Death of a Landlord (final)

The last of the tale, hopefully, is the lovely "covering" for our landlady's spa. Charlie decided that it was by far the best option for the heavy hot tub cover that Beverly couldn't get off by herself. This has yet to make any sense to me.

One morning, I walk outside to get into my car that had been warming up across the street for 10 minutes, and am blocked in by a full-length semi, backed into our driveway, and also taking up the rest of the street. Charlie is in a panic, because our roommate's car is in the way, our roommate is on vacation, and he needs it moved NOW. 

I run inside, look for his keys, can't produce them.

Why? Because they are in the ignition. Charlie has broken into the car and is on his way to the front seat by the time I get back outside. He starts the truck and moves it without asking. Okay.

Beverly then asks if they can use our garage as a staging place for their building project (turns out, the semi was delivering the pieces of an Ikea-like hot tub structure). Why do they need to be inside? Because it is 10 degrees and SNOWING.

Why can't they use their own garage? Oh, because it's PACKED FULL of SHIT. Because they are hoarders. What do you say to your landlady when she asks if she can infiltrate your clean space? 

"Sure..." 

I ask that when they are not working, they close the garage since we have 15 pairs of skis, several bikes and a gaggle of other expensive gear.

I come home after work to the garage door open, my $1000+ race bike thrown in the corner and a broken helmet, our garage completely rearranged, with framed 2x4s and tools everywhere. Landlady and Charlie? Nowhere to be found. Perfect.

Our house had reached 45 degrees, since the garage was open all day. I breathe a deep yogi breath. It doesn't work. 

They return to their respective homes down south somewhere, and we have a lovely hot tub structure thing beside our driveway. Landlady finally went back to work, hopefully putting an end to these maddening home improvement projects. 

The project is essentially done. Evidence is below. Doesn't it look great? Come over and join us. Bring beer. Don't expect to see Sierra stars.

The Piercing Pagoda (aka Bev-train's hot tub) 

Death of a Landlord (Part 3)

It's the same weekend. The concrete slab leaves much to be desired on several fronts: curing is incomplete, snow continues to fall accompanied by the outside temperature, and the angle of the slab is laughable.

Additionally, the hot tub remains in the driveway, 10 feet away from the concrete slab. Landlady and Charlie are in dire need of help. Moving the hot tub is the one thing that they really can not do on their own. After all day of calling our friend Anthony (who happened to be at work, which they didn't seem to understand), he shows up as the sun sets, fires up the company front-end loader, and proceeds to, again, take care of our landlady's project for no pay, hardly a thank you, and way more hassle than it is worth.

With hot tub in place, everyone goes home, including Charlie and Landlady (to their homes down south, not their home above ours). Charlie calls Anthony the following week to hook up the electricity, whereas Anthony electrocutes himself not once, but twice, and knocks out the power to our house as well. Landlady offers him ONE beer. Doesn't really cut it, I imagine.

We now have a "spa" that runs off of our electricity, as the house is not zoned for dual occupancy, yet is metered separately by the landlady, who now writes us a pitiful check for our obscenely high electricity bill. Quite literally, our electricity bill increased from $150 last December, to $338 this year. I am certain that Southern California Edison is having to create new billing "Tiers" to figure out how much to charge our energy inefficient household. It's embarrassing and wasteful. They heat the hot tub to its normal temperature while it's consistently been -5 degrees overnight, and they aren't even there to use it.

Billing my landlady has proved exciting, as usually it is the other way around. Other than that, I've deemed nothing positive out of the entire endeavor, and have in fact, seen an increase in blood pressure due to extreme frustration. Not to mention, our friends frequent our house less. I don't blame them. 

Death of a Landlord (Part 2)

So the landlord's funeral week goes as follows: Landlandy and her boyfriend, who will go as Charlie from here on out, spend Monday through Friday in their lovepad. They even follow my friends and me to a bluegrass concert (They ask us what we were up to, we tell them, they show up. Perfect.). Trying to be nice, I even offer them a beer from our cooler. They say they will buy us some beers to replace the two bud heavies they take. No thanks. Keep your $2.

Regretfully, Charlie-boy high tails it out of town the morning Landlady's son is due to show up. Clearly this relationship is being hidden from the son. Slutty, yet understandable. The funeral is mellow, the lunch afterward is at the local bar. Fitting for an ex-but-not-ex-alcoholic. Tragic in a way.

             *Quick aside: Landlord and Landlady used to hate winter, so we had the place to ourselves for over 8 months a year, since we live in an extremely wintery, snowy place. Now we have her once a month. Ugh.*

Landlady and Charlie waste no time in getting comfy in their newly realized mountain apartment. She tells me that they really want us to stay and be happy with the place so they are going to install an outdoor hot tub. So I say, great, do what you want, it's your property. We have a free pass to the local spa/resort, so we probably won't use it, as it doesn't come with a hot shower and mint body scrub. But do your thing, landlady.

By this this time, it is the end of October, early November. In the mountains. I figure they'll wait for summer to install their glorious spa. No. No nonononononononoooooooo. An illusive thing, that logic. Landlady calls me, and asks if I know anyone in the concrete business, because they need to put the spa on a concrete slab. Of course, I do. So I give her my poor friend's name. She calls him, he has to work. She calls around to other people. She and Charlie decide it is too expensive and they can do most of it on their own. WHAT? My dad owns a concrete business. DIY concrete = NOT ADVISABLE. Especially in winter.

Nonetheless, I come home to a poorly framed, not leveled space by the side of the driveway. Did he put base material before concrete was poured? Nope. Fine. Whatever.

Next step, they call for concrete to be delivered. They don't, however, hire anyone to help float and finish the concrete. Because they are going to do it on their own. With no tools. Really. I'm not kidding. This lady owns 4 houses, and she can't afford to pay someone $100 to properly install a concrete slab?

Lucky for my curiosity, Clif has the day off while this is all happening. So my second-hand account from him still makes me squeal with a special kind of angst reserved only for those who have been long abandoned by reality and left in the cold by their own braincells, or lack thereof.

The concrete truck driver shows up, asks where the concrete guys are, and Charlie fills him in on their plan. The driver pours the concrete and then promptly calls our friend (whose name I had given landlady the week prior), and our friend calls Clif and asks if this is really happening. It is. Clif and Anthony help landlady and Charlie after observing the epic failure.

Keep in mind, it is snowing. Ideal conditions to NOT do concrete work.

Anthony tells them this. Their solution ends up being an indoor/outdoor heat lamp on top of the tarp that is now covering our sweet sweet concrete mass. Why the heat lamp? Because they are only in town for one more day, the hot tub is sitting in the driveway, and they really want to get the hot tub put on the concrete slab the following day. Anthony advises them to wait for at least a week. No. This won't do. It must happen tomorrow.

So Bumble & Bumble have extension cords everywhere, in the snow, powering a heat lamp designed for tabletops at outdoors summer parties. It's top-heavy, we live on a lake, where there is wind. Yes. The fire danger is significant. However, the gods of all things holy spare them for the night.

Next up, moving the spa onto the concrete slab.

Death of a Landlord (Part 1)

Imagine finding your landlord seated upright on his couch, in his loft, in the "apartment" above your house, naked. Dead.

Mmmm. Yummy picture to paint as I eat my lunch. But yes, this did, in fact, happen. Truth be told, it was my roommate (an acting EMT) who found him, and his rat terrier - whose poop on the floor led us to believe the landlord had been dead 24 hours.

I got a call the second I came out of the back country with my husband, and upon returning home, set out to a) deal with a rat terror (pun intended) who barked and whined if anyone closed their eyes, and b) clean up the upstairs apartment before the landlord's widow came up from their home in southern California.

The house was no small task. Our landlord was a hoarder (his widow still is), a 'recovering alcoholic', and the worst diabetic ever. In the house I found: a vat of "kool-aide", (a mixture of red-something and whiskey) spilled ALL over the kitchen floor and cupboards, empty and half-empty cans of soda adorning every surface imaginable and unimaginable, half-eaten cups of yogurt- spoon still in, cookies, needles, 50 games worth of scrabble pieces in a box, 6 bags of misc. trash, soup in the bottom of the kitchen sink (a week old?) ... you get the idea.

So my friend and I scrubbed and scrubbed.

The house was pretty clean. The widow calls and says she'll be up in a week. A WEEK. And then cries and says that everyone must think she left him up there to die (she did, we do think that), and everyone must think she is horrible (yup).

*Flash back to a week before* Our roommate (EMT) hears a thud above his head, calls 911, breaks into the upstairs and saves the landlord's life. He fell out of bed in a diabetic event and would have died if nobody got to him in time. Hum. Widow, where were ya after that?

Not to mention, this guy has no driver's license (taken away due to irresponsible management of diabetes), and his wife dropped him off over a month prior to fish, and hadn't been back since. The man was alone, un-resupplied, living like a child on diabetes, for over a MONTH. Awesome.

We take care of her dog until she decides to show up.

She, her adopted son, and adopted son's girlfriend arrive to deal with the mess (that wasn't there, because I cleaned it). We get a short thank you and then they all proceed to drink and hang out for a few days. She tells us that the house we are paying rent in is paid off, so luckily she can live off of the rent we are paying (and her job as an emergency room nurse), since she will really be missing the monthly payments they  received for landlord's health issues. Then they boogie.

A week or two later, we meet Charlie, the "handyman". Let's just say their floor/our ceiling is not very thick and he is more than a handyman. He's not even attractive, and has the vibe of an uncle that hugs too much and knows a lot about outdated technology. Negative 5 points on the 'keepin' it classy' scale, landlady. But whatever. Maybe she is finally getting to experience her mid-life crisis that she never had with her diabetic husband. I shouldn't judge people for finding someone and wanting to do like rabbits.

But I do judge, quickly, and that's no secret.

That's it for this installment. For part 2, we get into the "spa" business. It just gets better ...

Side project

I am starting my own business.

The risk is fairly low, since it will be a side project unless it really takes off. But for now, I'm reveling in the sound of the words "my own business." 

Today I put my business license application in the mail, and Lilium Social Marketing will (hopefully) bloom into a career builder. Pun unintended, but intentionally kept.

In the excitement of it all, my mom sent me the photo she thinks I should have on my business cards. She took it the week I went home to plan my wedding. I'm feeling fairly sentimental at the moment, so I suppose that's why I'm sharing things as personal as a photo. Don't get too used to it.

Check out my (currently) bare-bones website at liliumsocial.com. It's a work in progress, and as it's a side project, it may take longer than I normally would prefer. But so it goes. My sister, the artist, is creating a logo for me. For now, there is a pathetically hand-drawn lily that I did, that my husband then took a photo of with his phone, mailed it to me, and then edited on 'paint' in order to get it as a .png file. Maybe the most hilarious and humbling way to start a social media business, ever. BUT, I'm waiting on a new computer and then everything will come together. 

Until then. 

And I'm back...

South Tufa, Mono Lake, California

Admittedly, it's been a few years since my last post. With the new year comes resolutions and goals: one of mine, of course, it to write more. Typical. Other aspirations include starting my own business, beating my time from last year's Tioga Pass run, and spending more time outside. The latter may be the hardest, honestly.

I have again found myself in the predicament of working too much. I find myself here often, because the loose term too much gets easily re-interpreted to fit my current desires for new challenges and change. However, I have decided that the 9 to 5 job, plus waitressing 3 nights a week, teaching yoga and having an accounting job on the side becomes less productive when burn-out rears its ugly head. Paychecks abound, yet outdoor activity time does not. Thus it is time to reassess life.

So, it is with new priorities that I excitedly thrust myself into 2013, and hopefully the result will be posts. And tufas.