Emily vs. superintendent

Super : What's the problem with the hot water? No one else complained.

Me: It takes at least 5-10 minutes before it starts getting hot. And then when it does, it's not hot enough. It's only 95 degrees or so.

Super : They came out and they checked the boiler. It's on. So what's the problem?

Me: What I just said. It takes forever to warm up, and it only comes out at about 95 degrees. The law says it has to come out of the tap at 120.

Super : Maybe you just like having your skin scorched.

Me: No. I took the temperature with a thermometer. The water temperature doesn't get any hotter than about 95. It has to be 120. That is what the law says.

Super : Okay.

...Which is not to declare victory even temporarily, because I have seen temporary improvements before that didn't pan out, but I was finally able to wash the dishes without heating up a pot of water on the stove, so.

(no subject)

I have Ancillary Justice feels!

(Meaghan: read, like, half of it, and if you still can't get into it, then, you should probably read the whole thing just to be sure?)

When I started it it seemed so dense and chewy, a book I could admire intellectually more than I could get into it emotionally, which is because I read so much YA and all the feelings are right on the surface, but then after a certain point I went "Wow, it is really smart what she did there with the parallelism of the two situations, and also, FEELINGS." Because, for such an intellectual book -- and a book that's really about colonialism and empire and identity and free will -- it also manages to mash a couple of my id-vortexy buttons right near the end.

I want to read the whole thing again because I'll understand it better the second time around but maybe I'll wait until Ancillary Sword? (Which is coming out in October? Which I only just learned about? And which I'm pretty excited for right now?)

I am also thinking about it as a response to The Left Hand of Darkness -- not just in terms of what it does with gender and pronouns, which I didn't really find to be the most interesting or radical aspect of the book -- but in terms of being a survival quest of two people thrown together who don't (initially, at first) care about each other that much, and come to see each other in different lights...