Fire

The roomy nearly burned down the apartment, well not really but she had two kitchen fires in the same evening. And she felt the need to tell me in detail about both. The first one I wouldn’t have even known about if she hadn’t said anything because it happened before I got home. This was one of those times when it might have been better not to share.

What’s That Smell??

Let me preface this post by saying that if something smells like a rotting animal corpse – I can’t eat it.

I was in my bedroom last night when I noticed an extremely unpleasant odor. It wasn’t there when I arrived home and I thought it was coming from somewhere in my room so I started sniffing around try to find the source. We live on the top floor and I was sure I’d find the rotting corpse of a bird (even though a bird has never flown into the apartment). After a few minutes I gave up and went into the kitchen to get something, as soon as I stepped out of my room the stench got much stronger and then it hit me – stinky French cheese!! I asked roomy what she ate for dinner; it turns out she had a cheese from her region of France. To make matters worse, roomy doesn’t rinse her dishes (the many joys of colocation will have to wait for another post) and I had a refresher course on cheese stink when I opened the dishwasher this morning. I put on the rinse cycle and made a quick exit while hoping that roomy finished all of the cheese….

1st weekend

My first weekend in my current apartment was nearly two years ago. At the time, I wasn’t shocked but now that I look back at it I’m amazed I didn’t immediately start looking for a new place to live. There was a big sporting event going on and my new roommate went out with her boyfriend at the time and another friend who it turned out was one of her ex’s. In a previous post I referred to him as Francois, so I’ll stick with that name to avoid confusion.

I woke up Saturday morning to find Francois, in briefs and nothing else, passed out on the clic-clac in the main room. I wasn’t home when the roommate, her boyfriend and Francois left the previous night so semi-naked and unconscious was how I first “met” Francois. The roommate had left a note for me, which I didn’t see, explaining that Francois had a run-in with a drunk and violent guy the previous night. The encounter resulted in Francois getting hit, falling and hitting his head on the ground. Rather than taking him to a hospital, the roommate and boyfriend brought him back to our apartment. In her note she also mentioned that this was the first time something like this had happened and I shouldn’t be concerned. The funny thing is that I wasn’t concerned. Even though I didn’t see her note I didn’t even blink at walking out to Francois in his underwear in the main room. I just thought “oh, there’s an undressed guy I’ve never seen on the clic-clac”, got some breakfast and went about my day. It has to be a result of living in France, because I think my reaction would have been quite different a few years earlier...