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2007-02-27 - 3:14 p.m. Warm and Moldy and Currently Reading After the fiasco last week of the boiler sending water up through the floor above and down through my living room and the hallway and my neighbor's apartment, aaah there's the smell of mold in the mornings in the front rooms! I've been spraying things down with hydrogen peroxide I discovered on the web that it kills mold. The thing is, it's inside the walls also, so it lingers. But the heat works. Now the new thing is, we have no hot water - the thermostat broke, so the boiler only heats the tank for the radiators for twenty minutes...you have to listen for the steam to run the tub really really fast in that small window of opportunity, whether you're ready to take a bath or not. And the Victorian flush toilet doesn't work right now, unless I feel like spending a day taking the mechanism apart, which I will have to do soon enough. Right now to flush you have to dump a pail of water into the commode. Oh yeah, a radiator valve broke and spewed hot steam up my bedroom wall to the ceiling, sending down a rainfall of white lead paint chips in that room. Doesn't it seem like a wonderfully relaxing home to visit? Dan from upstairs and Margaret the old german lady down the block were showing an apartment in the building next door to Elaine's (famous restaurant to the stars on 2nd Ave.) so I had to go see. It was one small room, one radiator, two windows looking into the tenament yards, a kitchen you could barely walk into and turn around to leave (if you held your arms out you touched one wall and an old stove) and a bathroom Dan confided that poured water from each tenants tub down to the apt below whenever you ran the bath or shower, because the tubs had all been installed incorrectly. It was $1,500 a month, a 4th floor walk-up, which means 8 flights of stairs every time you drag yourself home at night. And there were all these couples interested! I couldn't imagine one person living in there alone for long before wanting to scream. Currently reading: Florence, The Days of the Flood by Franco Nencimi Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates Ideas of Heaven, short stories by Joan Silber The Complete Guide to Altered Imagery, Mixed Media Techniques for Collage, Altered Books, Artist's Journals, and more and How Stella Got Her Groove Back by Terry McMillan.