Welcome to Dead House

     A week ago I moved into my house at school this year. It is located about a half-hours walk from the south edge of campus. Kind of far away, but that is only where the problems begin. This house has systematically spited me at every turn. Simply diabolical in nature, I can only assume that this house is the spawn of Satan, sent from Hell to punish me for my multitude of sins.

     First off, I picked the room directly upstairs from the living room, not realizing that sound carries like whoa in this house. The walls and windows seem to be made of paper the way sound carries through them. I literally had to check to make sure my windows weren’t open five times last night. Goddamn you, night insects. Also, the ceilings in my room are slanted because of the roof above. This affords me plenty of opportunities to test the hardness of the plaster with my head. Let me tell you, it’s structurally sound.

     Living upstairs allows me to experience other types of discomfort. The thermostat is located downstairs, so although we have air conditioning which makes the downstairs comfortable, the upstairs maintains a temperature equivalent to that of Satan’s taint. There is nothing better than waking up in a pool of one’s own sweat. Onto the tricky stairs. When going downstairs, one must pay careful attention. Why, you ask? The bottom stair blends in perfectly with the first floor. You step on to that last stair and think you’re done with the whole deal when BOOM, death.

     Ahhh yes, the showers. Unfortunately, the last people living in the house had the gas turned off when they left, so we spent the first five days without any sort of hot water. You know what that means: Freezing showers! Yayyyyy! They actually aren’t that bad after you get acclimated to the water, but for that first five minutes you wonder if life is worth living. That isn’t the only problem with the shower. The upstairs shower has incredible water pressure. This sounds good, and it really is for rinsing one’s hair, but I swear, if we cranked that baby all the way up, it could probably take the skin off a rhino. This high pressure causes a vacuum on the inside of the shower, making the shower curtain billow in annoyingly. We even tried to put weights on the bottom of the curtain with limited success. My last point about the shower from Hell is that there is a window right next to the shower. This window lacks frosting or a curtain, so we get to bare all to the world every time we clean ourselves. God help us if anyone ever calls the cops.

     One last thing about the upstairs bathroom. The toilet handle tends to stick. If you don’t push it back up after flushing, the water will run all day, costing me approximately six hundred dollars an hour. [We get Wawa Green Tea as our toilet water. A little more expensive, but worth it I think.]

     I’ll finish with a little somethin’ somethin’ about the cable/internet situation. We started out with cable, which was a pleasant surprise. After Dave (one of my roommates) got a cable modem, he had cable, as did everyone with a wireless modem. I had to go out and buy fifty feet of Ethernet cable and string it from Dave’s room, up the stairs and into my room. Kind of a pain in the ass, but overall, no big deal right? I had internet for about two hours. Then the gas guy turned on the hot water, and the house decided to spite us by cutting off our cable, and consequently, our internet. [This post is currently being written in a computer lab underneath a parking garage in that God forsaken land known as North Campus.]

Little known fact, R.L. Stein’s first Goosebumps book was actually based on the house I’m living in.

     I really hope the house is only hazing the new guys, because I don’t know what else I can take.

—

Listen: Metallica, “No Leaf Clover”
Quote:
Frylock: I think he’s crazy.
Master Shake: No, I really think he’s from the year 9595!
Meatwad: Yeah, me too.
Master Shake: Did you listen to his story?
Meatwad: I did. And it checks out.