More Special Times of Specialness!

Guess what we got last night? Can you...?

Noooo...

We got to spend the night in a hotel! Want to guess why...?

Because when we got home, our bathroom was completely dismantled!

Yes, we knew our landlords had hired their usual "plumber"* to make some unspecified fixes, but we were told he'd be done yesterday evening. We purposefully stayed at work until late, to give him room. Evidently, it wasn't enough, because we entered to find debris and supplies all over, the bathroom baseboards and parts of the wall and floor removed, the bathtub moved into the middle of the floor and broken, and a nervous-looking "plumber"'s assistant peering through the hole where our toilet had been into the apartment below.

Mrs. Nator was Not Amused.

She commenced the Stomping Downstairs and Chewing Out of the landlords, who actually were quite apologetic and reasonable, and agreed to foot the bill for a car service, dinner, hotel for the night and breakfast. So, after administering to our very confused and unsettled cats, we threw together some things and zipped off to the scenic Holiday Inn Express of Park Slope, Brooklyn, which we had not previously known existed.

Actually, the hotel was just fine. Very clean, newly refurbished, comfortable bed, decent shower and lots of porn on the pay television (more on that, later, perhaps). Not much space to spread out our delivered Chinese food, but quite reasonable for a room in NYC (somewhere around $170 for the night, after the requisite ridiculous taxes). Definitely a place to keep in mind, should anyone have visiting relatives.

I didn't get enough sleep, however, and would be quite put out that this had to happen on the night before my big raise-related meeting - hadn't said meeting been put off yet again. So, there you go.

Another adventure under our belts, with only a bit of whinging and some slightly disturbing hysterical giggling in reaction. We have been told that our home should be fully habitable again this evening, but we shall see if that is true. We haven't much hope that, even if it is functional, it will be clean and put back together by our return. We just pray, and we hope you'll join us, we don't find that the "plumber" has opened the gas line, or walled in the cats, when we get home.

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* I use plumber in quotes, because the gentleman in question has rarely demonstrated any ability to wash himself or brush his own teeth, much less carry out complicated pipe repairs without major errors and lengthy, extremely inconvenient delays. I believe they hire him consistently because he is cheap, which just reinforces the adage about getting what you paid for, etc. I'd decribe him further, but I am generally so captivated by the combination of the ecosystems flourishing in his interdental crevices and his incomprehensible Liverpudlian mumblings that I retreat in panic, patent drawings of composite oral irrigators/subtitle display systems dancing in my head...