I Has a Ceiling!

Oh my! What a week I've had.

You may have noticed that I wasn't around much last week. I got slammed. With everything. And next week doesn't look to be too much better. Apologies in advance. Things should settle in another week or two, but until then, I'm just trying to keep my feet under me.

First things first. I went from this...

...to this...

...to this...

...to this...

...last week. They started on Tuesday and finished on Saturday. And so, now it's finally done. Whew.

(You may remember this all started in January.)

But, as all of this is right above my bed, I spent most of last week displaced in one way or another. The first night I slept on the couch in the living room. The rest of the week I could sleep in my bed, but I had to strip it first thing in the morning and remake it when I got home from work, so the contractor could flip it up towards the wall and out of the way during the day.

All the while, half of my bedroom was in the living room and out of the way. Including my TV. Sigh.

At least I was out of the house while they were working on the ceiling. You may remember I mentioned that vacant English class I was covering all week. Yeah, that kept me from experiencing the full effect of having workmen in the house. I'd leave in the morning and return in the evening to visible progress.

While working has been great, it is tiring. I'd get home with barely enough energy to get that bed remade. And then it was time for my homework. Lesson planning. (If I had the energy to look for a gif, it would be one of someone cheering with no enthusiasm whatsoever.)

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad to have the work. And the other teachers have been way supportive in sharing their lesson plans with me. But that doesn't mean I can totally rely on them. They give me the plan, but I have to figure out how to execute it. I have to teach the class. And I have to figure out how I'm going to set up other things, like the classroom, and how to keep up with papers and grading until I hand this class over to someone more permanent.

I've been scrambling with seating charts, classroom control, and getting the basic supplies. The staff has been so helpful. I managed to locate books. I learned to make copies. I got the kiddos their syllabus to start the year off right. I even have a computer and working projector, so I can make slides at home and use them in class.

What I'm saying is, it's been a lot--way more than I'm accustomed to. I'll have posts for this week, but again, I'm going to be very lax in my visiting. I'll get there. But it's going to be late. I hope you understand.

I promise, no more whining this week. I do have a couple good stories to share.

It's Been Put Together

The windmill bag was moving along a lot quicker than I anticipated. Right after taking the pictures I used in last weeks blog post, I started on the assembly.

Stitching together the bottom went quickly. Before I knew it, I was stitching up the sides.

I thought about what sort of border I wanted for the top. I started one round, and then decided that that was enough.

I threw it in the wash. I was doing laundry, and I'd get to the straps/handles soon enough.

And then school started. *insert screeching brake noise here*

So, yeah, I expected to have a finished bag to post today. It's mostly finished, as you can see. The straps/handles won't take terribly long. But I just have a whole lot less time at the moment to work on them.

The bag turned out bigger than I expected. Here's a view of the inside...

So, overall, I'm pleased. (I didn't really block the thing, that's why the pictures appear lumpy. I'm not going to bother blocking it as it's just for me, and I'm content with the lumpy.) There are a few things I'd do differently, and I may try them on a second attempt at the bag. But not at the moment.

I'm going to be a bit scarce this week. Because everything has to happen at once. 

First, the money from the court case finally came through, and the contractor who's going to replace my ceiling is coming this week. So, I'm going to be moving out of my room so he can do that. 

And, at the same time, school started. I am covering a vacant class for the first couple weeks, so while I'm displaced, I'll be busy all day at school, and at night I'll be playing catch up with lesson planning and such. 

So, I'll be around. I'll get to blog visiting eventually, but it may be later rather than sooner. The dust should settle by the end of the week. Hopefully. We'll see. Wish me luck.

Things I Learned

...in small claims court.

As I promised last Friday, here are a few things I learned going to small claims court two weeks ago. In no particular order...

1. Being a small claims court judge must be much like being a teacher. He gave us instructions that some ignored. He explained things clearly, but some still could not answer him. I kind of felt sorry for him.
2. If you find yourself having to take someone to court, document everything. And have all the documentation in a logical order.
3. If serving court papers, make sure to submit proof of having done so at least five days before your court date. 
4. Be on time, but expect a long wait.
5. It is illegal to charge more than 10% interest on a loan. (Not our case. A case prior to ours.) 
6. Cases were heard by quickest to resolve first. (Of course if we could have come to a compromise, we wouldn't have sued...) 
7. When your case is done, leave. (Papers were mailed out after.) 
8. And then don't return, wailing how the defendant "threatened" you out in the hall. (Another case prior to ours.) 
9. The judge can only rule on the specific case brought before him. Leave other matters out of it. 
10. Everyone's an idiot in court. Take a deep breath and try to keep up.

Deluge Resolution

Last week we had our day in court.

In case you missed it, in late January, on a Saturday morning at 1:15, I was awoken by water pouring through my ceiling and onto my bed. (I explained it pretty well in that blog post.) Drying out the ceiling and putting the room back together has taken a while. (I gave periodic updates here, here, and here.)

What we have been waiting on is figuring out who's going to pay for it. Landlady has been fighting with the upstairs neighbors since it happened.

The people upstairs rent the place from the woman who used to live upstairs, but had recently moved to an assisted living facility. The woman's daughter hired a management company to oversee the rental stuff.

When the water incident happened, landlady contacted the management company immediately after the plumber left. (The plumber determined that the upstairs neighbors had to have overflowed something as he couldn't replicate the issue. He checked for a burst pipe and then if any of the fixtures in the upstairs bathroom were leaking. They weren't.)

The management company said the renters claimed not to know anything, so they were not at fault. He had no idea where the water came from, but it was not their responsibility.

Landlady went to the owner's daughter. She put her in touch with their insurance company. Insurance company said renters didn't do anything, so they wouldn't cover the issue.

And it's gone around and around for months. Landlady decided to sue. (I mentioned serving the owner the papers a couple weeks back.)

Small claims court is interesting. I learned a lot. Hopefully, I'll never need to use any of this knowledge again. But I figured I might as well jot it down in one place.

First of all, it turns out that "where else could the f***ing water have come from?" is a valid legal argument.

The owner of the unit upstairs did not appear in court. Instead, the management company and insurance company showed up. They said that since we couldn't prove the water pouring in was due to their tenants (the plumber only proved that it wasn't a burst pipe or a leaky faucet), they couldn't be held liable.

The judge disagreed. Once he determined that their bathroom is directly above my bedroom, he explained that the preponderance of evidence suggested that the only reasonable explanation was that something had happened in their bathroom. Putting the renters at fault.

So, the hole in my ceiling will soon be no more. But of course it'll take time before the insurance company pays out. (At least we now have a judgment. That should help, I hope.) And I'll have to move everything out of my room (I moved everything back in when it became apparent that it would be a while. It's been three months since I moved all my stuff back in.) It looks like we're in the home stretch.

As this post got huge, I'll save the lessons I learned for a future post. Because there were some particular things that I did not know before this whole thing. You may find it interesting as well.

Full Evil

Last Thursday I went full evil. It kind of just happened. I'm rather ashamed, but here I am, putting it on blast on my blog.

First, I served papers on a sweet old lady.

I have mentioned the deluge that happened in my bedroom. Yes, there is still a hole in my ceiling. Getting the neighbors to pay for the damage, well, isn't happening. We've had to take them to court. The sweet old lady is still the owner of record. (She's moved to an assisted living facility.) Her daughter, well, if her daughter had taken care of business, we wouldn't be going to court.

Shortly thereafter, I called 911 on a black man.

I don't know if you've been aware of all the "Beckys" calling 911 on people of color who were minding their own business. It's a thing.

However, this man was lying in the street, twitching. It was a busy street. Traffic... Well, it was 6-ish.
And while he was in the crosswalk, he was far enough out in the street that he could have been hit. I don't know that he was having a seizure, but it sure looked like it.

On the bright side, 911 seemed to be aware of the issue, so I wasn't the first to call. Once the first responders arrived, we got out of the way, so I don't know how this all resolved.

It was once I got home that I realized how evil I had gotten. I need to be way more careful in the future.

Ugly Slippers, Final

I finally got the soles sewn onto the ugly slippers. Finally.

It wasn't all that difficult, but as with all new things, it took me a while to get the hang of it.

I'm not sure how well this works at keeping the slippers non-slip. I'll have to get back to you on that, after the recipients get their long-overdue Christmas presents and try them out.

In case you'd like to try this yourself, the tutorial for this method is found here. I googled "soles on knitted slippers" and this site came up.

As you can see, her soles look much, much better than mine. I used a faux leather fabric.

Ah well. It's done now. Would I use this same method again? I don't know. It depends on how well the slippers work out.

And with that, my Christmas 2018 knitting is done. Christmas 2017 knitting is still ongoing.

Bedroom deluge update: I still have a big ol' hole in my ceiling. 

It's pretty much the entire ceiling. It will not get repaired until the restoration company knows who's paying to have it repaired. The owner of the property upstairs refuses to pay as does her insurance company. The renters still deny that anything whatsoever actually happened. So, before anything else can happen, we have to take them to court. Ugh. 

Stalled

If you follow me on Instagram, you've already seen my knitting photo for this week...

Aaaaand, that's about all I got accomplished. About five rounds of the infinity scarf that I've been working on since...

*checks Ravelry*

...since June.

I pulled out my knitting. Looked at it. And didn't do a whole lot with it.

I am back in my room. There's a big hole in my ceiling that'll get patched up in the next week or so. Progress.

But my stuff is still living in the dining room until the guys come to replaster the ceiling, so I'm not wholly back in my room. It's great to sleep in my own bed. I have access to all my belongings. But I still feel a bit displaced.

That's probably why I've gotten out the ugly slippers and the walking purse but have been unable to do anything with them. They're at the sewing up stage, and all I want to do is sit and knit.

I even have new pictures of my seasonal earrings to post. I was going to get that listing ready for Etsy. I still will. It just got pushed back a bit...

Trying It Again

I didn't do a whole lot of knitting last week. I know, I say this a lot, but this last week I had an excellent excuse. I'm still out of my bedroom.

I'm hoping it'll be about another week until things have been repaired. But considering how the clean up has gone, I'm not going to hold my breath.

(It's gone well, considering. But, just when I think something is going to happen, a contractor cancels. Or, one contractor tells me that I'll have access to my stuff, and then the guys who are doing the work on Saturday morning inform me just as they're about to start that I won't have any access until Tuesday late afternoon. And I have 20 minutes to grab everything I might need until then.)

So, yeah, it's been interesting...

And just as I'm contemplating finishing my father's wife's walking purse...

...I realize that I don't like what I've knit.

(Apologies for the pics. My normal background fabric is in my sealed off room--there was mold--and my lights need charging--someone brought out the lights but not the charging cables.)

The one on the left is the first attempt. I knew I could get it not to curl, hence the second attempt on the right. (This is the flap for over the purse.)

Once I reknit the flap, I figured I could reknit the purse...

In an attempt to prevent that curl (the top), I decreased the stitches (the bottom), and found that it didn't make much of a difference. Sigh.

Next time (if there is a next time), I'll crochet an edging on it. It'll be much easier, and I can probably fix that curl better. I hope.

Home

I may not be very coherent for the next week or so. But before I whine, let me show you the pretty pictures.

The gray behemoth made it to its new home...

Niece seems to like it...

(If you want to say "hi" to my niece, you can find her on Instagram here and here.)

The rest of this post is me venting. It's been... Yeah. Consider this your warning. You might want to get out now.

Ahem.

1:15 AM. Saturday. I don't know what it was that woke me. But as I drifted awake, contemplating if I really, really needed to use the restroom or if I should just go back to sleep, I heard dripping. Kind of like rainfall. But the sound was wrong...

I jumped out of bed and turned on the light.

From that light, which was part of a ceiling fan just over my bed, was water, dripping onto my bed.

And then the dripping sped up.

I grabbed a couple towels to help sop up the water. Not sure what to do, I looked about for a bucket of some sort. I noted the time.

As the water sped up more, becoming a stream, more water started falling from a different part of the ceiling.

By the time I got my roommate (who owns the place) involved (yes, I woke her at 1:20 AM-ish), water was also streaming from just outside my closet. Landlady called it a waterfall. I called it a deluge.

Luckily, we had access to the water shut off for the building. Unluckily, the emergency line we contacted didn't send a plumber overnight (even though they said they were).

The water stopped after about a half hour. The plumber arrived 12 hours later.

I pulled all the sheets off my bed and put them in the bathtub. That's when I discovered that my mattress pad was awesome. My bed was basically a pool by the time the water stopped, but my mattress was only wet in a small spot right where the water had been dripping.

If I had been thinking, I would have taken pictures. I wasn't thinking.

Anyway, the plumber tried to replicate the issue. Above my room is a bathroom. He ran the shower. He flushed the toilet. No water. And this was after turning the water back on, and nothing happened.

(In other words, we turned off the water to our whole building--I don't know how many units--on a Saturday morning for nothing.)

What the plumber did find was a sopping wet bathroom. Wet floor. Wet clothes. Wet towels. And a stopped up sink.

The tenant above us? Yeah, he says no leak. No issue. Nothing happened.

Uh... Really? Apparently I'm a miracle woman, then. If only I'd known when we were in full on drought a year or so back. I could have single-handedly ended it.

So, it's now Sunday night. I've commandeered my other roommate's room. (She's out of town visiting friends.) My room has a dehumidifier going. Last I checked, it's 83 F in there. This is the stopgap measure until they can get someone to remove the ceiling.

They checked with their sensors, and the ceiling is wet. It's probably in the insulation. And we don't want mold.

I'm around. But my routine has been shot to hell. Hopefully I'll make the usual rounds this week. But we'll see. I'm taking things one day at a time right now. I have a bed tonight. I'll figure out where I'm sleeping tomorrow night tomorrow.

And hopefully things will get put back together sooner rather than later.

How was your weekend?