Gas leak

[vschanoes]

So, I come home at 12:30 or thereabouts from working at circehelene's, and walk into my apartment.  Immediately upon opening the door I cannot help but notice an overpowering odor of gas.  Hmm.  I think, maybe my boyfriend, the strong and silent one, accidentally knocked the gas on.  I flick on the lights (I have since been informed that this was a bad move;

Comments

[sinboy]

This is the super? Is she a family member of the owner?

[edit] Anyhow, I just woke up, so my brain is slow. That must have really sucked, and you have my sympathies.

[vschanoes]

Don't worry, your brain is fine, my writing was a bit confusing. She was just a regular tenant; I was calling the super to see if we could get access to her apartment.

It was...interesting, you know? And it was validating that I wasn't imagining things, there really was a gas leak.

[sinboy]

Ah. That makes sense now. Yeah, we had an upstairs neighbor like that. He left the tub running one night and caused thousands of dollars in damage, and got scared and refused to open his door when the super knocked. We got it open eventually, but not after a large amount of water fell onto my floor from the light fixture above my bed.

That was scary, but your experience is a step scarier.

[nick_kaufmann]

Craziness! Sounds like you live next door to a hoarder. Also, you'll have to tell me about your boyfriend next time we see each other!

[vschanoes]

Right? I was really curious to see what her place was like! It definitely made me feel better about my own housekeeping, I can tell you that.

You know the dude--it's David. We got back together!

[nick_kaufmann]

Yay! Hope to meet him sometime!

[heavenscalyx]

Aieeeee.

When I started reading, I was kind of afraid that the ConEd guys were going to find someone attempting suicide, so I'm glad it was just a clueless person with a leak.

[vschanoes]

Wow. That had never even crossed my mind, and I'm glad of that. My father did find the remains of a neighbor who had committed suicide once, and I'm not eager to follow in his footsteps that way.

[ecmyers]

Gahh... The thing that worries me most about living in apartments is the people living in other apartments who can harm me and my family with their cluelessness or carelessness. Kind of what bothers me most about a lot of things: I'm anxious about driving because I don't know what other drivers might do. Subways are scary because I'm crammed in with unpredictable people. It's a wonder I go outside at all.

I'm glad you and your loved ones are alive and safe, and as always, I hope I am as cool as you are in troubling, stressful, and potentially life-threatening situations like this.

[vschanoes]

Thanks for the kind words, but I think I just wasn't as frightened as perhaps I should have been. Mostly I was annoyed (because it was 1 in the morning and I had to get up and go to work and this was delaying my sleep!). I figured, I'll be safe rather than sorry and call Con Ed and vacate the premises, and, having done that, I had a touching, perhaps naive, faith in the expertise of the people they sent, and it just didn't occur to me to be anxious or scared. Foolishness rather than coolness under pressure, I think!

I'll say this for Con Ed: they came within ten minutes of me calling, and once I got them to understand that it wasn't my boyfriend's pot that I was smelling, they were dead serious about the whole situation (at one point when the woman next door was cavilling about letting them in, they said very matter-of-fact-ly that if she didn't, they'd be forced to call the fire department to gain access--they were not kidding about the situation at all).

[vschanoes]

Funny thing is, the only one that frightened me was Obele's almost choking. That one went on being upsetting this morning when I was thinking about it, too. Helen picked him up and did a kind of semi-Heimlich and I swept the food out of his mouth--we didn't even pause, and it all took place in a matter of seconds, but afterwards we were shaking he burst into tears.

The gas leak...pfft. The baby wasn't in danger, so no big deal, you know?