Total rant... living next to Norwich students sucks.

I will Never, Never, Never! move into a place again knowing college students are living next door. Please shoot me if I even consider it. Having an absentee landlord doesn't help the situation much either. I recall having a lot of fun in college, but i never recall being this rude and disrespectful of the neighbors.

The good news is the snow is gone... so getting in and out of the driveway is not so much a problem now. The bad news is when it melted it shows just how many beer cans and garbage is all over the lawn where the kids have thrown them. I just wonder how many more are under the layer of leaves that was never removed from the lawn in the fall.

They're supposed to take care of the lawn... and were supposed to take care of the snowplowing over the winter to. I finally had to set up a plow guy and paid him myself when the bill came - the kids have yet to pay me back their share, and I bet they never will either.

I did finally find the package they accepted from UPS for me in December - when the snow melted off the liquor bottles on the lawn, I saw a beige package in the midst of them. I went and checked it out - it was my package that they had pulled open, saw what was in it (including the slip with my name on it) and then must have thrown it out in the snow with the booze bottles.

The trash is still where it was in November - only theres a lot more now - a good 15 or more bags of trash in the garage just sitting there stinking up the place. Just as disgusting as can be. I'm a little embarassed having folks come by as the place is a pigsty. I have no idea how the owners think they are going to sell it.

Its finally gotten warm here in Vt - and I thought that would be a good thing. Apparently not because now its over 60 degrees it means the house is party central, i think half the campus has come to visit. Last night it was 2:30 AM before the slamming of doors, screaming and cheering stopped. Tonight... well who knows how long it will go on. I hate to call the cops on a bunch of kids...but I'd like to enjoy my sleep too.

These Norwich students have no respect for anyone. It really sucks living next to them. Which is too bad, I've done a lot with the place to turn it into a home. I've got six more weeks of this nonsense to get through. That might not seem like a long time - but right now every night seems like an eternity.

Conquering the laundry.

Here's a shot of my little bathroom. The shower is cool, two sliding glass doors meet to make a corner of it, something I'd never seen before. I discovered its reallyeasy to clean and the black bits around the caulking you see here cleaned up with just a little scrubbing and hot water. Something else new is the way the toilet flushes - it has a little knob on top you pull up for flushing, no push down handle here. The sink here is definitely bigger than the kitchen sink too.

However the most unique thing in my bathroom is the washer/dryer. Now when i saw this place advertised on craigslist, I'll admit it caught my eye that it included a washer/dryer in it, not many little apartments do. I should have paid a tad bit more attention. Theres just one machine that does the work of both, and you can see it on the left there. Its a Malber WD 1000, and am I ever grateful the instruction booklet is here.

So on moving day, I'll confess there was some wet wash that came with me - a few things that just didn't make it through the dryer when we packed the last things out. As we're moving boxes, trying to assemble the bed (it was trickier than it looked) and we were starting to turn our attention to Lunch... we had this laundry to finish doing.

I recall handing the instructions over and several folks crowding around the Malber. A couple of folks gave it a try, we did manage to get it to spin and to wash the load again... but the dryer continued to elude us. We finally gave up shortly after lunch and went on with our day. Once it was all completed, We returned the U-Haul, did some last minute cleanup at the farmhouse and came back to the piles of boxes. It was then that Jp managed to determine how the Malber worked. We had to put the laundry through another wash cycle, but we did get it to switch over and then dry afterwards. (Success - Yeah!)

The following week I did some research online. I read and reread the instructions. There must be a way to just dry things - especially since it said it could wash 10 pounds of clothes, but the dryer worked better with just 5-7 pounds of clothes. That seemed to indicate to me it could do a "dry only cycle" even if I couldn't figure it out. I did discover an extra spin helped it dry more, and keeping the spin speed under 700 would reduce wrinkles. I fingured out orange was for more sturdy stuff, the blue was more gentle, and the gray was the for the delicates. I could wash only... I could lightly wash and dry... I could spin & dry...but the dry only was my quest.

It was two days of trial and error and it suddenly hit me (DUH, i can be so clueless!) Malber has a web site, I had looked at it and there were no extra instructions there, so I had crossed it off my list as a place for help... but when I went back and looked at the web page again, they had an email address. Lo and behold, when iIsent a note out to them, the next day I recieved an email back with very simple directions, the wash dial need to be in the stop position, except only the stop position at 6 o'clock on the dial would work for a dry only cycle. I tried it that night and sure enough, it worked. I sent a thank you note out to the Malber folks right away. I just wish the instruction booklet had been more helpful. I'll leave a note with the instructions when I go for the next tenant, thats for sure.

Anyhow, thats been my excitement - figuring out how the Malber washer/dryer works. It doesn't hold much, it does seem to take a while to work, and if you over load it it wrinkles like you wouldn't believe. However it is supposed to be very energy efficient and as a front loader, uses very little water for each load. I can do a small load every couple of days and that seems to be working out fine for me now. In Reenacting season, I might find it helpful to stop at a laundromat or something, but I've got a few months to figure that out yet. Anyhow, here's a glimpse of another corner of the new place for you.

My new kitchen with the minature sink

Well I've been in the new place a week now. Still have boxes to unpack and figuring out what to keep and what to pass on to others.

The kitchen is taking shape.

Its a lot smaller... but seems fairly user friendly other than the minature sink. I'm not exaggerating - the sink not as big around as a piece of paper. Washing the cookie pan has been a challenge to say the least. Just wait til the real baking begins, I may have to follow up on that suggestion from a friend to wash stuff in the shower, it might be quicker and with less water spilled/wasted.

It's nowhere as big as the last kitchen - but for now this will work just fine. At least one corner of the place has gotten organized. The rest... will be done someday, hopefully soon.

I have a new home!!

I have found an apartment and will be moving next week to the new place. Anyone up for moving a few boxes??

UPDATE

I am ever so thankful to Marc, Eddie, Jp, Sue & Rob Rowell, Wally, Debbie, Lydia, Johanna, Rich, & Richie for all the help moving things out of the farmhouse, moving the piano to Lydia's and moving things into the studio apartment. I could not have done this without the help of my friends.

There's no place like home...

Well it looks like I'm going to be moving again. The folks who own the house I'm living in at the moment have decided they would like to close the house up for the winter, so I have a month left to find a place for me & my stuff. I'm hoping to stay in Waterbury, but if not I'm looking to find something between Waterbury and Berlin, which is where i work. Hopefully I'll find something reasonably priced in that area soon.