Mixed Bag of Complaints

So, I had to find 12345 Sunrise Valley Drive today. Since there is no number for their particular office park on the street, I had to overshoot it and figure out, by deduction, that it was in the office park I just passed. Now why on earth, in an office park that contains 5-10 buildings sitting in the middle of a vast parking lot, is there not a sign saying "12341-12355 ->", etc? Instead, I had to drive around until I found the address. God help anyone that has a job interview back there. I could just see someone driving around in there squinting at addresses for 15 minutes. And squint I did. The addresses are very small and not all the doors have addresses, of course.

On the side of another building on Sunrise Valley Drive is the name "Vantas Officing". Officing? Office is not a verb, people. I *think* they do short-term office rentals, but they at least appear to be in the office rental business. What makes them think they can just make up a word to describe their business? And it's not even a good word -- it sounds nonsensical and awkward.

I haven't done my appliance rant this week, I don't think. Our Very Expensive Stove hasn't worked right since the builder installed it a week after closing. Never mind how annoying that is. Having it get soot all over all your cookware is even worse. We called the happy Sears man to come out and fix the stove. It turns out that the propane conversion kit was never installed. He explained that he wasn't supposed to install that after the stove itself is installed, but that if we had the kit, he'd do it anyway, since he was here and all. Well guess what? We don't have the kit. We called the builder, and through some fucking miracle, we actually got a hold of him. He said where it was. It wasn't there. We looked everywhere in the kitchen and in the pile of random spare items (like track lights and roof shingles) that he left under the stairs. No propane conversion kit.

The nice Sears man helped us order one, but now we have to wait another week for it to get here. After we're sure we have it, we have to have the propane company come out and install it. Great. So we're looking at two more weeks of a poorly performing but Very Expensive Stove. Goddamn it.

The refrigerator still doesn't fit in the hole the kitchen cabinetry people left for it. The formica is a teensy bit too long to allow the door to swing. The drawer next to the fridge won't open with the fridge shut either. Neither of us want to take this up with them, just because it will be a pain in the ass, but I think neither of us wants to de-install and re-cut that piece of kitchen counter either. A little of this is the fault of Sears. This is a counter-width fridge, and they claim that it has zero swing space on the door hinges. That's not true. It needs about 1/8" swing space, but that's not 0", now is it? If you add that to the 1/4" too big on the countertop, you have a fridge that won't fit in it's alloted space.

On a happier note, have I mentioned that I love the washer and the dishwaher? The washer is the extractor sort (it's labeled as a Kenmore, but it's manufactured by Bosch). They are more expensive than the agitator type, but the use a ton less power and water and since we have a well, we figured we'd be better off using less water. It gets the clothes fabulously clean and when they come out, they are already practically dry. A full load of towels takes 30 minutes to dry, so it saves money on the drying too. I think they are expensive because they are exotic in the U.S., not because they are somehow inherently expensive.

The diswasher is pretty fancy (again, Kenmore, but manufactured by Kitchen Aid), being stainless steel inside and out. It's quite a bit noiser than I'd like it to be, but it will get anything clean, it seems. We put chili bowls in there without rinsing them and then forgot to run the dishwasher. We went to bed. We got up and realized that we needed all the dishes in the dishwasher to serve breakfast, so we ran it. The bowls were all spotless. it also cleaned a vase that I haven't been using because I've been completely unable to get the old flower goo and subsequent coatings of slightly greasy kitchen dust off of it. It's now sparkling clean. I'm amazed.

We also got lucky on the well water. It's a bit tough to rinse soap off yourself, but it doesn't spot the dishes AT ALL. It tastes sort of like rocks, but we use Britta filters in Reston too, so that's not really a big issue to us. I'm just glad it doesn't spot the fixtures, dishes, etc.

So, I was a naughty little camper this morning and I downloaded all of Kid A from Napster. Now, OK Computer is one of my desert island records, so I was anticipating the release of this thing. I probably would have bought it on release day except that WHFS played a song from it. That's right, the song was so awful that I put off buying the record, fearing that the rest of it was equally awful.

Out of 12 songs (there's a hidden track), only one is good and that one isn't as good as the less-good songs on OK Computer. I'm really glad that I didn't spend any actual money on the CD for one good song (Optimistic, if you're curious). See, I never pull out Pablo Honey or The Bends. If I want to listen to any of the three decent songs on those two records, I just listen to my mp3's of them.

I truly wish that I could link you to the hilarious bit about Kid A on I Hate Music, but that sites been dead for about three weeks now. The parent site, freaky trigger is also inaccessible. I'm sad about that. It was a place of great humor. I think my first visit there may have been a referral to a general Radiohead rant, actually. I found I Hate Music via shiitake.diaryland.com[1], and I think her link may have been to the first Radiohead whinge (there was a new one regarding Kid A). Shiitake is no fan of Radiohead, let me tell you.[2] She once told me that Radiohead was big and anthemic without having anything to be big and anthemic about. I think that's true. Later on, she didn't recall giving that particular reason for disliking them, stating "there are so many reasons to hate Radiohead". Hee. She's funny. Go read her journal.

I guess you can't expect bands to follow up spectacular records with spectacular records. It would be nice if they'd follow up with something better than mediocre though, because now I think that OK Computer was an epiphany and there's nothing good left in them. And, of course, I'll have to wait two more years for them to maybe come up with another record.

I forgot to mention that I climbed the hill (about 300' of elevation at a 40' grade) behind the Front Royal house last Friday. There is indeed a fire road up there, but the property line is before that. That means that the lot behind ours doesn't have a single flat spot on it on which to build a house. That's a good thing, because it decreases the chances of anyone building there. As it is, you can't see our house from the fire road. This is also good.

The fire road itself is more of a trail and less of a road. You can really hear the railroad up there[3]. You can hear it from the house, but it sounds fairly distant. It doesn't sound distant up there. With all the changing leaves, spicy woods smells and old-fashioned train whistles and no people up there, it was really pleasant. I wandered around on the fire road, but I turned back when I came to a point where I could see someone else's property. I could have continued, but then I would have been going downhill, which meant that I'd have to go uphill to get back.