Well, yesterday turned into quite the fiasco. Let me start at the beginning. While at my apartment on the first day of getting the keys, my Dad noticed that one of the light switches in the kitchen was covered over with a strip of packing tape. He asked the landlord why, and was told it was due to the motion lights on the corner of the deck. Turning off the switch apparently screws them up, so the tape was there to prevent accidental flipping of the switch. Well, I happen to have a night vision scope, which I use to check out the sky at night, and sometimes record what I see. Upon venturing out onto the deck that first night, the motion lights kicked on… BAM! It was like daylight out there! Well that’s a little too bright for my night vision scope, so I needed to figure something out. I asked the landlord if I could remove the tape and turn them off when needed, and he said sure. So I am not sure why the tape was there to begin with now, if turning them off is suddenly no problem, but I wasn’t going to complain. My Dad reminded me that they make a switch cover that arcs over the switch to prevent habitual flipping, but you CAN get your fingers in if necessary. Perfect, I thought! So, yesterday, I spent 3/4 of my lunch hour at Home Depot, looking for these covers.I finally found them, and there was a choice between beige and white. I had a 50-50 chance of being right, so I picked white. Well, now I know why I never win the lottery. Of course when I got home, the light switch is beige. So, I grudgingly returned to Home Depot in the evening, and swapped out the colors. To my surprise, it was very easy to install, so I should’ve expected something else to go wrong. well, night-time came, and I got all excited to flip off the switch. “Click”… nothing. The lights were still blaring away!! What the hell?! How could this be?? So, I located the fuse-box, and found a circuit breaker labeled “Lites” (sp). I thought “great, at least I can flip them off from here!”. Well, I flipped it, and not only did THOSE lights go off, but so did half of the lights inside the apartment! GRRR, all this Home Depot shopping for nothing. Apparently it is a dead switch, and the lights are hard wired. I now REALLY have no idea what purpose the tape served! It looks like I will have to resort to finding a piece of cardboard tall enough to stand up and block the light when I want to use my night vision. Oh well, at least the switch cover will make a good conversation piece! Hopefully TONIGHT will be my first full night of relaxing (I say for the third night in a row)… stay tuned!

For those of you who don’t know, when I was moving in, my parents realized that the heating element in my oven was broken. Me being the Doubting Thomas that I can be, decided to turn the oven on to verify for myself that it was not working. (but really, how could it, with that BIG separation right in the side section of the element!) I proceeded to turn on the oven, and waited for a good 5 to 7 minutes. Then I casually reached in and tapped the element to see if it was hot. It didn’t seem to be, so I grabbed it tightly between my finger and thumb. Well, SHOCKINGLY enough, they were right, it didn’t work! But apparently electricity still travels UP TO the broken area! That sure woke me up! Well, I informed my landlord, and almost a week has gone by. I was on the phone last night with Jeff, kind of bitching about how nothing had been done or mentioned to me, when suddenly our call got disconnected. Well, luckily it was, because as I was calling him back, there was a knock at my door. It was my landlord, holding a brand new heating element, with an electrician to install it! Roughly 5 minutes later, all was working great!Unfortunately, I was also testing out the central air at the time (which works great by the way), and was told “OK, now just leave the oven on for a good while to burn off any chemicals or sealants they use”. Oh well, it took a little longer to test the central air because of that, but I am happy to report that everything is working great now!