Frustration and Inspiration.

Well, this weekend has not been at all as I envisioned it would be. I came home Friday night after an exhausting week, having spent many hours getting ready for a presentation to the the higher ups at my company. (It went well, but that's not really the point.) Also, I spent all afternoon moving office furniture, as my office mate moved into a solo office and I moved back to the window seat. I was pretty dead, and looking forward to a weekend around the apartment, doing some chores, and maybe starting the kitchen reorg I've been planning. Instead, as I walked down the hallway at 7pm, I found a piece of paper waiting on my door. In essence, it said:

Hello, tenant. It's after 4pm, so you can't ask the building manager about this, and we're delivering this letter with so little notice that you have one business day in which to talk to the building manager. Because sometime between Tuesday and Friday (how's that for a time frame?) we'll be coming into your apartment, your home. We're coming in to treat for the pests you don't have, because you clean your kitchen and have a cat. We're not telling you what chemical we'll be using to treat your apartment, whether vapor, liquid, or power, all we'll tell you is to move all your furniture to the center of each room and to move items in the kitchen and bathroom away from the walls (whatever that means, and the letter actually reads "a way from the walls"). Also, the chemical must be pretty bad, because we're going to ask you to shut your pet up in one room and let us know which room that is. We're not telling you if that means the fumes will still be around at the end of the day, or if fumes through the crack in the door to where the pet is will be a problem. Thanks, building management.

I am, as you might imagine, quite unimpressed. I would like to know what they're using in my home, where I've switched to a no-chemical cleaning policy. I also would like to know if that cat is going to be breathing fumes. And, my furniture is heavy, but if they're spraying liquid around the floor I don't want my furniture to be damaged. Luckily, I have a great Momola, who drove into the city on Saturday, helping me move the heaviest furniture and gathering up that cat and me and taking us to the suburbs. Kittay is spending the week out here, and I'll be leaving my windows open when I got to work each day, as well as waiting to wash my sheets and all my dishes again. I'm writing a letter.

In the meantime, I spent last night and today out in Virginia with Lady, and we lamed it up and took it easy. We watched Colin Powell on Meet the Press, and cheered. The beauty of it was, that he's an admirable man no matter who he chooses to endorse, but his endorsement was so well thought out and thorough, so calm and well-reasoned, and so inclusive. "[Mr. Obama is a lifelong Christian, not a Muslim, but] the really right answer is, what if he is?" It was wonderful to hear.