3 things: weather, heating woes, & holiday scheduling

[edenfalling]

And now some other stuff, because apparently I am very wordy tonight!

1. On Sunday, we had August in October -- ridiculously, stupidly unseasonable heat and humidity. Which I guess is better festival weather than what we got on Monday, which was steadily dropping temperatures and pouring rain until 5pm, after which the rain let up but the temperature continued to drop.

2. Tangentially, my heat is now functional! I know this because tonight I came home to an apartment that was at least 76 degrees and smelled unpleasantly of burning dust. You see, I'd set the thermostat quite high back before I realized the heat was totally nonfunctional, thinking maybe it just needed an extra kick to turn on, and then I forgot to turn the dial back down to a more reasonable setting. It turns out that my landlord claims he never actually turned the heat off in the spring, but he refitted the furnace (or something to that general effect?) this summer and he thinks he accidentally broke some connections since both upstairs apartments had heat but both downstairs ones didn't. Anyway, whatever the problem, he has since fixed it and I will not freeze this winter. Yay!

3. I talked to Boss Lady about holiday scheduling. This is always a little tricky, since I'm the only smoke shop employee whose family is not local-ish, so I'm the one who wants the most time off at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I always work New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in partial compensation, and the last couple years I was able to work Thanksgiving because my family came up and commandeered my apartment for the holiday, but I've never worked Christmas and I don't remember working Christmas Eve -- it's possible I did a 9am-2pm shift one year, but if so, that was the only time.

Boss Lady says this is unfair and I must close on Christmas Eve this year, which means I won't be able to leave Ithaca until 6:30pm at the earliest. No Christmas Eve church service in NJ with my family, alas! But she is offering me Wed-Fri off around Thanksgiving, and the same at Christmas, so it's not all bad. And we usually assign holiday shifts by making a chart and asking people to volunteer, so there is always a chance my coworkers will claim all the shifts without me needing to pitch in... but I kind of doubt it. Ah well, so it goes.

(Next year I will be able to work Thanksgiving, but I will need to beg four days off for Christmas because Mom, in her infinite (albeit questionable) wisdom has decreed that Vicky and I will be hosting the holidays in 2014 -- I get Thanksgiving in Ithaca, and Vicky gets Christmas down in DC. That should be interesting...)

Comments

[branchandroot]

Thank goodness for getting the heat straightened out. It's definitely coming on to that season when space heaters stop being quite enough without a blanket fort.

[edenfalling]

Yeah. I mean, I have a really thick robe, and enough spare blankets to make a fort out of my bed if necessary, but it shouldn't be necessary. Downstairs Neighbor S, who also had no heat for a while, told me her solution was to turn on her oven and leave the door open so she was basically cooking her apartment... and then to tell Landlord Dude that she planned to keep on doing that until he fixed the heating, and he could just eat the difference in costs.

Which is not something I would personally do, because I prefer not to antagonize landlords, but Downstairs Neighbor S knew Landlady and Landlord Dude socially for years before moving into this house so it's not quite the same situation.

[ext-2124499.livejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

Thanks for this post. I know all about the woes of heating. I live in Edmonton and it seems like even when we have our heater on high it's still freezing inside.
http://www.thegentlemenplumbersedmonton.com/heating.html