Hallelujah! Well, almost.

Maintenance came through!

A gigantic man named Chris just knocked at my door in response to my complaint that my garbage disposal didn’t work. He made a small fuss over Ochi, thus winning major points with me, and knelt down on the kitchen floor to explore the disposal. “Hmmm,” he said. All repairmen say “Hmmm.” I think it’s an invocation of the gods of mechanical things. “We never plugged this thing in. Let me go down to the shop and see whether we have the cable I need.” And they did. And I can now grind up coffee grounds.

And as Chris left, I asked him when Emerson would come by to get my internet hooked up. And 20 minutes later, Emerson came by. I still don’t have internet – something is peculiar about the wiring to my room – but I have a working TV and DVD player and even VCR, which I didn’t have in the condo (never got around to hooking it up), and Emerson promised to check with his boss to find out why he can’t get me internet. He will call me in the morning with a progress report. And it turns out I won’t have to pay Comcast for internet access any more. Terwilliger Plaza has tnet, which substitutes for it. And soon everything will be at my fingertips just like at RiverPlace, and I will be happy.

It is a relief to find that I am in the hands of friendly workmen who know when to say they don’t know something and explain what they intend to do about it. And I can soon schedule my free hour of maintenance to get my TV and my pictures hung on my walls. And I’ve actually done a load of laundry in the laundry room half a hall north. Thank you, God, I’m almost here.