Up on the roof.

From time to time there's the odd sound coming from the hallway outside our door,  and I typically ignore most of it.  Half the time it's someone hitting the "ass button" in the elevator.  Now, I refer to it as the "ass button",  since it's the button one pushes to summon help,  but is unfortunately just at the correct distance from the floor so as to facilitate it's being pushed accidentally by one's ass....
....which apparently wasn't the experience of one of our neighbours last Wednesday night,  since I found out that she was stuck between floors for 20 minutes,  and had to be extracated by the company that monitors the "ass button".   Remember how I mentioned that the elevator was not working on Thursday morning when I came home with the chandelier?
  Right.
Got the whole story.
Apparently you also need to hold the "ass button",  since a quick jab won't do the trick, thankfully.  Probably because they've heard so many people hitting it with their asses up to this point.


I should say,  I was pretty impressed with the fact that it only took someone twenty minutes to get here,  but I guess in light of our having coined the phrase "Tod Falle"  for the elevator,  that's probably a good thing.

Do I need to give another German lesson?  *sigh*

Tod Falle  =  Death Trap.

I'm sure it's not really  a death trap,  but once in a while there's that moment of doubt, just after stepping aboard,  when getting on just doesn't seem like such a good idea.

I try to take the stairs.


So there was some clattering and banging outside the front door,  and I just figured maybe the chimney sweep guys were back?  Who knows?
Well,  turns out the roof hatch must have been frozen,  since these two gentleman asked very politely if they could come through.
Hey,  whatever.

They weren't the chimney sweep Dudes from last week though...

What exactly they were trying to determine remains a mystery,  but I figured I'd need some photographic evidence,  or you'd just figure I was having an episode or something...

(pssst...Bob's gone bonkers!)



No no kids,  I ain't making this shit up....

So you're probably wondering (aren't you??)  just how did the little guy get up on the upper section?


Well now,  let's have a look,  shall we?

 

 

Pretty sure I need to put in an "Alley-Oop"  at this point.

Think they practised that one a few times?  "ladders?  we don't need no stinking ladders!"

Actually,  if we're going to rip off a line from "The treasure of the Sierra Madre" properly, it would go more like this;
"So if you're the chimney guys,  where's your ladder?
"Ladder,  we ain't got no ladder, we don't need no ladder, I don't have to show you any stinkin' ladder!"


Fun to go off on these tangents,  innit?



So fine,  they come back down,  traipse through with their by then snowy boots,  and off they go.  No biggie,  since I was going to do a little post weekend floor washing anyway.

That was that.   Or so I thought.

Get finished washing the floor,  and the door bell rings.  I'm thinkin',  *crap*,  they're back!

But no,  it was a third guy.   Looking for the first two.
I'm like,  "Dude,  they ain't here".   (and that,  by the way,  is a direct translation of the German)

So off he goes,  and no sooner had I opened my "Sunday Times*",  but a fourth guy shows up.
In addition to his coveralls, he at least had a piece of paper with him,  and the address he had been sent to wasn't any number in this building,  let me tell you.
Nearest I could figure was that some less than clever secretary had mistyped the apartment number and instead of it being a 31,  it was 91.
31 is way over on the other side,  where they are STILL working on one of the two top floor apartments that we looked at back in September.

I'm not kidding.

I don't think things are going well.  There was talk that a wall had been ripped open and he had been sent to close 'er up and finish up.   (Funny what people will tell you when they're feeling kind of bad for being at the wrong address....like it's any of my business?)

Now,  life is too short to start getting agitated about this kind of thing since well,  although some folks would find it sort of annoying,  I tend to see the humour in the whole parade past the front door routine.
I also realised that if say,  we were out in the "burbs" like what I'm used to,  they would have all been able to see each other already at the street,  instead of playing hide and seek in some building with two elevators that are a half a block apart.

Now,  in addition to the little snippet that he let slip,  how else do I know things aren't going all that well?
Well,  there's the fact that just last week it looked like they had ripped out ALL THE FLOORING from an entire apartment,  since it was sitting in bags lined up at the front door for a day or so.  Plus, remember once upon a time we had to have a visit from the four eyed door installer?
It so happens that when I was down in the garbage room,  I saw one of the workers come down to let his sorry ass in the front door.

This was shortly after the four Marx Brothers had gone through.


Somehow I suspect that it might all tie in to the water leak from a couple weeks back....?


I just have this sneaking suspicion.








*there was no "Sunday Times"  and they didn't really look like this....

......