Merry Christmas To Me

As the holiday season has arrived I have been very excited about the festivities and the invitaion I would have to enjoy the company of my family and friends. . . well I WAS excited anyway. I currently work for company A (I do not wish to expose the name in case of offending anyone) and was excited to receive an invitation via email inviting me to the "family Christmas party." Upon calling to RSVP I was rudely rejected by a superior informing me that "student" secretaries were not invited. I have since tried to rid my brain of the embarrassment and disappointment I felt during that conversation, but I have been reminded everyday for the past three weeks of the joyous celebration that I was not able to take a part. Daily I was commanded to cut wrapping paper, assemble ornaments, fluff mini trees, water centerpieces and count numbers attending. My holiday spirits were deflated in a hurry and Christmas didn't seem like it would be the jubilant celebration I had been counting on. Finally the Christmas party came and went and I felt better that I would no longer have to endure such hardships at my workplace. The day after the party however I was given the golden opportunity to clean the banquet room in which the party took place. I loaded 4 large vehicles with left over Christmas gifts (there had to have been at least 300) and then was able to carry them up three flights of stairs only to be sent home giftless. My only word for this. . . OUTRAGE!!!

The Place In Which We Live

So we have been placed as the managers of our 5-plex. A prestigious position no? When we moved in we were dazzled by all of the incentives that we were offered just for being the "managers" of our small kingdom. We moved in from our last debacle of a dwelling into as Jen so eloquently put "greener pastures" only to have those incentives ripped out from under us. In a phone call to our landlord voicing our displeasure at these wrongdoings we were reminded that we were given exclusive access to the only washer and dryer in the house. That was nice of them as we had bought the washer and dryer from the previous tenants. So to take a moment to describe these lush pastures; the walls are paper thin which allows us to hear not only that the neighbors are conversing but what they are conversing about. Which brings us to our upstairs neighbors. They are the Bucks. Having just been recently married you can only imagine the sounds we hear from their neck of the woods. Lets just say they really like each other. When hearing people in a romantic situation like this (and having no choice but to fight the mental images) one would like to imagine a body builder and his supermodel wife. One day we met them. Ever seen revenge of the nerds? Enough said. We call them the Buck Nakeds. We aren't sure that the people living below us are in this country legally. There are 6 of them fresh off the boat, or raft, or tube, or however they got here. 2 parents and 4 children. The mom just had the furriest baby we've ever seen. Cute in an ewok kind of way. The children used to run around the house and play right outside our bedroom window until 3 in the morning. That stopped abruptly when we got frustrated and went outside to threaten them with deportation. They have since left us for a bigger apartment leaving the one they so recently inhabited looking like a 7-11 restroom. This brings us to the people just through the wall. To summarize them... they're crazy. Jim is almost 50 with tattoos up and down his body with the mouth of a sailor who claims that he is an ex-authority 70. We believe him. His wife Helen smokes like a chimney but not on the premises anymore thanks to Jen and her No Tobacco Tolerance policy. They asked one day if they could use our washer and dryer and after a mental flash of their "Caucasian refuse" clothes all over our tiny laundry room and not ever being able to use our own facilities (not to mention the fact that we don't trust them at all) Jen politely said "heck" no and sent them on their way. They aren't very fond of Jen. Our landlord recently gave our phone numbers out to people who might be interested in the Mexicans vacant apartment. We love having nobody living below us (and the fact that our crooked landlord is getting no money from it) so we tell them in the nicest way possible about the neighbors. That apartment is still vacant. Maybe we'll end up liking this manager position after all.

Moving Already?

Joseph and I have been happily married for two months and fourteen days. These blissful days have been spent in our first apartment ever, which we love, but will be leaving soon for greener pastures. After a horrible dispute with our landlords over an oven and an extra refrigerator, which was so kindly stored in the middle of our living room for over a week, we have decided to move to a place that "treats us like paying tenants," as Joseph so kindly has reminded them time and time again. Just to give you a glimpse of our oven war. . . . after waiting for two months for a maintenance man to come by and take a look at our oven, which he pointed out was made in 1981 and which he said should definitely be replaced, we finally went to our landlord's office to complain that no attention had been paid to us in the least bit. We were nice and tried to explain to them the condition of our apartment when we moved in (moldy fridge, not vacuumed, not dusted, moldy shower). For days they said they would come down and take a look at things . . . and one day they did. They replaced our oven with one from 1982 (in worse condition) and they placed a "new" fridge in our living room and left the old one, which we had no idea needed to be replaced. Despite our complaints that the oven that now sat in our kitchen was causing the smoke alarm to go off every time we used it and the fact that only one burner sat semi flat, the maintenance did nothing. And so there we sat for a week and a half with an oven that caused the sky to scream and an extra fridge in our already small living room. The landlords seemed too poor to install anything nicer, despite that fact that they just bought a bunch of new property, and built a new office, fully equipped with leather chairs and decorative mirrors. Suddenly they became unreachable, not showing up during office hours, not answering the phone. Frustration took over our lives. But the best part is that they wanted us to sign a new contract for a year and continue living in neglect in their "poor college student housing." And there you have it, we have found a place closer to BYU, the owners are fantastic and we will be rid of Harman Properties for the remainder of our days on this earth. And so a warning to those of you who read this . . . . Steer clear of Harman Properties in Utah County, they are "dirty dogs," who are after money and nothing else.

Slug Invasion

So this is going to sound ridiculous, but it will give you a glimpse of what us Watson's do when we are at home. I was walking through my kitchen late the other night and what do I see lurking across the floor, but a tiny little slug. Gross!! Quickly I scooped up the slug with a tissue and plopped the slug into the toilet thinking I was going to drown it. To my surprise the slug preceded to crawl up the toilet bowl. I called Joseph down and we watched as the slug slowly made it's way up and out of the water. It was at this point that we knew we had to take serious action. We grabbed the salt shaker and viciously frosted the slug. The slug fell back into the water as it foamed to a gruesome death. . . and we flushed the toilet. Problem solved. . . but here is my question: How did a slug get into my house?