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2007-05-09 - 9:21 a.m.

...truly missing the forest for the trees...

This entry is cross-posted here.

***

While K, Bandy, and I were off at Whistler, we asked our landlady to watch our cats for us. (We didn't think that this was an unreasonable request given that K has logged many hours as their IT consultant, installing their wireless router, and setting up their new computer for them...) And our landlady was very gracious about doing it. She even hired someone for the day that none of us would be in the house, which we both thought was very kind. And then when we returned, we fed their big black monster.

I've probably explained before that their cat Roderick is actually the size of a small elephant. He's older, rather rotund, and a bully. Yet, cute, in a big fat bully kind of way. We like Roderick, although he's clearly a cat snack junkie, and our landlady supports the habit.

Now that she's watched our cats, we understand a little better. Our cats didn't eat for almost two days after we returned. Not hungry. Their bowls were packed full of dry food, and there were Devil's Mountain mounds of wet food (remember Close Encounters of the Third Kind??) in each bowl. ick.

But even funnier than that. I've told the story of our broken toilet here before. Finally K just taped a note up in the bathroom, over the toilet, with the notice "THE TOILET IS BROKEN" and instructions on what to do when it doesn't work. We intentionally put up the sign before inviting our landlords up. K stuck it up with scotch tape on the painted white wood. And yes, the note removed a wee tiny bit of paint from the freshly painted wood. Eh, an easy touch-up for when we move out.

When we returned from our vacation, our landlady had removed the sign, touched up the paint on the wood, and then moved the sign up on the wallpaper, changing the tape from scotch tape to masking tape (so as not to damage the wall, I presume).

This little bit of missing paint clearly drove our landlady NUTS. In fact, now I imagine that she had been downstairs lying awake worrying about it.

Now I ask you. When you are a landlady and you see a sign that says, "The toilet is broken" in your tenant's house...would your first instinct be to (a) touch up the paint and move the sign to a prettier place, or
(b) to FIX THE TOILET??

Anyway, the end result is that K and I had a big laugh over the toilet sign episode. Still, if we had our druthers (what a strange word), we'd be installing new toilet technology. There are some places where "heritage" is highly overrated....

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