Mens sana in springtimetangential

March 31, 2007

My new bicycle has arrived. I am going out to ride it. Think all caps and several exclamation points.

At the same time, bad news. Alas, my poor neighbor, the one with the dog ...

Yesterday, to the tune of $6000, she had her heat pump replaced. At 3:30 in the morning I heard the dog barking loudly for what seemed like a half hour. "What on earth is going on," I said to myself. "It must be something." As it turned out, it was. At half past seven the telephone rang. It was not my sister. It was Karen. Karen is emphatically not a morning person. "Did you hear Finley barking early this morning?" she asked. "Yes," I said....

She had woken up feeling what seemed like raindrops on her face. Water was streaming through the ceiling (from the new heat pump) around the ceiling fan (which was on) and onto her bed. She got up and stumbled into the hallway to turn off both the fan and the heater. The fan then fell onto her bed, followed by the ceiling. Water continued to pour (as it had been for several hours) into her unit and the unit below, soaking the carpet of the basement of the unit below. The fellows who had installed the heat pump the day before —taking from 8 in the morning until nearly 6 in the evening to do so— had failed to test it properly after installation. They checked the air conditioner, but not the heater. Had they checked the heater, they would have seen that they had installed a faulty valve. By the time dawn came, the emergency units had arrived and pumps were installed and pumping madly, drains leading through the hallway and out across the yard, down the outside steps, and into the street. And so on ....