Signed, Seal, and Delivered

Or at least signed. Since Meg apparently doesn't like being held in suspense...On Sunday morning I went to my landlord's office to sign an extension of the lease. The situation was actually a bit peculiar. My landlord is actually the legally appointed guardian for the real landlord who suffered a stroke shortly before we originally moved in to the apartment. When I arrived to sign the lease, the legal appointee was on the way to the hospital as the landlord's health was failing. I spoke with the appointee and we agreed that the appointee's assistant would sign the lease in the appointee's name. I'm not sure how legal the whole thing was, but I figure as long as we were in agreement it should be fine. As I was leaving the assistant's office we received a phone call informing us that the landlord had passed away. It is slightly intriguing to me that if I had arrived an hour later (after the landlord had passed away) I probably would not have been able to sign the lease as at that point the legal appointee would no longer have authority and the landlord's lease would need to be enforced to determine ownership of the apartment. I'm hoping that everything pretty much stays the same when ownership of the apartment gets sorted out. I mean, we do have a legal lease. I think.

Also, happy birthday Mom. I love you.

Signing On Sunday

When I wrote my last post I was reasonably upset. As such, I was probably a little too harsh on my landlord. Despite our previous differences, the e-mail was apologetic, and I do believe the landlord that the whole deal with the government worker came as a surprise and was not malicious. At worst, our landlord is simply not very experienced.

Over the past week I have been e-mailing with the landlord in an attempt to convince the government worker that because the apartment involves additional costs (things that should be fixed that cause us additional expense) it is reasonable to leave the rent at its present level. Our landlord could have passed the buck and blamed the rent hike on the government worker or emphasized the fact that the government worker wanted the rent raised even higher, but instead our landlord helped us out and the other day we heard back that the government worker approved keeping the rent at its current level.

We sign the extension first thing Sunday morning. Let’s hope nothing changes before then.

Not Happy

I was going to write a nice long post about Lex and Lauren, their new child, and Lex's kindred spirit (who I found online). That post will have to wait though as I just got an e-mail from our landlord that really brought me down.

We had basically agreed on extending the lease and were set to have a meeting on Tuesday night to wrap up the details and sign. The terms of the lease were going to stay the same except that we were going to request that either the landlords fix the problem that prevents the apartment from receiving hot water in the winter from the building's central heating, or to lower the rent to cover the cost of heating water in an electric boiler.

Tonight the landlord e-mails and says that she is bound legally to have the lease approved by another party because she is acting on behalf of her father, and that party is requiring her to raise the rent. This may be legitimate but it still has really pissed me off.

The pissed-offiness is compounded by the fact that we have had several problems with our landlord over the course of the year and are model tenants. We pay the rent on time, cause no damage, are clean, and get along with the neighbors.

We thought that our living situation was relatively settled until Michelle finished her degree. Now I'm not so sure.

Spread The News

Lex and Lauren have a baby!

Blame It On Barak

Blame it on Barak. Not the former Prime Minister of Israel, but the ISP. As I noted earlier after we had switched ISPs we began to experience packet loss and weren't able to stream the slingbox. We knew the problem was with our ISP because friends on different ISPs were able to stream the slingbox without problem.

After a couple of rounds of tech support we finally solved the problem. Barak assumes that most of its customers are Israeli and thus surf Israeli sites (in Hebrew) or occasionally some European sites. As such, the default account is optimized for accessing Israeli and European sites. Reaching US sites takes slightly longer as the request takes a more circuitous route. If people are surfing in Israel and Europe it doesn't really hurt, and Barak doesn't have to pay for more direct routes to the US. In our case, however, it did make a significant difference both for the slingbox and our normal web usage. Once tech support recognized the problem they were able to set us up on a specialized account optimized to the US. If you are having problems with Barak I suggest you call them and explain what the problem might be.

In the meantime we'll be watching our new favorite shows on the slingbox (Studio 60, Heroes, and Jericho). Now if only Scrubs would premier already.

Pre Internet Solution Post

With the help of Barak tech support we have solved our Internet problems. A full report of the solution will follow shortly.

Sukkot is Here

Yep. Sukkot is right around the corner. Avid readers of Michelle's blog may have seen pictures of the prefab Sukkah that we built. The pre-fab Sukkot are great and almost everybody has them. On the night after Yom Kippur when we put up most of the Sukkah, you could hear the cling-cling-cling of other people hammering down their pre-fab pieces as well. I must admit though, it does kind of feel like cheating. Our ancestors used these Sukkot as shelter while they harvested the fall crop. Heck, 10 years ago people were still banging 2x4s together to make a Sukkah. I think it took us a total of 15 minutes. And that includes unwrapping the poles.

One of the nicest things about Sukkot in Jerusalem is, well, the Sukkot. They are everywhere. We are eating in ours tonight, and then I have taken upon the mission of eating in every single Sukkah the city has to offer. It's like speed dating, only with food. And Sukkot. And they don't bring the Sukkot to you. I'm going to try anyways.