It’s 1am and I’m up. Again. I can’t sleep. This has been going on since about mid-week last week 🙁 At first I couldn’t sleep at all, but the last two nights it got a little better – I still had bitch of a time falling asleep, but once I did – after getting up a couple of times and after rolling around for hours – I slept okay …ish.
It’s 3.30am and I just got inside. The carbage can shelter located in the corner of our parking lot burned down completely. No human losses, but one car was completely destroyed and several suffered heat damages. Including mine.
I was sleeping with my window open, and through the sleep heard noise I thought was rain and smelled smoke. Thought there were people smoking near by – but then started to wonder why they took so long to finish and finally woke up completely. I thought the rain sounded weird and there was also the smell of smoke, not very strong but still – I pulled something on and went out to my small back yard to check. It wasn’t raining so I went towards the parking lot, thinking maybe some kids or drunks were playing with fire there, until I could see around the corner of the building and there was the shelter, completely on fire. Nobody was in sight and I had no idea if it had been called in. So I ran right back in get my cell phone (it was recharging) and called 112 (our 911). Somebody had already called it in and the fire brigade and the police were on their way.
I got some more clothes on (I had only put on a short sleeved shirt and trousers, with bare feet in sandals) and went back out, this time from my front door. Now there were other people gathering there too, watching. My car was only two empty car slots away from the burning building and there was nothing between it and the fire. But it wasn’t on fire. I saw that the car closest to the shelter, only centimeters away from one of the shelter walls, was completely on fire.
I wondered about driving my car away from its slot, along with some other people whose cars were in the other row but a little further away from the fire than mine. In the end none of us dared to. The two slots that were empty usually aren’t, and I think the owners were away from home with their cars because I didn’t see them or their cars anywhere. That’s incredibly lucky, because the first slot is also centimeters away from the wall (you can’t get it from that side because no grown up can fit in between the car and the wall, that’s how small it is on both sides) and if the car had been there, it’d have completely burned down too just like the other car on the other side. And the car in the second slot would have been damaged too.
It took maybe five minutes for the fire brigade to arrive, but it felt like forever. When they did, they got it under control fast, I thought. The walls were still standing, the roof was gone I think, and they pulled down the whole structure I guess for safety reasons. There’s now a pile of wet burned wood where the shelter used to be.
Apparently the fire spread to the whole structure quickly. One girl had come home from work about 10 minutes before, and there were no signs of fire at the time.
I texted the pertinen information to my Mom before I wrote this up; didn’t want to her learn about it in the news in the morning or anything like that and to tell that I’m okay.
Two of my machines broke down this week: first on Sunday, the pipe thingy that brings water into the washing machine and the television on Tuesday 🙁
Mom’s boyfriend was able to fix the pipe, although he had to hunt down a couple of extra parts because one of the parts that came with the new pipe didn’t fit with the faucet. The washing machine is almost 25 years old, and this is the first thing that needed fixing. Still works great, despite being so old *knocks on wood*
Then something broke in the television – there’s no picture, just a black screen and a narrow light/color line about in the middle of the screen. The audio works normally.
The television is also old, 15 years going on 16. If it can’t be fixed, I won’t have the money to buy a new one until I get a job that lasts for more than a month or two. I don’t even want to think about what to do about the television at the moment – whether to try and have it fixed or not. I also can’t get it fixed if that costs too. And I’m not even sure it’s not waste of money to get it fixed now (assuming that whatever it is that’s broken and that fixing would cost what ‘m prepared to pay to fix it)… it’s been repaired once before already and maybe having one or other thing brake soon there after. It’s starting to be that old. Might be better in the long run just write it off now, and buy a good new television the next time I have money enough to big purchases. I can’t ask Mom to buy me one as a birthday or Christmas present, considering how much she’s already helping me with my meds. And even if I could, these new LCD or whatever televisions are so different from this old generation that I’m familiar with, that I’d have to research them anyway for a couple of months just to learn what’s good and what’s not, and whether they all support full HD already (a couple of years back, I know they didn’t even though they were advertised as HD ready) because that’s going to be coming along here apparently around 2015 or so if I remember right. So for now, I think it might best to get a USB tv stick for my computer (I can get one for about 20 euros), and then take my time learning about these new fangled televisions and what’s the evolution of them is going to be in the next few years. So that I don’t buy a tv that is inadequate in couple of years when HD broadcasts start.
Hmm. Food for though. Once thing’s f0r sure – absolutely not gonna do anything about until autumn. Too hot to learn that stuff now!
I just worry that all my house hold appliances start to break down now – the washing machine is the oldest, the television the second oldest. All the others were bought when I moved here and that was 13 years ago. They don’t build them to last anymore and the next ones I have to buy; I’ll be lucky if they’ll last 5 years 🙁 I’ve lost count how many of my friends have had to replace machines when they break down about five years after purchase. It seems like they make them to last only until the warranty expires, and then within a year from that, they break down. Just like my previous laptop. The machines should last longer than that! It’s uneconomic and unenviromental to have to replace machines every few years. You’re not supposed to buy a new one every few years (if you have money to do it, which I don’t)!
On the other hand, I’m the kind of person who thinks all machines should last for a long time, the bigger and more expensive it is, the longer. Instead they all, computers, cell phones, washing machines, fridges, they all seem to break down 3-4 after purchase these days. I don’t want to buy that, that’s wasting money. And also, IMO, what you buy, you should use it as long as it works well and fills your needs; you don’t buy a new one just because this one is already 2 years old and doesn’t have all the new toys!
The only things I can see logic buying a new one are computers every few years – and that only if you use programs that new versions can’t run well on a machine that’s a few years old. All but one of my computers I bought because of that. And the one I didn’t buy because of that, I bought because the previous one broke down 2,5 five years after purchase and fixing it would’ve been almost as costly as buying a new one, especially because it had been already repaired three times under warranty. I had planned to think about a new computer at the earliers, 5 years after purchase. But say like Mom and her boyfriend? They don’t use theirs every day, never use anything but internet for e-mail and Word occasionally. They don’t use it even every week. Usage like that? The computer should last for them for the rest of their lives. It’s 3,5 years old and it better not break.
Huh, this post became something of a rant. But I just hate the thought that the next washing machine or television or whatever I need to buy, is more likely to break down soon after the warranty expired than not :<
First off, I’m dealing better with the hot weather than I did the last three summers 😀 I guess it’s because the migraine situation is so much better now and all my energy isn’t going to withstanding it. It’s been about three weeks of hot weather now, and today is the first time I feel like I can’t deal with it… just last summer, it would’ve been the third day the latest. I still hate it, but so far I don’t seem to notice it as much as I used to. And today I notice I think because:
<rant>I’m tired – I slept only 2-3 hours last night because some neighbors of mine got up/got in at 4am and talk as loud as it had been in the middle of the day. They continued this until 7am :< I don’t get people like this: I can’t talk outside all my private stuff in voice that anyone who happens be within 50 meters hears every god damn word. Don’t they have need for privacy??????? And even if they don’t, how about being considerate? Just because it’s summer, don’t mean there ain’t people getting up early to go to work and who should be allowed to get their much needed sleep! Assholes.</end rant>
Maybe I should be grateful I’m unemployed? At least I don’t have to deal with the desire to go and strangle the assholes because they’re forcing me to go to work with whopping 3 hours of sleep.
In other news, watched the first episode of Torchwood’s season 4 today. I thought the US version was supposed to be a reboot/reimagining/whatever? But this continued where season 3 left off. Otherwise, I liked it. It was kind of weird though, Torchwood comprised of only two people. I’m happy though, to have another scifi series back on the telly. And heard Falling Skies got renewed and there’ll be season 2. Glad of that too, the shows been nothing special so far, but it’s scifi and and scifi not getting canceled (nearly) always makes me happy 🙂 I like it so much better than V (2009) when it comes to writing humans – it’s feels like it’s about all of us, even though there’s few characters focused on. This was my problem with V – the human side was supposed to be about all of us humanity, but failed spectacularly in that because they kept the focus too tightly on Erica 🙁 Falling Skies reminds me of the original V in that sense – these a few key characters, but feels like these characters are part of a community, and there are lives and stories that exist beyond the camera. I never got that feeling about the human side of V – it was all about the very few inviduals: Erica and her pals, although the subject matter required wider scope. So for that alone, Falling Skies feels more real (read: better) to me than the 2009 V ever did.
Mom had the surgeon’s check-up yesterday, and the wound has healed well. And the biopsies they took during the surgery, are all clean! 😀 And the surgeon said that the risk of the breast cancer renewing is low 😀 And she also said that it’s there and there whether Mom needs to have radiation treatment or not – we don’t know yet; Mom has a an appointment with the oncologist who decides what treatments she needs a week from Monday.
This is about as good a result as we hoped for 😀