Tough Winter

Springtime is here, but the weather still changes wildly, from hour to hour, here in NY, and the wind never subsides. Wonder why they don’t list NYC also as a ‘windy city’, just like Chicago is known!  Sprinkles of snow alternate with rays of sunshine and the temperature swings from minus zero C at night to some midday heat for a couple of hours that makes one sweat while walking. 

In addition to weather problems which, unfortunately, do affect my osteoarthritis, this winter has been a tough one for me since I was forced to deal with all sorts of technical problems that varied from parts’ replacement in my desktop,  to software troublesome installations needing tweaking and troubleshooting to function properly. Upgrading to a different level of operating system software also brought up a whole set of other issues and, in some cases, even the need to purchase latest versions of application programs that become ‘no longer supported’ by their manufacturer.

  

My woes, however, were not only restricted to the above issues during these past months. Renovations within the apartment building where I live and in the apartments neighboring mine have created havoc in my daily life. 

For 10 weeks we only had one elevator at our disposal to replace and restructure the other one, and for several months I've had banging next-door to me, due to the enlargement of one apartment being connected to another on our floor. It has been hard to work under these conditions and continuous disruptions. 

To top it all, one morning this week woke up to find the foyer of my apartment flooded with water coming from our hallway. My initial impression was that it may have happened due to the washing of the hall’s carpets, but I was wrong. 

Discovered that the problem was of a greater magnitude and was caused by an occasional guest in a nearby apartment, who may have played around with the valves in his apartments HVAC unit.  The water that regurgitated from that radiator flooded not only that apartment, but our entire hallway and penetrated four others on the floor. Needless to say we are now surrounded by cleaning services, blow drying machines, and inspector visits for insurance purposes!

When will all of this end? Am really looking forward to some peace and quiet, but also planning my next trip abroad!  Meantime, as I write this, I also hear that today we are affected by an Internet cyber attack slowing down online services everywhere……including uploading this blog post!!