So many things have gone wrong recently, it's difficult to make an accurate summary of them. I've had a couple of really good days in there, though, so I haven't totally lost my mind. Although it's come close on a few days.

The day after Thanksgiving, while our upstairs neighbors were out of town, it got down into the 40's. On previous chilly days - of which there have not been many - our upstairs neighbors have been kind enough to be baking their apartment to death, so we've not had to bother to heat ours. So, of course, with them out of town, we turned on the heat.

Nada.

Zip.

Zilch.

Inside twenty minutes - the heater for whatever reason draws outside air to heat - the apartment was colder than it had been before I'd turned on the heat. We called maintenance and turned the "heat" off. (After scrambling to make sure the gas bill was paid and all, which it was, but maintenance asked us to check) With three computers in the living room, it didn't really get too cold in here, although it was a little uncomfortable.

Now, technically, we have gas heat - but apparently we don't actually have a furnace. Air passes over the coils that also heat the hot water and... blah blah blah. In any case, in order to work on the "heater" they had to shut the water off for a while. (This will be important shortly)

We weren't actually here when they fixed the heater - we'd gone up to my Mother-in-Law's place. When we came home, they'd fixed the "heater" but also left some space heaters just in case... I'm mildly confused about this, but okay...

That night, we notice that something is wrong with the sink in the bathroom. The water coming out of the tap was coming out in two streams, at high pressure and at opposite angles to each other. However, it wasn't considered, by any stretch, to be a high priority issue, so it took a while for maintenance to come back and fix it.

In the meanwhile, Kevin and I've been going about our normal routine, including brushing our teeth in the bathroom. The water-stream was difficult to use, but not impossible, especially for something as low-water-necessary as brushing one's teeth.

Maintenance dropped by yesterday to fix the sink.

Ug.

Turns out when they closed the water off to fix the "heater" an insect crawled into our pipes. When the water was turned back on, said insect met an untimely end being first drowned, then squashed against the filter at the end of the tap.

Kevin's sum up?

"We've been brushing our teeth in Eau de Insecte all week? Gross."