It's weird. The owner pays a management company to deal with this.

So when I call the management company to make a repair, they call the owner, who says he will take care of it. The owner doesn't take care of it, and the management company just says, "it's being taken care of by the owner."

And then the cycle begins again.

Our onsite manager doesn't do repairs. She calls the management company to report complaints, takes out the trash, and posts notices.

It's a chain of buck-passing.

Very nice, Allyson.

I think the key differencce between our landlords is that hers got helping of malice. Mine are just bureaucratic incompentents who eventually cower before the rage and do something. Hers are the incompetents plus spite, which is so much worse.

I can go without internet on a vacation, easily. Even if it's offered. but then, I'm the girl with no cell phone. (Dude, even my MOM has a cell now. Dad got it for her trip to B'ham because those crazy kids don't have a landline.)

San Pedro Town, Belize:

You'll walk, rent a golf cart, taxi, or bicycle mostly to get around. There are only ten streets, and NO pavement! Most people go barefoot or sandals, everywhere. You can swim in the warm clear Caribbean Sea, protected by the reef. The color is beyond description. Many people just stare at it for hours. The water is really warm, averaging about 82 degrees year round.

Isla Bonita indeed.

Go Allyson!

I also filed a complaint with the Los Angeles Housing Department Code Enforcement peeps.

I have a case number and everything!

I better go home and clean in case official people come to visit.

For ita: Comic Book Martial Arts Ads

The below images are ads for martial arts courses that appeared in comic books of the late 50s through the early 80s. The ads were usually over the top in their promises to teach you how to smash bricks with your head, turn invisible, fight 12 attackers at one time, and kill a man with your pinky finger. Even including bodybuilding courses, hypno coins, and fake vomit in the equation, there was something especially strange about selling martial arts training through comic book ads. Unlike all those other products, it was unlikely anyone could get hurt or killed by mucking about with a sea monkey. Yet, in truth, all you really got for your 99 cents was a small pamphlet providing ass-backwards instruction in a few techniques, or, more often, a "taster" for the larger course. It's safe to say no one became a martial arts master through a comic book ad.

From one of the ads:

Turn your hands into "explosive" defense mechanism!

You can lick your weight in tigers as a skilled FEARLESS MASTER OF ORIENTAL FIGHTING ARTS

There's a coworker here who always makes me feel like doing a double-take, for no particular reason I could fathom. And I just now realized it's because she looks exactly like Kat.

We followed up the viewing of Ratatouille with food at Popeye's Fried Chicken & Biscuits, because when my short-cut to the movie theatre turned into a long-cut, we passed one in Kenmore Square that had to have opened like really recently. Cajun counts as French cooking, right?

Isla Bonita indeed.

That very island was featured on Samantha Brown's Passport to Latin America this week (the Belize episode). Looked like a lovely place to get away from it all. But not an inspiration for a Madonna song.

Go, Allyson!

Jesse, I have a package to send. Can you please swing by and take it to the post office since you are already going?

Yeah, no.

So, I'm kind of glad I went to the post office, because it was market research paper towels, and that cracked me up.

Also, I went to McDonald's and was disappointed by under-salted fries.