The Heating Season

Will I ever be warm again? I feel like I’m camping – a damp coldness has crept into my bones and I find I can’t feel warm no matter how many cups of tea I drink or how many sweaters I put on! It turns out that our apartment, being under the jurisdiction of Columbia University Housing, has a ‘heating season’ – Oct to May. But only if the outside temperature drops below 55 F! I still can’t convert from Fahrenheit to Celsuis, but I do know that, while the autumn nip is in the air, it must be over 55 F.

One week later…

The heating season has begun. We were woken up in the early morning by the sputtering sounds of a radiator long asleep and now stretching into action. In spite of my attempts to clean what seemed like years of dust off the radiators, the air hangs heavy with the pungent smell of burning grime.

In a few more days, our apartment will become stiflingly warm. We open the windows slightly to regulate the temperature. (We have no thermostat, just a temperature sensor. I’m not quite sure what the sensor’s purpose is.) Unfortunately, we must close the windows in the evening as the autumn rains return, lashing heavily and at a rather steep angle. I guess this heralds another round of broken, cheap umbrellas. NYers seem to have a disposable-goods attitude towards everything!

My Worst Day (so far)

It was my first week here. The weather was still 90 – 90% humidity and 90F. Ugh. The streets reeked, even to my insensitive olfaction. The sidewalks were spilling with garbage and dog poop. And I was about to embark on my first solo subway adventure.

This involved a transfer, as I needed to get downtown, near NYU, and back to Kmart to exchange lightbulbs we’d purchased the night before. Who knew that “type B” bulbs had two different fitting sizes? Not me, apparently! The subway was crowded, and I feared I’d end up somewhere unfamiliar and unsafe. But I managed to get off at the correct station, and found the Kmart again. The salesperson at the Customer unService Desk reluctantly took my receipt and lightbulbs, and told me to find the replacements. She also informed me that there were no washrooms on the premises. I guess a 3-floor department store housing over 100 staff at any given time wouldn’t have bathrooms. Isn’t that what sidewalks were for?

Anyway, off I went, looking for replacement bulbs. It was difficult to tell which of the “type B”’s had the correct fitting. What to do? I certainly didn’t want to have to trek down for a second lightbulb-exchange trip! Then I realized I would do what any New Yorker would do: I took several packages of bulb contenders, went up to the second floor where the lamp we’d previously purchased was on display, and tried out each bulb until I found the right ones. Then I left everything next to the lamp, got an unopened package of the correct bulbs, and exchanged them at the unService Desk.

Never have I been so happy to see a Starbuck’s as that afternoon. That instantly recognizable chain has public toilets! Hurray! I rushed into the dank and smelly room, but alas there was no toilet paper!

After that ordeal, I took the subway to one of the two Home Depots on Manhattan. The address I had for it was incorrect, and was brusquely informed by the staffmember of the building I did enter. When asked if he knew where the Home Depot was, he was able to tell me it was on the other side of the building. Did that mean I had to go through the building to find the Home Depot? Apparently not. Instead, I had to go around the block.

One think I’m learning about NY is that you have to ask the right person the right question to get the answer you’re looking for. Just because someone might know the answer, they won’t tell you if you don’t ask and if it isn’t their job.

Something good happened – Home Depot delivers for the low cost of $21 anywhere on the island! Yay! I bought a cartload of stuff and had it all delivered that night.

Another thing I’m learning about NY – everything gets delivered! Half the people in our apartment building even gets groceries delivered.

Home Depot on Manhattan doesn’t have lumber, the salesperson told me. They also don’t cut wood. But they would kindly sell me a saw. Thanks, but not in this small apartment. They do have services for putting furniture together, however. It’s very much a ‘do-it-for-me’ rather than a ‘do-it-yourself’ place, and very polished compared to the Home Depots I’m used to!

After all these salespeople, I really wanted something familiar and comforting, so off I went to the Mid-Manhattan Library. Rows and rows of books always soothes me. And it was close by, so I could even walk, thus avoiding the subway! Little did I know that the ‘few’ blocks turned out to be very many. Ugh. I finally arrived at the library, exhausted and too annoyed to even enjoy the architecture of the building. Once inside, I had to line up to have my bags inspected (good thing I had the drill and shelves and other hardware delivered!), and then line up again at the information booth staffed by dottering NY old ladies. They said that the architecture books were up on the 3rd floor, so I headed up to finally relax in the midst of books. But life doesn’t happen like that. There were no books. Not accessible by the public, at least. There were, however, lots of people sitting at lots of wooden tables, looking at books. Where did they get these books? Well, it turns out that this was a special collections (part of the?) library. You had to request a specific book, wait in line until your number was called, and retrieve your book from a staffmember. No browsing amongst books for me, and no solace for my soul.

I caught the subway during rush hour back north, and arrived home with a better understanding of how things in this city works, but without respite.

Institutional Real Estate

So Columbia U’s housing department is officially known as the “Department of Institutional Real Estate”. No kidding! When we arrived here in August, our first order of business was to find a place to live. Luckily, Toby’s supervisor had forwarded our housing application earlier in the summer, so we were already in the system. I’m learning that being “in the system” in NY is very important for everything! But more on that later.

We spent our first morning waiting at the IRE office, a shockingly modern outfit inside a stately, turn-of-the-century building. Unlike the students looking for housing, we were able to see an actual person, Marge, who directed us to 3 different apartments to look at. So off we trekked, through unknown streets of Morningside Heights.

The first was rather small, about 450 sq. ft. The kitchen was laughable – literally a closet. You step in and are face-to-face with the refrigerator. Turning 45 degrees to the left put you at the sink, and another 45-degree turn had you at the stove. A further 90-degree turn had you facing the doorway, and with one step, you were out of the kitchen. One needs to leave the kitchen to open either the fridge or the oven. Yikes!

The second had a wonderful living room with beautiful detailing on the walls and ceiling. The kitchen was bright and large (by NY standards, still smaller than ours was in Edmonton). Unfortunately, the superintendent acted as though we were sucking the life out of him by asking him to show us the place. He was thoroughly unpleasant, and we’d have been reluctant to ask for any maintenance had we been living there!

The third place is the furthest from campus (about a 10minute walk), and by far the best of the three places on our list. The “super” is a wonderfully chatty and upbeat woman who offered all sorts of information on living in NY and on which neighborhood places would be worthwhile going to. The apartment is the largest of the three as well, about 675 sq. ft. Much of the floor area, however, is hallway, and the kitchen is smaller than we’re comfortable with, but we’re adapting. Like all of the places we saw, the floors are hardwood, the walls are plaster, and the ceilings are 10 feet high! Our place faces Riverside Park, and through a gap in the trees, we can even see the Hudson River! I think that once the leaves fall, we’ll have river views all winter long! I love that each room has a window, and there is gorgeous moldings at the ceiling and the baseboards.

We hurried back to the IRE office and waited another hour or several before seeing Marge again. She ‘booked’ the apartment for us, but to officially claim the place, we needed to log into their website and submit a credit card number. No problem, we thought. There was even access in the waiting area of the IRE office! Unfortunately, the site wouldn’t accept the credit card number, claiming the address we entered was incorrect. How finicky was this check-system? Would we need to have the correct number of spaces in our typed-in address? Maybe it wouldn’t recognize a Canadian address? At any rate, the only way we were able to claim the apartment was to use Toby’s parents’ credit card. We felt as though we were 18-year-olds, moving out on our own for the first time in our lives, and needed our parents’ backing for everything! At least we got the apartment!

Later that day, we made an appointment to sign the lease for 9:30 the following morning. Off we went, that very humid, very hot Friday morning, back to the Office of Institutional Real Estate, only to wait for over an hour. (I wonder how long the wait would have been without an appointment?) We were escorted into the signing room with 8 other people, and went through a 20-minute form-signing session. Although I had to provide a photo to be allowed a set of keys, I am nowhere on the lease. As it turns out, I don’t exist here, in so many different ways! We finally got our key-release form finished, and headed back to our new home to meet with the super.

Our first night was a sleepless one. Given the 90% humidity and 90F temperatures, we lay in our empty apartment, sweating profusely and wishing for sleep! The following morning, we made our first purchase: an air conditioner! Probably the most expensive impulse buy we’ll ever make, but, boy, we have no regrets! We spent another two nights sleeping in the living room, underneath the air conditioner, until the entire apartment was cooled enough. Ahhhh…. The wonders of modern technology