Rachel's Got a New Job & Our Ceiling is Leaking!

We have had a wet March around here. And I don't just mean the random snow and then rain and back to snow every few days. Our downstairs bathroom has been leaking a lot as of late. In the past week & a half we have collected almost 9 1/2 quarts of water--I haven't emptied the bucket because I plan on showing our manager and the maintenance worker. Luckily, we do have a great apartment manager who has been helping us out with this. She quickly got the roofers here to get an estimate, e-mailed the bids to her supervisor and now we're just waiting for the contractors to give us a time and date--and have the weather be steadily nice, for once! There are a few leaks, and sometimes near the bottom of the surrounding walls will leak. It could be worse, like when we had the apartment kind of flood about a year & a half ago. It is mostly just inconvenient and frustrating. The manager still has to get it approved, but she said we most likely won't have to pay rent this month, as a way to help us out.

But now for the exciting news: I got a new job! It's at a local, small law firm downtown. And I'll be working 9 - 5, Monday - Friday, with a good starting pay rate & promises for raises once my probationary period ends. Zak sent me the ad he saw on craigslist about a week ago, so I wrote up a cover letter (the ladies said it was the best one they had read for the job!) and sent off my resume. About a day or two later, I got an e-mail back asking for a good time to schedule an interview. On Monday I had my first interview, with the gals who held the position previously. It went really well, we had a good back & forth and it felt very natural. I convinced them I could definitely get the job done and be a great fit for the office. An hour after the interview, they called to set up an interview for Tuesday.

When I got there, the two ladies in charge were still interviewing the only other person for the job. So I sat and chatted with the girl I met the previous day for a bit. When I was called in, I knew I had a good chance of getting the job, they responded really well to my humor, personality and there was very comfortable feeling in the room. We mostly just chatted, they told me I got a glowing report from the other ladies and complimented my cover letter and resume. And told me they thought I'd be a great fit for the office, and how important it is to have personalities that work well in such a small office. So we talked for about 30 minutes and then they asked when I could start! I told them I'd talk to my current manager and then call them back. I could not stop smiling as I drove to the mall to tell Zak. And then I recapped everything that happened. I walked down to Smoky Mountain and told my manager that I got a new job and asked what the procedure was for leaving--I just had to fill out a form that said when my last day would be. He's hiring some new servers and wanted me to help train them this weekend, so I will work this weekend but that's it. I am starting my new job on Monday!

We are so excited. It's pretty much a perfect fit for me. It's a small, quiet office and I actually like office work. I'm only a little bit nervous that I won't live up to the expectations, but Zak has reassured me I will because I am awesome. So now we will be doubling our income, so I can justify buying some new work clothes!

On not-as-exciting-but-still-good-news, Zak is on the reserve list for fire crew. We're not exactly sure how big the list is or how big a possibility of him getting on the crew is, but he'll find out soon. I'm pretty sure training starts in May, so we have about a month to find out, I think. It was a pretty big blow to find that out, especially since Zak did everything in his power to make a good impression and talk to the guy in charge. But it's almost certain that they picked the guys with experience first. So that's been hard to let sink in. But it's not a definite no, Zak still has a chance. He's trying to get some other things in motion, back-up plans and the like. Hopefully he'll be able to find something that will be related to his field.

We've started to look at other apartments. It's not solely because of the recent leak problems, but we feel it might be time to move. We've lived here for 2 years and while we have liked it, we feel like we should let someone else who needs the nice, government-subsidized place have it. My biggest priority is having a washer & dryer, I've gotten really frustrated with the laundry facility here. There are a few places that we would like to move into, so we are putting out feelers for them. We have to give our apartment manager a month's notice, so we are trying to figure something out soon and hopefully move mid-May. At least we have a truck now, so it'll make things easier!

So, a mixture of good and bad news for us. School is still going well for Zak, he is doing great in his classes and all that jazz. I've been good about working out 3 - 4 times a week and eating better. I'm almost to the point where the next size down in clothes will be comfortable and not as tight. So close! And I've gotten a lot tanner, so hopefully by the time I head to California, I'll be brown Rachel again! That's all I have for now, I'll try to write a new post soon--about my first week of work and whatever happens with the roof.

Another video

Here's a video of the water rushing out to the street

A few days later some guys came out to take out the pads under the carpet, leaving the room looking like this:
We had to move everything to the other half of the room / our bedroom and leave it there for a few days. It was . . not my favorite. But they came back and put new pads under the carpet, so now everything is happy and joyous. And thus ends our Halloween adventure.

Yay, our first major maintenance problem!

AUGH.  This morning I woke up around 4 or 5 to use the restroom, came back to bed and right as I was falling asleep, I heard just loud DROP DROP DROP DROP DROPDROPDROPDROPDROPDROP.  I couldn't figure out what was causing that noise, because it was louder than just hearing rain against the window.  So I sleepily got out of bed and turned on some lights, and lo and behold, the door frame in the second bedroom was dripping water.  I didn't know what else to do, so I grabbed some towels to put on the floor and tried to go back to sleep.  Granted, I was mostly asleep, so I didn't think to tell Zak, and besides, it was like 5 AM, what could he have done?

Well, Zak woke up around 8, and I mumbled to him that the door frame had been dripping.  He got up to look and I could tell from his tone that something was wrong.  The towels I had put down were soaked all the way through, and water was starting to gather in the carpets.  It looked like the water was dripping down the wall in our linen closet and quickly dispersed.  Zak quickly got into action and moved stuff away from the walls.  But then we came downstairs...

Half of the tile in the kitchen was covered in water, about a centimeter deep.  Just a big, glistening lake in the middle of the floor.  It was a bit overwhelming because I was thinking, 'HOW are we going to clean this up?'  Thankfully, nothing was damaged (his computer was on the half of the table not covered in water), but we moved everything away and placed some buckets and pitchers down to collect the water falling off of the light fixtures.  I used our remaining two paper towel rolls and placed them down on the floor while Zak called our landlord.  She said she would send over the maintenance guy soon.

What a lovely morning, n'est-ce pas?  Needless to say, we are pretty on edge and are dreading the cleanup, especially upstairs.  Here are some pictures and I'll update* if anything else happens.  Happy Halloween, everyone!

 upstairs bedroom

before & after paper towels

at least we have a lot of things to collect water falling from the ceiling in?

*UPDATE:  The maintenance guy just drained a LOT of water from off/on/in the roof.  I recorded some video of it, because the noise was so loud and it went on for a good 10 minutes.  Also, the stream of water was impressive.  I said to Zak, 'You never think of water being so destructive, until you see SO MUCH OF IT at one time.'  We then used the wet-dry vacuum (16 gallon capacity), and Zak filled about a third of it up.  The cleaning crew came and got out about 90% of the water.  He said our place happened to get most of the water, a few other tenants got some as well, but we were the majority share holder.  They left a big black fan that's blowing on the carpets, and hooked up our box fan as well.  They will be back tomorrow, and maybe a few days after that.  Here are some more pictures and the videos.

so much water

Zak got about 5 gallons out of the carpet

I know it's not much to look at, I took this one for the noise