Monday, January 17, 2011--Run That One by Me Again

Judy, John--here's one I'm serving up right in your wheelhouse.

OK, so we return from our long jaunt down to the tower and back, during which we are twice hit with the lost ring scam, and Mary says we need to rest up from all the walking.  An hour or so later the doorbell rings--we have never heard the doorbell, but I assume it's ours.  I open our apartment door and then the second security door (we have to traverse 2 doors to get in and out) to find a short guy in blue overalls and a jaunty blue cap who burbles something fast and incomprehensible (is this yet another version of the lost ring scam?).  He wants in to the adjoining apartment, but no one is there.  I close the door, when again he rings.  Again more incomprehensible French, and he enters our apartment with what appears to be a very small--tres petite--caulking gun, and gestures that he needs to use it.

OK, carry on I gesture (we're now well beyond words, but who needs them when we have such intimacy).  He opens the door under the sink and makes what appears to be two squirts, another under the cook-top fan, and then another in the bathroom.  Before leaving, he insists I print and sign a rather official looking work-order (for which he provides no copy).

Smelling something fishy, I call my landlord, who sounds utterly out of breath and very distressed.  I am not to allow anyone in the apartment except a fireman or policeman, he insists.  He is clearly fatigued and distressed and upset with me.  That conversation is, to put it simply, circular and adds nothing to the condition of clarity.

I am just about to send him an email with evidentiary photos, when he calls and tells me not to worry.  He was jogging when I first called.  This is the insect exterminator contracted by the building association there to save us from cockroaches or beetles, that we both agree simply do not exist anywhere in the apartment.

I now include the evidence of this thorough, and doubtless effective, extermination.  Look especially for tiny daubs of goo above the  hinges.

kitchen hinge

kitchen cabinet (what appears to be residue of a generous sneeze)

corner of fan

bathroom hinge