We have no hot water in the house, which we discovered when we came home to a house with no electricity. The Boy freaked ("But I won't have my blessed internet!") and we tested every circuit one by one. Turns out the water heater is the culprit, and the rest of the house is functioning fine now.
Having no hot water just mysteriously pop up as a problem is cool 'cause I already haven't showered in two days. I planned well, as you can see. So it will soon be three, potentially four, five days before we can clean ourselves. Love that early 20th century plumbing.
Mainly, I'm disturbed because our heating sucks so much that I use the shower as my heater. You know, get undressed, take a shower, and jump directly from shower to bed without passing go. If you do that, you can kinda conserve some body warmth and you won't spend the first half hour before you go to sleep trying to fight off hypothermia.
We also prepared for the no-hot-water disaster perfectly: our dishes were fairly severe (by my standards) and I just about froze my fingers off trying to pry the oatmeal off the pan.
Tomorrow, some random Senegalese dude named Neb is coming over here to come to our rescue. The Boy met him in the hallway of our building one day, and somehow he came to learn that Neb is a plumber/electrician. How does that happen?
"Hey, random guy, nice to see you..."
"Yeah, random guy, you too..."
"Hey, by the way, guy, what do you do for a living?"
"Oh, I'm a plumber slash electrician, and you?"
Anyway. The Boy conserved Neb's number somewhere in his "system" (aka pile of papers of all sizes and color, in no particular order) and called the guy to come fix things. I was suggesting we try an actual service, but The Boy says we have to help the African struggle. I thought it was funny that he applied our electric needs to the African struggle - and so militantly, I might add - but I don't care who we call, as long as I get myself some hot water. So Neb better mean business.
Ugh. We had the problem of our bathroom water heater dying about two years ago (the one in the bathroom is electric, the kitchen hot water (and the water for the gas heating) comes from the kitchen's gas water heater). The problem is that our rental agency is a bunch of assholes...
It took them THREE WEEKS to change the water heater.
For three weeks we took sponge baths with pots of hot water brought over from the kitchen (relying on the other half to bring you a big potful to rinse the shampoo out of your hair).
I swear, the rental agency makes me foam at the mouth.