Tidbits from My Life

Last week's horoscope is/was pretty appropriate:You seem to be suffering, although in an interesting way, from a metaphysical version of jet lag. Maybe it's because you've been stretching your boundaries with such experimental vigor. Or maybe it's because you've been engaging in a form of time-travel, exploring the past and future in your dreams and fantasies. In any case, you can take comfort in the knowledge that the warps and tweaks you're dealing with are the results of your brave choices. Congratulations as well for having churned up the most useful riddles you've had to ponder since you jumped out of your skin last year.Well, I wouldn't say I've been stretching my boundaries vigorously. I just give them a little shake every once in a while.

Although, I hope my dreams aren't about the future since I had a dream a couple of weeks ago that I was wandering around shooting random people. When the police finally caught me and wanted me to explain myself I had no explanation. That was the most upsetting part of the dream, really. They just wouldn't leave me alone about it.

So many thoughts boiling around in my head. I can't quite do anything with them. Most of them aren't worth putting on my journal. Crazy questions about my life, where it's going, how I feel about it, what my priorities are, and stuff like that.

Hm.

I did finish putting my dresser together on Saturday. I had to take it mostly apart all over again, which was a chore. After I finished, we went over to CKR's and I made baked mac and cheese and we watched The Others. Such a good movie.

I am so sore from putting that dresser together. That's all I can think of that did it. My poor hamstrings.

Sunday, Chrysoula and Kevin and I went out to dim sum at a local place. It was very crowded. I'm not sure if that's normal or if it was because of the New Year. Or maybe it was a little of both!

Today, I haven't done much. A trip to the doctor's office with Chrysoula, a trip to the grocery store, some time studying, some time napping, and some time working. My life is a whirlwind, let me tell you.

My chem midterm on Friday went well, I'm pretty sure (heh, I had a dream I got a 99 which is impossible since it's a 50 point test), and now I need to study more for my bio midterm. Whee!

My kitty is adorable. He sometimes gets into these ecstatic rolling sessions. He just rolls from one side to the other over and over and over again. He just rolled himself off the bed...

I went to see Children of Men last weekend and really liked it.

I just got back from seeing Pan's Labyrinth and it was totally awesome. Not quite what I was expecting but just totally awesome. I will own this movie when it comes out.

It's fun watching movies in Spanish. I know so many words! Not enough to be able to ignore the subtitles but still it's cool.

The snow from Wednesday is still on the ground. It's just not getting warm enough to make it go away. The snow we got on Saturday stuck to the ice left from Wednesday. And it's supposed to snow tomorrow. Whee!

Whew, my bio lab prof finally got back to us about how we'll make up for the canceled lab. He'll go over it at the beginning of Tuesday's lab and we can turn it in on Thursday. Need to work on my pre-lab worksheets for Tuesday. I have some reading to finish and then some stuff to run through the CD that came with my book.

I think everyone will enjoy this. It's completely work safe. Unless models made using gummi bears is against the rules and how could anyone make gummi bears against the rules?

It snowed last night! Luckily, I also got my new jacket in from L L Bean (and the new shoes and rolling backpack I ordered with it). The new jacket is warm, may actually be stylish, and seems to be less heavy/bulky than my leather jacket. It may help that it actually fits instead of being a little big. This was, however, a bad time to lose one of my gloves. They aren't the greatest gloves but one of them is gone. I am parked next to a Sears so I will stop by and check out their gloves.

I was supposed to go to CKRs last night for movies but when I went out to my car and saw someone almost fail to get up the little hill in our complex I decided that I wasn't going anywhere. I spent the evening tromping around the complex taking pictures, talking to neighbors and just generally having fun in the snow. Yay! Snow!

School canceled classes yesterday at 3:45 (I left at around 1:30) but decided things were ok on campus this morning so we're having classes today. Getting out of my complex was a little nervewracking but I made sure to get as much of the snow off of it as possible (I saw some people who barely made an effort and still had about 3 inches of snow covering their back windshield except for this one square inch where they just kind of grabbed a handful of snow off, wtf?; I didn't get a chance to see if they cleaned off all of their front windshield).

The specific area around school is ... ok. There's still some ice on the ground in patches which made the drive from the highway a little more slidey-exciting than I like my drives to be but it wasn't too bad. I'm not terribly looking forward to going home though. The sun is out and melting stuff but it's not supposed to get much above freezing here and I have to be on campus until 8 pm tonight (stupid night class). I expect more slidey conditions for the drive home. It does look as if it won't be snowing today/tonight though, so maybe it won't be too bad.

Oh, hey, time for class!

High Tension was pretty good. I wish I hadn't seen the spoiler giving away the twist but I still enjoyed it.

We went bowling at Acme Bowl after Kirby got off work. It was pretty fun! I'm not a terribly good bowler and alcohol doesn't exactly improve my game. But I still had fun. The music was mostly cool and the place really seemed to wind down once it went to 21 and over. I'm almost thinking that the next time we go, we should go a little later or just eat dinner without worrying about getting a lane soon.

My legs do hurt and I expect that my arm will be sore in the morning.

We totally made friends with our waiter. You know, I seem to have good taste in friends in that we always make friends with the wait staff and have fun with them.

We dropped Chrysoula and Kevin at home and then went home. It didn't look good. No lights at our intersection. I went to my car (covered in ice) and brought my flashlights in. Yay! Flashlights. kirbyk turned on the gas fireplace so we could be warm. We wandered around the house a little bit.

And then... the lights came on! Almost exactly 24 hours after they went off. Woohoo! Power!

I hope it lasts!

I'm sitting in my room, watching TV, catching up on my online stuff, contemplating my next craft project, and listening to the wind howl outside. We are getting quite the storm tonight. It's a good night to be at home and not have to get up early so I can just enjoy the night.

I need to get some of that spicy cocoa for myself. My tin, which didn't have much left anyway, is in a box in the garage.

They're warning of power outages caused by downed trees and the lights flicker a bit. We hung out at CKRs tonight and there was a section of our drive (where most of the traffic lights were) where the power was out, but we still had power at home (and no flashing clocks). It's occured to me... This is a gated community. Can we leave (or get in) if the power goes out?

I'm sure we can. I just think it would be kind of funny if we couldn't.

I'm not quite curious enough to wish the power would go out so I could go see... Although my best flashlight is in my car which would be on the way to the gates...

um....

I reached 1 million meters finally on my rowing logbook. I stopped back in July with 4.5km to go, partially because I wasn't sure how it got handled and didn't want to go over the mark and have them send my prizes to the wrong address. I downloaded the certificate. It's all purty.

I did not finish the Halloween challenge. It's hard to go from 0/wk to 31km/wk all of a sudden so I ended up stopping with only 5k done. Ok, I could have finished if I hadn't skipped rowing on Thursday and Monday but I was exhausted and as much as I love those certificates we get I love sleeping and not getting sick even more (I have this vague congested feeling which could be a virus, allergies, or weather related, but sleep is always a good remedy; my current guess is weather, but low-grade illness is second).

I created a new ticker on my profile to illustrate the path to 2 Million Meters(!). Only 22.7 of 1000 km done so far. Man.

School is going pretty well. Tiring; my sleep is all out of whack. The time change was not as much of a relief as usual. It's odd because last week was a light week, no english class because we were all having personal conferences with the prof about our essays (he had some suggestions but overall had quite a bit of praise for my writing, yay!), and yet still I was just so tired. I need to make more effort on being focused because that will improve my ability to get things done so I can go to bed on time. Yup. I'm gonna work on that as soon as I have the time and energy....

I got grade reports for algebra and anatomy this week (it's the middle of the 5th week of a 10 week quarter). I'm getting an A in both so far (I have the highest score in anatomy as near as I can tell, in fact). I'm pretty sure English is also an A since I haven't done any of the things that would pull my grade down and the short essays have checkmarks. We get our long essay back next week (revised version was due Monday), which I'm looking forward to. It's nice to get feedback on the random stuff I write.

I haven't been doing much. No knitting, barely keeping up on my tv watching, and no non-school book reading (still quite a bit of web reading, though; where are my priorities). I think I might get my sock out in a bit though. I don't have a lot of homework this weekend (a short essay, read 2-3 chapters for anatomy, and a few hours of math homework) and I want to catch up on my tv and try to finish that sock. It's the last of the socks. I have to finish it.

I also have to think about what I'm doing next quarter. Man. My class time choices kind of suck. Since I don't know when I'll be moving closer to school (I'm waiting for some stuff to happen before I work on that), I don't want to sign up for anything earlier than 11:30 am and I don't particularly feel like taking a night course that meets most nights of the week (a couple of nights, I don't think I'd mind). It's hard to decide what to do. I'm also not sure I want to take two lab courses at once. I haven't taken one yet so I have no idea what to expect from it... And I really don't want to take the computer information systems class that's required. Seriously, I do not need to learn how to use Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. I could teach the class! I should find my list of stuff to take.

I should find my hats/scarves too. And possibly a new jacket. It's been chilly here and my fleece jacket is not quite up to the task of keeping me warm but my leather jacket feels like it would be overkill. I hate buying jackets though. They always fit so oddly. We'll see what happens I guess.

isildur and I have been getting together to watch horror movies every week. It's been fun. Last week, we watched Takashi Miike's installment in the Master of Horror series. Showtime wouldn't air it and once we'd seen it, we could see why. Also, he's got this thing about needles... We watched Hard Candy the same night which was really good and a little creepy. We've watched a couple of other Masters of Horror episodes and Saw, which I was nicely surprised by. I was expecting a movie more like Hostel and got something a little closer to Se7en. We watched The Producers last weekend, which was really cute, and The Prestige which I loved. I almost wish I'd never read the book, because then it might have been better.

I didn't really do anything for Halloween. Since I wasn't going out anywhere except Algebra class and everything is packed up, I decided that I wasn't up to making the effort on a fun costume. I did realize, after going to class, that I could have dressed up in one of my generic Ren Fest costumes. Not much effort and I actually know where those are... I think I do anyway and I could have worn my cloak to class! I definitely know where that is. I did go over to CKR's house and we watched The Exorcist III. We were going to watch The Shining but being at the mercy of a video store means you can't always get what you want. There were definitely some fun moments in there.

I'd kind of planned to do something on Wednesday but ended up passing out shortly after I got home. I work up briefly, had some popcorn, and went back to bed. It's almost like my pattern in HS. On Fridays I would come home, fall asleep, get up and eat something, and then go back to sleep until someone woke me up the next day. I don't think it will be my normal Wednesday routine since that's usually when Kevin and I watch movies. Last week, it happened on Thursday and since that's a one-class day, it meant I had the whole day to nap.

chrysoula and I hang out on Fridays after class, so there's no napping on Fridays either! Weekends are fair game though. So much time to nap. And then do homework. And then nap. It's a crazy cycle.

The cats seem to be getting along better. Kira and Kimba come hang out in my room quite a bit when Kirby's not around/awake and I am (they come sleep with me in the mornings, which I find funny). There's not as much growling and even a slight bit of playing. They are all kind of wacky about the whole thing but there's definite progress being made.

I think that's it! I should try to post a little more often since otherwise I end up with long rambly posts. If I post more often then I'll have short rambly posts!

Huh. I can't remember what I've been doing these last couple of weeks....

During the week I really don't do much. Stay at home and craft and watch TV/Movies and read. But on weekends I do stuff! Sometimes it is even stuff that requires leaving the house!

Hm.

I actually think I spent the evening of May 5th trying to finish a library book that was due on the 6th. I couldn't renew it easily because it was an interlibrary loan and it was going to be $1/day fines. I stayed up most of the night (ok, all night) finishing it. Good book. I need to get back into my book list. I stopped at the end of last year because I accidently copied over the list I'd been keeping with an older version and I couldn't recreate the list. It made me very sad. This year I've been keeping a list on paper since I've also been writing down craft project starts/finishes. I should put it back online but keep the paper backup going.

On the 6th, I cleaned out my storage space. This is not a huge deal or anything but I've been meaning to do it for years and just never got around to it. I have a pile of stuff to decide on, sent a whole bunch of stuff to the trash/recycling bins, and have some more stuff headed to goodwill. In the evening, I went to dinner and to see Silent Hill again with tersa, aeflsciene and ebonlock. I really like that movie.

On the 13th, I decided to take myself out for dinner and a movie. I'm a pretty good date for myself. :) I went to see An American Haunting. It was entertaining but I think it's a rental.

After the farmers market run on Sunday, I called my mom at home to wish her a Happy Mother's Day. We talked for quite a bit and I got all caught up on the family gossip. I have a cousin getting married tomorrow. And next week we find out if my uncle's cancer has spread (I think they only recently found out about the cancer, mom told me on Sunday). I'm thinking that maybe there should be no more weddings in my family in 2006. Funerals and illnesses punctuated by weddings! We've got two more weddings in the fall, so far, so I guess we'll see what else develops. I'm hoping we get good news next week (mom and grandma's visit depends on the cancer prognosis). Later, I called grandma's house and talked to other people in the family. That was fun. Marisa, my sister-in-law, and I spent some time talking about relationships and dating. Heh. My cousin Douglas talked about how cool his and Carmen's new baby is. I need to work on something for the other babies...

I put my Pasha together and... I wasn't satisfied with him. Now that he's been sitting around my living room for a while, he doesn't look quite so bad to me though my inability to set things evenly means he is a little deformed. I think I might be happier if his body was a little denser, so I might try to make him using smaller needles next time and add more stuffing! I might try to make Nautie next. Decisions, decisions.

Right now, I'm working on a sock and on clapotis. I started the clapotis on Sunday during the Social Knit time. It is going pretty quickly but I've got an awful lot of yarn to put into it (16oz, 1000yds). I'm going to make it wider and longer than the pattern calls for. I prefer shawls to scarves. It's sad though. I need to do more increase sections so I can't go to the straight section and start dropping stitches. Man, I really want to drop those stitches.

Oh, and I finished the cross-stitch for Joseph. I posted the pictures up at my kodakgallery.com site. The difference between the non-backstitched and backstitched versions of it is amazing (the last four pictures in the crafty stuff gallery). It makes up for the incredible pain involved in backstitching (especially that gold thread, damn you gold thread!). I want to take it to be framed but I can't until someone tells me what the outside dimensions of the frame I used for Samantha's cross-stitch is. The version I did for Joseph is not the same size because of the fabric I was using but I want the frame dimensions to be the same. Is that silly? I think they'd look nicer hanging next to each other if the frames were the same size even though the pattern and the mats and stuff won't be. I dunno. Maybe I'm being silly. I don't think I'm being silly but maybe I am being silly.

So far this week has been stressful and unhappy making (mostly work stuff and it's really not interesting). Here's hoping next week is better. I haven't been getting a lot of exercise done due to this but I got a nice 5k in yesterday. That was good. I now have less than 50k to go to get my first million meters. Yay! My deadline is my birthday (June 1) so I've got 12 days. I can do that. I just have to not procrastinate on it. I did that in December and ended up doing 90k in 10 days and it was not good. I think the seasonal allergy exhaustion is starting to go away but I don't want to jinx myself by saying it's gone. :)

Gosh. My birthday is in less than 2 weeks. I should think of something to do for it... Huh.

Heh. One week between open updates!

Last Wednesday was Passover dinner with eilonwey, glaciation, wildpaletz and senatorhatty. It was fun and there was lots of good food.

I don’t think I really did much on Thursday. I can’t remember.

On Friday, I watched all three of the netflix DVDs I saved for the weekend. This included the movie Black Christmas (which is being remade as we speak). It was pretty fun, actually. I was kind of afraid that it would be too dated (the clothes certainly were) and maybe a little boring but I was nicely surprised. There were some things that I’m really wondering how they’re going to work them out with the remake (anonymous harassment calls being a big plot point). And, well, there’s one thing they might change that I don’t want them to change! But I’m not sure I should tell you. Hmm…

I mostly slept on Saturday. I didn’t really intend to spend all day sleeping but there you go. I was kind of sad about it when I got the mail and realized my rowing DVDs had come in. That was pretty cool! Alas, I didn’t have time to check them out much since I was going out that night but I listened to them as I was getting ready. They look interesting. The maitre’d at Vaso Azzuro claims to remember me from my birthday, oh so many years ago. And hey, it’s getting to be that time of year again. I should consider what I want to do this year.

Sunday was Easter! I didn’t have any plans this year. tersa canceled our morning farmer’s market run as there probably wouldn’t be a farmer’s market so I slept in again (ah, how hedonistic). Eventually, I got up and called my mom’s house. I talked to a few family members (they were doing Easter at my mom’s house this year since she has a hugefenced-in yard now). I also talked, very briefly, to my niece Samantha. My Uncle Harry put her on the phone and I could hear him coaching her in the background: "Say Hi to your Aunt Michelle" "Hi Aunt Michelle" "Say I Love You Aunt Michelle" "I love you!". It was very very cute. Perhaps you had to hear it. She has the cutest little voice.

I also talked to Becky for a while on Sunday, which was nice. We hadn’t talked much since I visited in March and it’s always nice to get a chance to just sit and chat. I spent some of the in-between times working on organizing my comics. Man. I have so many comics and I really don’t collect that many comics! They just…pile up like mad. I hope they aren’t breeding. I don’t think I want to know what kind of spawn could possibly arise from my comic book collection. …. No. I’m just not going to think about it.

I stayed home sick on Monday. I just wasn’t feeling well. It really didn’t help that the night before I was woken up every couple of hours by the cat puking in a new area of the carpet. Poor baby. Poor me! I was a little worried but he seems to be ok and there have been no repeats of pukey-cat. I filed my taxes. I ended up owing very little money to both the state and the feds. Woohoo! I slept. I finished the white bits on Joseph’s baby announcement and started on the color on the bottom of the pattern. I rewatched the last three episodes of Lost. So very exciting, yes?

I went to work on Tuesday, which was…um….work. After work I did stuff around the house. Laundry, exercise…

A couple of weeks ago, I got a workout log book (in fact, it’s called The Ultimate Workout Log, I got it at Amazon). I finished the first week of logs on Sunday. I’m not sure how much more motivation this will give me but it’s a little less haphazard than my other log books. I mean, the only thing I’ve really been good about logging is my rowing workouts (I like seeing those meters add up!) but it would be good to keep a record of my strength training and other stuff, if I ever do other stuff.

Anyway, in this book you have to set weekly goals (you also set 6 month goals (the length of the log book)). I didn’t meet my goals for last week, sad me, but I came pretty close and was probably not realistic about it in the first place. So this week I set different goals. Except… See, instead of saying 'row 3 times this week’ (last week’s goal), I wrote down ‘row for 30 minutes’ figuring that would be a better goal since with the whole chest thing I haven’t been able to do very long rows but I thought setting an amount of time rather than a number of times would be good (I can’t remember why now but I still think it’s a good idea, I just need to be more ambitious, I guess). And then last night I decided to do the rowing workout DVD… which is 40 minutes long. So I met my goal for the week yesterday! Hmph. I’m not going to let this mean ‘no rowing for the rest of the week’ but it’s a little crazy to meet your weekly goal all at once.

Now, last night I rowed for a little longer than the length of the video but 40 minutes is the longest row I’ve done in a while. And… I just don’t know. My PT said no rowing after the time I rowed that caused me some crazy pain but that didn’t happen last night. Maybe I managed to not do whatever it was that caused that crazy pain or maybe the pain is ‘gone’ or something, I dunno. The training DVD I did is big on technique. I can’t actually see what I’m doing but I’m pretty sure I’m getting the body mechanics he’s showing on the DVD. It would be good to have a mirror though. I tried moving one of the mirror closet doors into the living room but it didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. I’m thinking if I do the DVD a few times without the mirrors, then maybe I can grab the audio into an MP3 or something and listen to it in the bedroom where I have the mirrored closet doors. This way I have the memory of watching it to guide me. I dunno.

The other interesting thing is that the DVD shows the erg on slides. These are to better simulate on-water rowing for people who erg to train for that. I do wonder if there’s some things that would work differently if I had slides but they cost money (I can’t remember how much but I’m pretty sure it’s a bit) and they take up a lot of room. And they probably don’t go well with moving the erg around a lot, which I do because I just don’t have the room for it to stay out somewhere. Oh, how I wish I had a two-bedroom apartment.

The rowing season is almost over (April 30th) and I have two pieces I haven’t done for the nonathlon or the season rankings: the 60 minute piece and the marathon. I don’t think I’m up for a marathon. At best it would take me about 4.5 hours, but I’m betting I’d need to add about 30-60 minutes on there to account for how long it is. I could probably do a 60 minute row though. I doubt I’d touch my personal best but it would still be cool to get one down for the season.

And then a whole new season! Woohoo!

Oh, and last night I rowed just enough that I’m now just barely above the 900km mark. I have done 100km in a month (heck I did most of the 100km Holiday Challenge in ten days in December) so I should definitely be able to finish my FIRST million meters and get a nice start on my second million by my birthday. I went ahead and changed the ticker on my userinfo page already.

I also just have to mention that I've now dreamt twice about going to see Silent Hill and in both dreams I can't remember the movie. I know I saw it but I can't remember anything about it in the dream. There's always something distracting me. In the first dream it was trying to find my friends in the huge crowd of people at the movie and waiting for the bad thing to happen (something about watching a horror movie in an old church just made my dream self absolutely certain there was some ritual or something going on to bring about the end of the world or something). In the most recent dream, it was that the person next to me kept touching me and crowding me and was just overall kind of a crazy guy. Yeah, he was cute but still. I am crazy amused that I seem to be having anxiety dreams about a movie. Only two more days to go!

March was a month of traveling for me. Two trips! I went to Seattle for a few days for work. And then I went to Minneapolis to visit friends and go to the Boiled in Lead St Paddy's day concert.

Unfortunately, the concert wasn't the best I've been to. Membership in the band has changed around again and they mostly played instrumentals all night. Not really my idea of a celtic rock concert, no. It made me sad. I wonder what next year's concert will be like since it will be on a Saturday and their 25th anniversary concert...

I did get to enjoy visiting my friends, though. :) And I discovered that I do like vodka martinis if they're made from extra-good vodka. Hmmm... vodka.

Since I got back there hasn't been much to talk about. I've been trying to incorporate rowing into my workouts, but it's been hard. I ordered some training DVDs. I'm looking forward to those coming in. I've also been reading a lot on the forum trying to get some tips to help me get back into the rhythm of it. I think getting my sleep schedule back into shape will help out with that.

My weekend was not terribly exciting. Friday night I hung out with tersa and we watched Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It was really funny and very cute.

Saturday, I didn't leave the house. Heck, I didn't even change out of my pajamas! I spent the day trying to put my comics back into order. Man, I've got 6-7 years of comics that haven't been filed or entered into my little logbook. And, since I can, I'm trying to transfer my handwritten logbook into an Excel spreadsheet while I file them away. It's not hard, really, but it's time consuming. I got a few boxes worth of stuff put away, but I've got so much more left! It's a good thing I don't really collect that many comics. I'm also trying to put them into alphabetical order.

I talked to a friend of mine from Minneapolis while I filed. I also talked to my mom, who warned me that she and grandma may be coming to visit next month. Eep! I do think it's funny that my deciding to move always gets them to come visit me.

On Sunday, I went to the Farmer's Market with tersa. And then I went home for a nap as I suddenly felt enormously tired. After a while I got up and tried to do things around the house, eventually going so far as to reorganize my craft stuff. Now I have one bin for knitting and one bin for cross stitch and sewing related things. Whee!

All in all, not a bad weekend. Except for the fact that it ended. Damn.

I finished my Olympic sock! Yay! Well in time for a gold medal in the Knitting Olympics. I probably could have picked a greater challenge but this one worked out pretty well. This puts me officially in the middle of two pairs of socks. So, I've decided to take a break from socks for a while and work on one of my two cross-stitches instead. Yay! I got the linen I ordered so I'm going to try it out.

I am stuck at home this afternoon waiting for a plumber. My toilet got stopped up last night. I have this horrible feeling it started earlier than that but I didn't notice because it drained enough. But last night I tried to clean the litter box (flushable litter) and ... no flushing! This is not so good. Really not so good. This morning it had drained a little so (dumb me) tried again but still no actual flushing. I tried using the plunger and an unbent wire hanger to get it to work but no luck. I called my rental manager line and the phone service called the on-call manager. Who called me and asked me if I tried to plunge it. I think she could tell from my tone when I said 'yes' that I was a little annoyed to be asked but I guess not everyone tries to fix problems themselves before calling for help.

And I just got another call because they're having problems getting the main plumber for my complex out here and again I'm being asked by my actual rental manager if I tried plunging it. Hmph.

She called me back again and said there's someone who will be coming (probably around 4 pm, but possibly earlier). But since they aren't the preferred vendors for the complex they may not be able to do anything if it's a problem in the main line (though I would think my neighbors would be having problems too if that were the case). And hey, she said she would try to get me reimbursed for this too. I'm not going to insist on it because this kind of stuff does happen and it really seems like the HOA was the slow factor here because they took a couple of hours to call the managers back about who their preferred plumbers are and then those guys are completely unavailable today.... but hey, this is inconvenient.