Figuring out heat

Any expat will tell you that some days, life overseas just takes longer. You can leave the house with a list of three things to do, and after running all over town all day long, you return home with none of it accomplished. When you're new in the country (like I am here in the ME) and don't speak the language, it can seem like accomplishing even one thing on the list is the world's biggest victory.

Like the day earlier this month when I was able to get things set up to have drinkable water delivered to my house. (For my first 8 months here, someone took care of it for me.)

Or like today, when I was able to say--in Arabic--I need a new gas tank for my space heater. I knew it would cost $7, I knew how to get the tank, and I knew what to say. I knew the process for my building guy, called a haras, to walk through to change my tank for me. It was easy peasy and I felt proud of myself. A month ago, I couldn't do any of that...but look at me now. Able to get water and gas for heat all by myself. 

I'm still figuring out the best way to heat my apartment here. I have options.

• Very expensive diesel to heat the boilers for the radiators. Most people I know run their radiators for an hour in the mornings and an hour in the evenings to help take the edge off the cold...but no more than that because it's just too expensive to do more than that.
• Split AC unit that can run heat. I have two of these: one in the living room and one in the kitchen/office. I can't run both at the same time nor can I run the washer/dryer while one of the units is on. It blows a fuse. And it really only gets the room to about 63 degrees F. 
• Propane gas space heater called a soba. The cheapest option: a tank costs me $7 and I go through a tank about every 3 weeks or so. 
• Electric space heaters that take the edge off a small room like my glassed-in balcony or my bathroom.
• Electric blanket to warm up my bed.
• Hot water bottles to snuggle up under a blanket... don't really cost a thing and really help to warm up the body. They're great in early mornings and at night when it's just me in the apartment. 

Right now, it's averaging mid-40's outside and mid-50's inside my apartment with no heat. I've figured out that it takes both the soba and the split unit together to get my living room to be bearable in the evenings (67 degrees). But if it's raining, or once the temps drop more and the snow arrives... I need to use the radiators. Knowing about the expense, I've actually been saving up for months to be able to afford to pay it. 

As I won't get the electricity bill nor the diesel bill until winter is already over, I won't know at all during this first winter what it's cost me to stay warm. But just like I've figured out how to get water and how to get a gas tank... I'll figure this out too and next winter I'll know for certain how much things cost and what's the best way to heat my little rooftop igloo. 

I love my little rooftop apartment, even if it is an igloo in the winter. 

Call it a day

Nearly 7 years ago I got a job that put me on the computer way more than I'd ever been. Working on the computer all day long caused any desire to be on the computer more for blogging to disappear. But I found that I missed it. As an internal processor, I was having a hard time processing all my thoughts. I felt like my creative side was drying up (or being used up by work). 

I decided to try to get back into that rhythm that was once such a good outlet for me. Telling the stories of my daily life via the written word put out into the webosphere for hardly anyone to read.

Today was a day. A day I wanted to crawl back into bed and hope that tomorrow would turn out better. You see, I'm not so great with all the techie things, and today it felt like the tech world and digital world (if those are different things) were against me.

I can't get my VPN to work, which means some websites open up in Arabic, and my Arabic is not good enough for me to read the page to know how to switch it to English. It also means that, for example, I can't use Google Voice because Google Voice can tell I'm not in the US and it's app doesn't work where I live. 

My LastPass master password wasn't working. But I couldn't get anything from the website to help me and I finally had to uninstall the whole app and reinstall it and reset my master password and to be honest... I still don't know if LastPass is working on my computer yet because I just needed to walk away for a minute.

The airline I booked a future flight to Torino with wrote to tell me that they cancelled my flight for the 28th and rebooked me on a flight for the 29th... to Rome, which is not where I need to go. When I tried to change my hotel to cancel the night of the 28th, they want to charge me more money for staying less nights... so when I asked if I could keep the night of the 28th but not check in until the 29th, a sweet Italian girl called me... and I couldn't understand her English.

I got a new iPad, which I worked hard to set up, hoping that all my information from my iPhone would just move right over to the new iPad but no... it didn't. But since my LastPass isn't working, I can't get signed in to anything on the new toy and had to just walk away for a minute.

My landlord came over to fix a few broken things. I asked him for the second time this week if he could please set up things with the boiler so that I can have heat (albeit expensive heat)... he keeps trying to convince me to just use the electric heater. Which I'm doing, but I can't run the heater and any other major thing (like a washing machine or a vacuum) at the same time or it blows the fuse. So I have to sit and freeze while my clothes dry. (How cold is it, you ask? 45 degrees F outside, 55 degrees F inside my house. And just going to get colder. I want the real heat from the boiler, not from a space heater.)

The funny thing with my landlord is that he thinks I fully understand Arabic now because I've been taking some classes. I can count to 20 and say my basic colors and name some fruit... but he thinks I fully understand everything he says in Arabic to an electrician on the phone with the speaker on. 

All of this on a day when I have a massive headache because I probably have a concussion from walking into a glass door yesterday. Yeah, that happened. The glass front door to my building is always open and yesterday, for the first time in 8 months, it wasn't. I was on my phone and just walked smack into it. I'm kind of surprised it didn't shatter. I hit it hard enough that I saw stars and had to hold onto it while making sure that I hadn't completely knocked myself out. I have a nice little goose-egg and bruise and a mighty sized headache. 

So any of the things above would've given a headache... but all of them together greatly aggravated the one that I already have. 

But... the landlord fixed my shutters that were stuck and wouldn't close. He had the electrician change three of my outlets to be European outlets instead of local ones. (I've been plugging space heaters into power strips that are plugged in with an adapter... I guess starting an electrical fire would be one way to stay warm!) I convinced him to get the boiler set up for me to have the good (but expensive heat), and I showed him where the roof leaks onto my glassed-in balcony when it rains hard. It felt like a productive day.

So while I may not have a functioning iPad yet or know what my master Password is or resolved all my flight/hotel issues for Italy... I'm not frozen. I'm 3 outlets closer to not burning down my apartment via electrical fire. I can close my shutters. I got some actual work done. And I've gotten good enough at faking it that I understand what's going on in Arabic that my landlord thinks I understand everything he says. 

We can call it a day.