OK, so I flipped out, but

[ghostjmf]

Evil housemate finally moved out, leaving an horrific mess. And a debt you don't even want to hear about that I'll never collect. I'm too old & tired to have this experience, & wonder why people who own rental property ever even rent it without having the renter's balls, or equivalent thereof, in arrears. I'd say "1st-born", but lots of these types of people wouldn't care. To be fair, this one may have only cared about those 2 types of collateral, but it couldn't be managed.


At any rate, a few days before the move, I came home to find my broiler pan out of the oven. This is par for the course for EH, who thinks they're a chef because they discovered broiling, but feel the pan puts their food too close to the flame. Or whatever. I go to put pan back in, & broiler tray pretty much takes a leap at me; EH had broken it in such a way that the broiler door won't open or close normally. I eventually take tray off its trolley (it took a long while to get it back on, later), so I can try to fix it. EH has all my nuts & bolts & is apparently planning to pack them up, or something. I beg/harrass them back to me.

I start to work on broken tray door, & notice the pilot light of broiler/oven is out. I'm pretty certain it was on when I started, but all that trying to work on tray without taking it out created a draft, or something, that put it out.

I've been lighting pilot lights all my life, but this one is different. Its one that stays constantly lit (supposedly) & the last time it went out there was actually something wrong with the part you light; we got a repair person to fix it. It is hard to light, & because its been about 9 years since I've tried, I really wasn't sure where I was supposed to be waving my arm with my short kitchen match, instead of those long stove-lighting matches.

Yeah, yeah, I could have made a taper. I actually had a long candle somewhere that could serve as one. I was already wheeling into flipout mode, or would have done that.

I called the gas company & got their robot.

This is the point where I flipped out.

I have the broiler tray out, it won't fit back in because its not fixed yet. I have a cat who loves to crawl into new small spaces, like the suddenly available broiler opening. If I wall up the opening (to keep out the cat), I'll be trapping all that unlit gas in there; not good.

It used to be that you call the gas company & the 1st thing the recording says is "for emergencies hit 1". Now it says "we're closed; call back during business hours." After giving you a chance to converse with the robot. I tried the # later, after the flip-out, & hitting "0" repeatedly does eventually give you a different recording which implies it might take emergencies seriously. Since it was only a test by that time, I didn't pursue it.


What I did during the flip-out was look up the "business" # for the police, not 911, because it wasn't a "real" emergency as yet, & hope that I didn't get that by-now-familiar "we are not open; talk to our robot" message. I didn't, I got a human, who when I explained the "not yet quite emergency" got me another human, who got me the fire department, not the gas company. Apparently, the police don't have an in with NStar either. Fire dept said they would be over pronto. I said "there's no fire; I just need someone who could prevent a small explosion, if there's going to be one, to light the broiler pilot".

Of course a fire engine with 3 firemen pulls up, & they ring every bell in the building because it seems mine is broken, even though I had told the nice person on the phone mine might be broken & gave them my phone #.

Needless to say, one of the firemen had no trouble with my weirdly built pilot light, while another remarked that "there's not much gas yet". "No, there isn't; I called you right when it went out" I agreed. "I wanted to avoid an explosion". "Oh, I've been in an explosion!" said nice fireman.

(So have I, when a housemate in a former apt lit the very easy pilot in that stove by dropping matches down a little hole in the oven instead of touching the match to the broiler ring, which was the way you lit that broiler, because they had seen someone do the little-hole-match-drop on some other stove once & thought it looked cute, or something. They didn't look so cute with their eyebrows singed off. I only hope nice fireman was referring to that kind of explosion, & not a bigger, worse kind.)

I hope I don't get a big bill from the city for wasting their time, or something.


However, now I wonder why in plumbing emergencies, which usually involve water instead of fire (but I had one that almost involved fire once, after the broken pipe to the furnace ran the tank that was supposed to heat up out of water) we are conditioned to call the plumber & patiently wait.

Firemen aren't going to fix your plumbing (or your stove, if its really broken) for you, but I'd bet they sure know how to turn the gas mains, water mains etc, if you can't get to them, off.

[kayrharris]

Yay for the fireman. I bet Natalie's fiance' has stories like this. She says he can fix just about anything.

I'm glad for no explosion or migraine from the smell of gas.

[cindy.wellman]

Three nice firemen trump an EH. Sucks that you can't get the $$ back from the EH, but maybe the stress of not having EH around will allow for some peace around the house. Will you be looking for a new housemate?

You have me wondering about our gas stove now. When we bought the house, an electric stove was part of the sale. I'm not too picky about most things, but cooking with gas is something that I prefer. We've been at the mercy of the military for a while now, mainly living in military housing, so it was toss-up as to what type of stove you'd get. In Italy, there wasn't housing on base, so we lived on "the economy" Our stove had gas for the burners on top, but electric for the oven.

When we were buying the house, we didn't know if we would be living in Idaho for a long amount of time. To to be safe in case we were here for a while, I thought we should ask for a gas stove when we put in our offer on the house. We got the stove, and some rain gutters we asked for too! LOL I'm headed over now to look to see just where one would light the stove if one needed to light it!

[Bob Juch]

Take EH on "Judge Judy"!