Raindrops from the Ceiling

It seems like I sure do complain about my apartment a lot, doesn't it? I swear, every third post nowadays has me whining about something going wrong over there. Really it's not too bad, I love the square footage, I've gotten used to the strange layout, and I really love the fake wood floors.

But today I want to talk about the fact that our air conditioner is totally trying to drive me insane.

It's not that it doesn't work - well okay, it sort of is that it doesn't work, since it doesn't actually circulate air all the way into my bathroom at the far side of my house, which makes relieving yourself a weirdly sweaty experience. Wait, that went to a strange place.

Regroup: It's not that the air conditioner doesn't work, it's just that it gathers condensation very easily. In order to combat this condensation, there is an overflow pipe that drains out under the house, and as a backup there's a secondary overflow that hangs directly over the kitchen sink, just in case the pipe isn't getting the job done. Usually this just means that at the height of summer we may have a little water dripping into the sink. It's mildly annoying, but nothing I can't handle.

This summer though, something is seriously wrong with the overflow pipe, which has resulted in a near constant stream of water splashing into our sink. It's loud. And unending. And it gets everywhere, as the splash radius is out of control. Then, not only was the water using the secondary pipe over the sink, the water even started leaking out of the corner of the access panel to the air conditioner.

Have you heard of water torture, where your interrogators drip water on your forehead slowly forever until you go mad? This is how I feel, except it's not so much on my forehead as it is an unending irregular beat on the linoleum floor and steel sink in my kitchen. Constantly, the drip-tink-drip-drip-splash-drip-tink-splash. Forever. Even when the air conditioner is off.

Finally unable to take it anymore, we had the landlord bring out a handyman to flush the pipes in order to get the insanity to stop. When he opened the panel to a huge rush of water that flooded the kitchen, I held little hope that he would affect much change. But I will give him credit, after blowing out the pipes, there is much less dripping and it's eliminated all but the sink pipe problem, which is reduced.

Still, it haunts me.

Thus, I have fashioned the most awesome piece of in-house ingenuity that has ever been created. It's a washing machine hose that covers the pipe opening and then snakes down along the wall to the side of the sink, where the water harmlessly dribbles down the drain, without a single sound.

Sure, it looks like the most ghetto, half-assed thing in the world. And hangs down terribly awkwardly, completely dominating your field of vision when you walk into the room. And at night in the darkness and shadow of the light filtered from the living room, it may look like a huge tentacled monster about to pounce on your head. (I said it "may" look like that, not that that exact train of thought went through my head. And it especially did not do so two nights ago, to the point where I actually shrieked and did a sort of crouch-and-roll in the kitchen at 1:00 AM. Ahem.)

Oh, and also, I had no good way to attach the hose to the pipe, and thus have rigged up an elaborate device to hold it in place. Which is made up of at least: a nail hammered into the ceiling, several lengths of nylon string, a paperclip, and a surprisingly large amount of sticky tack adhesive gum.

But whatever. Let's focus on the fact that I no longer have to deal with the constant drip-drip-dripping.

You've all read the Tell-Tale Heart, you know how this whole thing would have ended without my contraption.