3 things: rent check woes, cigarette delivery woes, & crockpot joys

[edenfalling]

1. On Monday morning, as I was about to get into the shower, my landlady called. This is approximately how our conversation went:

Landlady: Did you pay your rent this month?
Liz: Yes, of course I did.
Landlady: You're usually very prompt about that, which is why I was asking. Because I never got the check. Or at least I don't think I did; I don't remember depositing it anyway.
Liz: I'm quite sure I sent it.
Landlady: Oh, I believe you! What probably happened is I've been having some trouble with my mailbox, where the lid kept flipping up and stuff would blow out.
Liz: Um.
Landlady: I bet your check is buried under a snowbank right now.
Liz: Oh.
Landlady: So please write a new one.
Liz: I'd like to check with my bank first, to make sure it hasn't been cashed. So, I should write you a new check minus the fee for stopping the old one?
Landlady: No, you don't need to bother, because the bank is liable if somebody fraudulently cashes the old one.
Liz: *prudently doesn't mention that she's actually afraid Landlady will cash the first check by accident if it's still legible after melting out of the snowbank*
Liz: *prudently also doesn't mention the time Landlady deposited a rent check back into Liz's own account, which resulted in the bank debiting twice the value of her monthly rent when they accidentally fixed the error twice*
Liz: Okay, no change to the usual amount. But I still need to check with the bank first.
Landlady: No problem!

And then I was late for work.

The check has indeed not been cashed, so I planned to write a replacement tonight and put it out for tomorrow's mail pickup. And then this evening, I got a text from Landlady asking if I'd mailed it yet, because if not she could come pick it up in person this evening. I said I wouldn't be home until 7:45pm, and had not yet written the check. She said that was fine, just put it out and she'd pick it up sometime after 8pm.

It's 10:30pm now. She still hasn't picked it up.

*twitch*

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2. Every Wednesday the smoke shop gets a delivery from Elmira Distributing. It is supposed to arrive between 11am and, say, 4pm. They are our major cigarette supplier. We ran out of at least one type of cigarette today that was going to be in the scheduled delivery.

Do you know when the delivery arrived?

6:57pm, exactly three minutes before I locked the door and closed the store for the night. So then I had to check in the order and put the cigarettes away, because neither Sweetheart nor Hipster Girl has a key to the cigarette storage case and it's bad form to leave $900 of merchandise just lying around on the floor behind the counter. Then, of course, I had to redo my cigarette inventory tallies, and process the invoices, and the upshot is that I didn't get out the door until 7:30.

Gnrgh.

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3. In much less frustrating news, I tried out my new crockpot last night! Basically I took my usual stir fry ingredients -- bell pepper, yellow squash, onion, chicken -- and chucked them into the crockpot instead of frying them on the stove. Also, I added maybe 1.5 cups of water, some salt, some black pepper, and two old packets of chicken bouillon that were originally meant for ramen noodles. (I am weird and eat ramen like a dry noodle side dish rather than as a brothy-soupy thing. This means I only use about half a packet on each batch of noodles, and have saved up a lot of packets over the years.) I cooked the whole mess on high for a little over four hours, poured it into a big refrigerator container to store overnight, and tonight sampled the results.

Conclusion: not a half bad chicken soup. It would be better with some peas and carrots as well, not to mention some noodles or potato, and I think a couple basil leaves for flavor, but what the hell, it worked. :-) And while chopping ingredients is still a pain, it is so nice not to have to stand over the stove while everything cooks.

I may buy ingredients for pot roast this weekend. :-D

Comments

[kaigou]

If this kind of thing happens regularly (or more than three times) with your landlady, how about you suggest she give you the bank acct # to deposit your rent into? You won't be able to withdraw, only deposit (obvs, but worth repeating if she's worried), and that way you'll also get a receipt from the bank when you make a deposit. I once had landlords who lived out of town, and they set up an acct. Made everything so much simpler, and never again was there the "it's in the mail" crap.

(Especially if her account is with a bank that will let you deposit electronically, but I think you might have to have an acct with the same bank to do that. Not sure.)

[heliopausa]

Yes, I did that two landladies back, and it worked beautifully. I had a standing order for a bank transfer once a month.
(The current landlady comes three times a year, for a Grand Handover In Cash, with solemn on-the-table counting, and tea and nibbles. :) That's worked beautifully, too.)

[edenfalling]

This is only the second mishap in... four years in this apartment, I think? *checks* Yeah, I moved in June 2009, so four and a half. But even so. :-/

We do use the same bank (which is how she was able to deposit my check back into my own account), so that might be worth looking in to. Thanks for the suggestion!

[edenfalling]

Payment methods are so variable, aren't they? Since dropping out of Cornell, I have lived in five different places. The first three (2002-2005, new place each year) were via a rental company based out of Collegetown, so I either handed quarterly payments to the roommate who was the designated Keeper of the Rent or just walked down the street to pay directly. The fourth (2005-2009), I rented the second floor of a house and my landlords lived downstairs, so I just handed over the checks directly -- except for the year they moved to Pennsylvania for Mr. B's job, and I had to stop two rent checks that got lost either in the mail or the chaos of their move. (They deducted the stoppage fee from the relevant month's rent, so it was on them, not me.) And now Landlord Dude and Landlady live about halfway up Cayuga Lake, so it's more practical to mail checks than expect them to drop by regularly. But automatic deposits might work very nicely!

[branchandroot]

People that financially dippy should not be running rental enterprises. *shakes head*

[tephra]

There are a ton of sites full of crockpot recipes, should you need inspiration. The one I see recommended most is A Year of Slow Cooking. I get most of my new ideas from Pinterest; it seems pinners have a sorid affair with slow cookers. :D

[edenfalling]

I am still not entirely sure how she failed to noticed she was writing down my account number instead of her own on the deposit slip that one time. *hands*

There are a lot of small-time landlords in Ithaca -- it's a consequence of being a college town, you know? The population skews very young and transient, which means a lot of the long-time residents own two or three houses and rent them out for supplemental income, or even just rent out the basement, attic, or other spare rooms in the houses they themselves live in. Which means there is a lot of sloppy accounting going around, and also a lot of fairly informal contracts.

[edenfalling]

Oooh. *bookmarks for reference*

[aishuu.livejournal.com]

Your landlady and mine must be related. Slightly neurotic...

[edenfalling]

Landlady and Landlord Dude are pretty decent as landlords go, but every now and then we run into a little glitch. *sigh* Come to think of it, I should ask them for a written rent contract again. We renewed verbally in the spring, but Landlord Dude never did get around to printing out an updated contract and giving me a copy.

[emmee-kay.livejournal.com]

I love my slow cooker(s)! They save the day at least once a week! (And as usual, I give the dippy comment.)

[akatsuki210.livejournal.com]

Slow cookers are wonderful! I have a few great recipes (all from my husband's side of the family) for mine: beef-barley stew, pot roast, and chili.

[edenfalling]

They are indeed wonderful! (Don't worry, we're all dippy here. *wry*)

[edenfalling]

My mom gave me a few recipes along with the crockpot, of which pot roast was the first. Mmm, pot roast. With carrots and onions and maybe potatoes for starch if I'm feeling ambitious. :-)