Man, I wish I had paid attention: Volume 1

Our apartment is really big. Well, it's big for me because I used to live in a shoebox in New York. We have a whole kitchen that you can sit in, an office, a bedroom bigger than ALL of my old apartments, some strange space between the kitchen and the bedroom,an entrance mud room and a living room that has a dining room table, a L-shaped sofa and a grand piano- baby Grand, but whatever. The ceilings are about 14 ft high. Plus, we only pay €450/month. Of course, we live in Bumblefuck Germany, but that is neither here nor there.




Our apartment house is very old- like 1450 old. By the way, supposedly Mozart's cousin used to live in this house and she played the cello. wooot! Given that Mozart had some strange relationship with his cousin it is entirely possible that Mozart may have boned (his cousin) in our apartment. There's something cozy about that thought, isn't there?





Sometimes in between cooking we like to get in a quick game of Badmington, or maybe a cello trio. It doesn't matter, it all fits.




The flip-side of the high ceilings and space is that it can get really cool in here. Not nice fresh-air-cool, but a sort of chilled, stale air that makes you cold in your bones even if our super, duper accurate German aligned to the solar system and God thermometer tells me that it is actually perfect room temperature in here.

We have heat. The problem is, I don't know how to turn it on. It's really very digital and you need to "set" it. When it's on in the winter I can change the settings, but it's been sleeping all summer. As opposed to an easy On/Off button or switch there is a knob and three buttons with the letters: I, P, F. What does that mean? 'I' is probably Information, but what the hell are P and F? PON? FOff? Power? It's not, I tried. I pressed the P and it gave me H1 and took me to a large calendar. hahshdfashh. I played around with I and the knob for a few minutes, then a sun, then a moon and then the temperature blinked. I did what I thought was tell it to heat to 20 degrees both at day (sun) and night (moon) but it has been an hour and I don't smell that heaty smell of the first heat.

I am pretty sure Alexander explained it to me after we got the new digital gauge put in. Of course, I didn't pay attention because honestly, who can't adjust the heat? So you mean I have to turn that knob there? When he started to talk about setting for night and vacation so it adjusts automatically I just tuned out. Sorry, there's only so much I can give to the heat. Unfortunately, it is only about 10 degrees out this evening and I am home alone for the next two weeks. Hot chocolate, anyone?