The Smell that Surrounds You

It was an interesting weekend. Dana and I spent most of the time lounging in front of the TV or playing Guitar Hero. We're both becoming pretty decent at the game, both being about half way through career mode on medium now. We also did some shopping and cooked up a good bit of chili which was both a dinner on Sunday night and 3 ready-made lunches for Dana and I this week.

Before bed on Sunday night, Dana came out of the bedroom with a disgusted look on her face. Both our bathrooms had an awful smell to them like backed-up sewage or something. Close examinations of the toilets, sinks, and the tub didn't reveal any obvious sources, neither did a cursory examination of the rest of the rooms. We called the maintenance people who said that the most likely cause would be a back-up of the system (for which there were no obvious signs) or a dried J trap under a sink letting in gasses from the sewer line. Running both sinks, checking all pipes for leaks, flushing the toilets, and running the tub didn't alleviate the problem.

Finally, we closed the bathroom doors, stuffed towels under them to prevent gasses from leaking into the rest of the apartment and went to bed. Lo and behold, this morning the bathrooms didn't smell bad: In fact, they both smelled nice! It's good that our place doesn't stink like sewage, but the engineer in me is disappointed that we couldn't find a root cause for it. Plus, the maintenance people are going to take a look at it today, see that there is no bad smell to be found anywhere, and conclude that we are completely crazy.

The repair guy for Raymour and Flannigan is coming over tomorrow to (finally) repair our damaged couch. We've had the thing for like 3 months now with a damaged corner, and it's just now getting fixed. They sell you on how great their warranty package is, but don't tell you how inconvenient it is for you to exercise that warranty. At least they haven't forgotten about it.