all that much. The original wet spot was right above my pillow. Neat.

They eventually fixed the bathroom, but when the cold weather started, we encountered a new problem. When you turn the heat on, our pipes clank and grind. I won’t go into much detail on this except that the bathroom pipes tend to clank and grind for much longer periods of time than the room, and it keeps my room, and the room across the hall, awake at night.

So with the pipes, I thought my troubles with this room were done.

WRONG! About three days ago I’m sitting on my bed “reading” my psych assignment when I decide I need to get up for some reason. I look down on my floor, a part that isn’t covered by our nasty green rug, only to see ants. About fifteen little black ants crawling around my floor. I swear, just when I thought nothing else could go wrong, Lucky Room Number 013 strikes again. I decided that instead of just smashing the little guys, I’d let them drown in some rubbing alcohol. But of course about a thousand of their little friends got mad and decided to come out to play so now I’m just vacuuming them up when I see them. I didn’t see any yesterday, but today as I was typing this “Kentucky” yelled out, “sim!” (she doesn’t really call me sim, I just thought I’d change my name too, since I’m doing it with everyone else…) right, anyway, she yells out “sim! We have ants!” Of course I knew this, and she did too, because I told her when I first saw them, but there weren’t any yesterday, so I guess they just decided to come out today again. So we broke out my little hand vac thing and started sucking the little bastards up. We also looked around, trying to figure out where they could be coming in from. During the previously mentioned flood, our walls bubbled around the floor due to the water in them. We're assuming this is how they're getting in. We put in a “maintenance request” today, and they better hope they get down here by tomorrow or I’m going to unleash on someone…

Honestly, Lucky Room #013, you never let me down.

[tonguegina]

Haha...wow. Sorry sim, that really sucks for you, doesn't it? I don't really have many problems with my room at all. We were plagued by lady bugs earlier in the year, but that's all past us now...oh, and when we moved in we had no cable. That lasted for almost a month. Now that sucked.

[Orgazmo]

Yeah, that blows. At least the ants aren't in your bed though.

[Pliedes]

What are you complaining about? Your room came with pets!

[AcTivE]

Pliedes: Ants that aren't in a glass container (usually called an ant farm) generally aren't considered pets, but rather pests.

[Cocktooth]

I agree with Pliedes....Screech Powers would love a room infested with insects!!!!

[ February 09, 2004, 07:33 PM: Message edited by: Shaw ]

[sim_flex_x]

Orgazmo- your wit astounds me

the ants have in fact taken over my bed. I swept their little asses into my hand vac, but they were in my bed, and that's just gross. I went up to the front desk and complained again, the lady I want to talk to was at dinner, that was an hour and a half ago...I think they're ignoring me...

[VOL]

Originally posted by sim_flex_x:


Well, "New Jersey" seemed nice enough, even though many people I talked to told me that those on the east coast tend to be kind of "snooty".

You hit the nail right on the head. All people from my native area are like that. Rude also.

If she's from northern Jersey, she's worse then us south Jerseyers.

[ February 09, 2004, 08:47 PM: Message edited by: VOL ]

[tonguegina]

"Snooty."
"Snooty?"
"Snoty."
"Snoty?"

I'm sorry. When I read that part of the post I instantly thought of Ferris Bueller.

[VOL]

*doubles over with laughter

Oh Ferris.

(P.S. ND just defeated #5 UCONN)

[BigDongedHoe]

All of you can complain all you want but look on the bright side of things: You could be living at home.

[Cocktooth]

VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY good point BDH

[Pliedes]

Originally posted by BigDongedHoe:
All of you can complain all you want but look on the bright side of things: You could be living at home.

Or even worse, living at home and going to Grace

Don't worry, you'll be down here in btown before ya knowi it.

[AcTivE]

I'm probably gonna need someplace to live next year. What are you doing Pliedes and BDH?

[Pliedes]

You gonna be down here in Bloomington?

[tonguegina]

No, he's going to commute everyday. It'd just be nice for him to have a roof over his head besides the one in his car.

[VOL]

I happen to commute. They will have the housing finished in the fall semester of 2004. It's hard to believe that my University offers Big 10 degrees and has more students (give or take a few) than Indiana State. Gotta love the Fort.

[tonguegina]

You don't commute from Bloomington to Indy every single day. You go from Warsaw to Ft. Wayne, three times a week?

[Ugly Bastard]

Sim, while she is no longer with us, I would still jump at the chance to jump on "New Jersey". Let me know if such a situation might present itself.

-Ugly Bastard

[AcTivE]

No, I will not want to communte, since I have no car. Budget it tight.

I will be going to IU next year

[Pliedes]

Originally posted by AcTivE:

I will be going to IU next year

Good sir, that brings a smile to my face. I did not know you were transfering until now.

[Combat Chuck]

I think that Gaz actually made up this story and typed it out, cause I usually thought that sim wasn't capable of coming up with this many coherent sentences.

Really.

Nice stories though.

[Ugly Bastard]

Originally posted by Combat Chuck:
I think that Gaz actually made up this story and typed it out, cause I usually thought that sim wasn't capable of coming up with this many coherent sentences.

Did you see what Chuck said about you, sim?

-Ugly Bastard

[AcTivE]

Originally posted by Combat Chuck:
I think that Gaz actually made up this story and typed it out, cause I usually thought that sim wasn't capable of coming up with this many coherent sentences.

Really.

Nice stories though.

thats funny

[BigDongedHoe]

Originally posted by Combat Chuck:
I usually thought that sim wasn't capable of coming up with this many coherent sentences.

Originally posted by Combat Chuck:
Really.

Neat