Ever since we moved here our water heater has been wonky. The hot water just doesn't last very long. Jon will tell you it last five minutes, but that's because he boils himself in the shower. I say it lasts a little longer. However, I've always had to choose between washing my hair and shaving my legs during each shower. There isn't enough hot water for both.

Jon said it was getting worse, so Saturday morning he went to the apartment office and turned in a work order. A few hours later, a twelve year old maintenance kid showed up. Now our apartment in Texarkana didn't have a water heater, as far as we knew. I think the building shared several large ones somewhere underground or something. (Seriously.) Apparently we do have one here. He came in and said it was in our pantry. Eh?

Here's a nice photo of what our pantry looks like.

It even has a nice little shelf over on the right side to store more things. It goes as deep as the washer/dryer which are in the adjoining closet. It's great.

The maintenance kid opened the pantry and I said "Oh. Sorry. We have a lot of stuff in there." (Meaning the brooms and ladder.) He said "Yeah. Everything from HERE (pointing at the TOP shelf) down needs to come out. I smiled at his joke and moved the brooms and ladder out of the way. When I turned around, he was pulling all of the food off of the shelves. He wasn't joking.
He started at the next to top shelf and I was pushing the stuff to the opposite end of the table as he went (wishing I had taken a picture of the pantry before he started), so it would stay in order, because I wanted everything right back where it was. When he got to the canned food shelf, the same time we ran out of space on the table, I took over and did the rest.

Here's the pantry completely empty. Except for the top shelf of course.

Here's most of our food out of the pantry, on the kitchen table.

And here's the rest of the food in a laundry basket.

And the other random things that were on the floor below the bottom shelf and over on the side leaning against the Secret Wall.

The best part though was what he told us a few minutes later. He said the water heater was actually leaking and we needed a new one. He called the office and they said they couldn't get one until Monday. So our food sat out on the table and laundry basket Saturday and Sunday. Luckily we were both off Monday, but it didn't matter. Monday afternoon they still hadn't come, so I called the office and they said it might be Tuesday morning because it hadn't come in yet. We had to close Jack into the bathroom on Tuesday because they won't come in if there's a dog out, and I didn't want him to have to be in his kennel all day. Tuesday came. Tuesday left. No water heater. Jack went BACK into the bathroom today. They finally came this afternoon and replaced it, and all of our food went back in the pantry after five days of super easy access to it.
It was nice to be able to slightly reorganize some of my ridiculous placement of food on certain shelves when we moved in, though. And we have hot water. So yay.

Posted in: craziness, food on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at at 11:19 PM 3 comments    

Remember the time in February 2007 (that would be a whole year ago) that all of the Peter Pan peanut butter was recalled and subsequently removed from all grocery store shelves? That was a sad sad day. I have always only eaten Peter Pan peanut butter and in the last many years loved the Honey Roast Peanut Butter that Peter Pan made. They mix honey in with the peanut butter! Completely delicious.
When the recall occurred, I had to suffer through 6 months of Jif (blech). I was excited when, in August, the Peter Pan jars began to return to my local grocer's shelves. Finally the Jif could end! However, I still missed the Honey Roast. Over the past 6 months, any time I went to any grocery store, I'd stop by the peanut butter aisle to see if it was there. Alas, it was a no.
Until last night. I was in Wal-Mart, not even needing peanut butter, but checking nonetheless. And I saw the most wonderful thing on the shelf! You guessed it! Peter Pan Honey Roast Peanut Butter! Although I prefer the crunchy variety, which they haven't stocked yet, I could not leave without buying some!

If you've never tried it, I obviously highly recommend it. Go to the store and get some! Now!

Posted in: food on Thursday, February 07, 2008 at at 10:35 PM 1 comments