And Now, A Musical Interlude...

Ha-llelujah!!! Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Halle-e-lu-jah!

(Image, left, courtesy of a certain Quaker digital library. No sh*t, really.)

Handel's messiah chorus was the only song going through this Jew girl's head when the super announced that the water level in mini's room was finally zero. We could fill in all holes and paint away! Let the fixing begin! One can only imagine the sweet euphoric feeling following this news. Like a huge weight was lifted off her shoulders. This is an amazing feeling that lasted quite a while.

37 minutes, to be exact. Because that's when she noticed some pulling on the paint on the wall below the light switch on her bedroom. Suddenly the wet carpet in the hallway made sense. And.....(shocker!)....she followed the messed up paint trail up with her eyes only to find the plaster on her ceiling wet and heavy and looking about to cave in. Excellent.

Super comes back. Again.

Super (once again) claims no big deal. Vacant apartment upstairs has been showing without supervision and someone left the sink faucet on and left. Water shut off, it'll dry, building will fix it, problem solved. Thanks super. As always, most helpful.

Did any of you go to summer camp? If so, you may be familiar with the song that suddenly replaced any other lyrics in Poker Chick's head. It's unofficial title is "the most annoying song in the world".

Oh, this is the leak that never ends......

It's only funny because it's true, peeps. 100% true. 75 days and counting.

The Leak Saga, Part 3

Yesterday, a steam pipe exploded in a all in mini's room. That's right, you heard us, a steam pipe. Did you even know that could happen in apartment buildings? Apparently it can. Once every 5th floor. So now there is a hole in mini's wall that looks like this:
Of course, one could think to yourself: that's great!! This totally explains the wet plaster smell, the paint bubbling of the wall (and subsequent hole that was "dried up") yet remains inexplicably wet and thus still undiagnosed.

You could think that the mystery was finally solved, and it would be completely logical thinking. Except this wall on the complete other side on the room. So where does that leave us? One mysterious leak has been "simply explained" by poor plumbing in the apartment upstairs. Water lines were cut off. It did not dry up.

Then the "aha" of the leaky washing machine. Which was fixed except the smell was still there. And then the oven was pulled out of the wall so that we could find another leak. The water was shut off and it was chalked up to odd coincidence. Then the steam pipe exploded. And apparently this "part" that broke is only on every 5th floor.

Three (possibly four) crazy coincidences. And none of them have resolved the original issue, because somehow the wall is still getting wet. And remember also that roaches are attracted to the smell of wet plaster.


So Poker Chick is in need of help from you peeps. She needs answers to these questions:

1) Can anyone out there calculate the odds of all of this happening in the same room at the same time? There's gotta be a way to make some money off this in Vegas.

2) Can anyone advise a girl how to have the conversation with the insurance company who had already assessed and paid for the "initial" water damage? "No really sir, I realize how this must sound, I promise we are not making this up for the money.....hello? hello? Are you still there?"

Stay tuned for the exciting saga! It's too bad Poker Chick doesn't have a whole house. Home ownership is so much fun!!