Michael R. Barrick

What I hope is the final chapter in the festival of stupid over the windows played out today. After three years, adventures in arbitration, multiple arguments over the use of "or" in the English language with Scotsman,  and having my day off for my 40th birthday interrupted, the "work" was done on the windows today. Amusingly enough the contractor showed up without tools this time, clearly expecting to be chased off again. I decided after my birthday that I couldn't beat my head against this brick wall of stupid anymore and let him in. I even had the plants and furniture in the living room out of the way for him.

In the end, none of the windows have been sealed and this is what we have for "restrictors":

That's it. Chunks of chains held on with wood screws. Anyone care to take bets on how long those are staying on once the weather warms up again?

And on a related note regarding the requirement that the window openings be restricted to 4" because we are "too high up" - here is a picture of floors 26 through 29 of the brand-new 40-storey apartment block across the street...

Never forget - they turn up when you least expect it, not to mention where you least expect it!

I live here:


This is not what I expect to find the cat hissing at on the balcony, three floors above the street:

Image from freenatureimages.com

Seriously. First it is squirrels in Elaine's underwear drawer, now raccoons on the balcony. What's next? A black bear on the fire escape? Wolverines in the laundry room?

Once again the fire alarm went off, this time wresting me from the shower as I was getting ready for work. And once again a false alarm. This time it was painters in the lobby setting off the particle sensor while sanding. Even the only marginally compitent contractors doing the restorations after fire had the sense to cover the particle sensors when sanding and painting (unlike the plumbers who set the alarms off repeatedly while cutting, welding and soldering pipe).

Given that prior to my morning shower and my second cup of coffee civility requires a little extra effort, I didn't do a whole lot to hide my displeasure. I did, at least, avoid the use of explitives.

I've had the building I live in burn substantially three times now. That's not counting incidents like when a car caught fire in the underground parkade of a concrete building I used to live in, dumpster fires, minor kitchen accidents (inuding my own stove going up in flames à la "The Sims" once - that was fun - the previous tenant had spilled a great deal of grease into the space under the burners). In all three of the significant fires I somehow managed to come out with my things unscathed.

The first one was when I was still in high-school, living with my mother. In that one the fire was on the other side of the firewall from us in a different wing of the building. My mother, who has lived through things like V-bombs falling on her neighbourhood and tanks battles in the streets, was not ready to abandon the apartment unless the fire jumped the firewall. She sealed the door from the inside to keep the smoke out and we had esacpe ladders ready (we were only three stories up). When it was all over ours was the only apartment without smoke damage. The hallway had changed from white to black and it was quite odd walking through that every day to go to school. For several weeks we were the only people living in the building. That fire was caused by an old man smoking in bed and falling asleep. He died in the fire.

The second fire was in the artists' live-work warehouse conversion I lived in Gastown. Someone on the second floor forgot about a pot on the stove and went out. The contents of the pot caught fire, it somehow spread to the counters and cupboards, and the apartment was gutted. The buidling was concrete and had sprinklers so the fire did not get far, but the vile black smoke from the burning particle-board and plasic in the modern "fire retardant" cupboards filled the second floor and all the upper floors. And of course the water from the sprinkers, when they finally kicked in, flooded the apartment below. Only my apartment and the apartment beside mine on the first floor were spared both smoke and water damage because the building, prior to its conversion, had been a cold storage warehouse and the floors were ever so slightly sloped for the sake of melt-water drainage. We were at the high end of the first floor in the area that once housed the administration offices.

The third fire was just over three years ago in the building I'm still living in. The fire itself did not spread much beyond source apartment and the hall beyond, but like the previous one, smoke and water damaged almost every apartment in the building. The entire fourth floor and all the apartments immediately below the one that burned were rendedered completely unlivable. kitsune_13 and langsuir were the only ones on the fourth floor to get their pets out alive, all the others died either directly from the fire or from the smoke. It was weeks before anyone was allowed back in at all. And like the previous one, I was spared damage by a quirk of architecture causing the water to flow around my apartment rather than into it. I don't really know how I was spared smoke damage when, even though the fire was on the fourth and uppermost floor, even the basement suites were smoke-damaged. Only my apartment and the one immediately below it were suitable for immediate reoccupation once power was restored to the building, and even at that the one below me did have some very minor water damage in the bathroom. Like the first fire, for quite some I and the old lady downstairs were the only people living in the building.

When the fire alarm goes off, I take it seriously. Even though this is the 6th or 7th false alarm within the last two months, every one gets taken seriously. The cats get put in the carrier and taken outside every time (which is getting more difficult now because they now bolt for hiding places as soon as the bell goes off). My patience is at an end for these things. I love our old apartment, but if these false alarms don't stop, it's time to move.

So the arbitration hearing was today. It was basically a cake-walk. I had photos, sections of the building code, a cheat sheet with counter-points to all the arguments I was expecting. The owner wasn't there, I was just up against the super, who I like and who is sympathetic to our side. The arbitrator didn't make a decision on the spot. The official decision will be mailed to us sometime in the next month or so, but it was such an obvious victory that the super called this evening because the landlord suddenly wants to meet and see what we would prefer done, which is how it should have been done in the first place.

My criteria is simple, one window in each bedroom that can be opened wide enough to get the cat carrier through, should we have to exit via a window and lower the carrier by the rope I keep handy for that purpose. The rest of the windows they can put restricters on, just so long as they still open to some extent.

I don't know exactly what the super told the landlord, but it must have been something to the effect that he lost, and badly, because he is coming to meet me here tomorrow at lunch. Sorry kitsune_13, but I have to bail on lunch again.

In a related humorous note, the whole experience before and after the arbitration was pretty funny in a bizarre kind of way. The office and waiting room was like the office in Beetlejuice. The women behind the counter were were remarkably like Patti and Thelma from the Simpsons. There was an amusing "floor-show" by a couple of first rate Whalley crackers - he in cargo pants, Birkenstocks, a t-shirt with the logo of the longshoreman's union, and a baseball cap, she with giant white runners, slightly greyed formerly white nylon/plastic/whatever-the-hell-that-stuff-is track pants, a faded pink t-shirt, and a walker and back-brace (the back brace bizarrely adorned with two bits of dirty, formerly white fun-fur). In general their look was some kind of mutant synthesis of trailer-park metal meets budget raver. These two arrived at the same time as us, riding up in the same elevator. Thing is, our appointment was for 11:30, theirs, it turned out was for 11. When the burlier and surlier of the joyless clerks, who Elaine decided was a kindred spirit with Cerberus ("You need three barking heads to do that job"), informed the metal-ravers that they were too late and the arbitrator had decided against them then Birkenshoreman chose to use what passes for reason against the Cerbera.

"How long does an arbitration usually last?" he asked.

"About an hour," replied Cerbera.

Birkenshoreman the Metalloraver saw his chance to use cunning logic to save the day, "Well then, I have 40 minutes left to my hearing."

Cerbera was not to be duped, "No. Your hearing is over. The arbitrator decides when late is too late."

Birkenshoreman the Metalloraver and Fade-to-Grey I-Can't-Do-Laundry Woman and her fluffy back-brace of doom then left and returned several times, subsequently playing the, "but I phoned to say I would be late" card. To that Cerbera replied, "Yes, the arbitrator decides how late is too late. He waited for ten minutes and decided. You are too late. Your hearing is over." This was followed by Fade-to-Grey vowing to "chat up" Cerbera (apparently her trailer-park charms must be her secret super-power), at which point she played the sympathy card, "It's all my fault, he had to pick me up from the doctor's." Cerbera was not sympathetic. Fade-to-Grey came away with a number, 115. The counter was at 91. Someone informed them that it had taken more than an hour for the number to get from 80 to 90. Sometime later the mental math filtered through whatever living brain-cells Birkenshorman and Fade-to-Grey had left and they realised they would not make their 1:00 appointment (with whom I'm not sure, perhaps their crack dealer), Birkenshoreman made another attempt swaying Cerbera with his infallible logic, "But there is still half an hour left to our appointment." "No there isn't. It's over. The arbitrator decided."

I don't know how it ended, we got called in for the appointment we were on time for at that point. The were gone when we emerged about an hour later.

On the way out, presumably because I was wearing a tie and carrying photocopies of the Vancouver building code some woman in the elevated presumed I was a lawyer and started asking me for legal advice. She didn't speak English well at all. It took three attempts for me to get, "Excuse me. Are you a lawyer?" from "cyusmayuloya?"

Apparently she couldn't understand me very well either. "No, sorry. I'm not a lawyer. I'm just a tenant," didn't dissuade her in the least.

"Ihaetennanopay.Wahido? Henosainotingnopaywahido?"

Elaine rescued me, "You need to talk to the people on the fourth floor."

This amused me to no end. Law-school be damned. All you need is a tie and some photocopied by-laws.

Last night when we got home one of the pictures on the bedroom wall was mysteriously very crooked. At first we presumed a cat had ricocheted off it while bug-hunting or something. Then as I went to get a nightshirt out of the dresser could feel something inside the dresser. One of the drawers had been left partially open and it while it wouldn't be out of character for a cat to climb in and get behind the drawers, tharsis was behind me in the hall and I was pretty sure _jazz_ was still sitting on the balcony where I had last seen him. Not only that, but from the motion it didn't really feel as large as a cat.

I started opening drawers and lo! Out sprung a black squirrel! There was a squirrel hanging out in Elaine's underwear drawer (obviously some kind a relative of Foamy). The squirrel darted under the bed and tharsis immediately took up a strategic position by the bed, cutting off the squirrel's escape. Based on my surprised exclamation, "Uagh! There is a squirrel in here!" Elaine came and got in on the action. She took a position by the door with the laundry basket in hand, Tharsis maintained his vigil at the best exit point between the bed and the door, and I got on the bed to do a little reconnaissance.

I could see the squirrel behind the bed. I sent Tharsis in to flush him out and Elaine captured the squirrel under the laundry basket. At which point I tried to take pictures:



The flash really pissed off the squirrel. It was at that point we discovered the true meaning of squirrelly wrath. It started growling. I've never heard a squirrel make any noise before, let alone growl. It was like a raspy wheeze. This was one seriously angry squirrel.

In a variation on the spider-in-a-jar method of removing pests scaled up to squirrel proportions, we slipped a stretched canvas under the laundry basket and carried the vicious, wheezing squirrel to the balcony, where he was released unharmed into the trees.

tharsis gets extra bonus point for fearlessness in the face of squirrelly wrath and for pack-hunting with the humans. _jazz_ missed the whole thing.

Apparently they are not directly responsible for the crap job, so says the the guy who just called me. The shitty job was done by their guys, but working directly under the direction and payroll of the building owner. So just because the guy who did the crap painting job on my balcony was wearing a Barclay uniform doesn't mean he was working for Barclay at the time. So, basically the guys from Barclay are being contracted by the owner, are blatantly not giving a shit about the quality of work they are doing, ripping off the owner and making their regular employer look bad in the process. OK, kids, say it with me: "boondoggle."

They are removing the rest of the fire-escape today, as you can see here:





Which means that they will be starting to attach the new one soon. I was speaking to the super about it this morning and I am not at all enthusastic about this. They are going to have to rip holes in the plaster of the wall of the room where my computers live. This is going to mean a lot of dust, probably some power outages, and may necessitate moving my desk. If you have seen how my desk and how it is set up you'll know what a pain in the ass this will be. It's a large, old desk that I inherited from my father to which I have added a hutch. It sits on 10 cm high blocks to raise it to a level that is comfortable for me to work at so it isn't just a matter of sliding it over. Also making sliding it over an impossibility are all the cables for my gear, many of which don't have enough slack in them to move that far. Moving my desk a metre will mean several hours of disassembly, recabling, and reassembly - all to be repeated when I move it back. When I was freelancing I would have charged $90/hr for this kind of work. I should bill the people at fault for this.

And of course the fault here lies with the crappy "restoration" company (Barclay Restorations) and their apparent inability to plan, well, anything. They've known for a year that this needed to be done, and it could have been done a year ago before all the apartments on the north wall were plastered and painted. The apartment the fire was in and all the apartments below it, the apartment across the hall from the fire (above ours) and the ones below ours all had to have all the plaster removed because of smoke and water damage. Now that this has all been done they will be ripping holes in the plaster they just finished putting up and painting. Our apartment and the one above us were vacant for months after the fire (ours was vacant for four months, the one above for nearly a year) so holes could have been made and fixed a year ago without inconveniencing anyone other than the guy in the apartment across the hall from Nat's old place (who has since moved out and someone else has moved in). Now all of the 8 apartments affected are "finished" and occupied.

After 16 months of this I'm getting a little fed up. Looking at their website they claims their "project managers are very organized and efficient" yet I see no evidence of this. They have claimed ignorance in working on a building as old as this one yet the website brags about having restored Hy's Mansion after a fire and having restored that brilliant old building at Nicola and Beach. To me it appears they are milking the insurance money as they do almost everything twice and cut corners where-ever they feel they can get away with it.