Second verse, same as the first...

...a little bit louder and a little bit worse.

Jackhammer and saw, day four: when the cleaning ladies begin to comment about how bad the noise is, you know things are getting desperate.

Seminar today began with a gripe session by the residents of Richmond Place about our 9-to-5 asphalt cutting, the workman who likes to sing over his jackhammer, and the 11-to-6 scheduled water outage today, which was necessary to fix the problem created Monday. At least there was warning this time, and hopefully no one was caught in the shower, but the outage created at least one problem...

"Anyone know about the loo situation?" was asked in the kitchen this afternoon.
You got one flush, just enough to empty whatever was stored in the tank. After that, there was no loo activity until the water was turned back on, which meant potentially seven hours without functional toilets. Fortunately, the water came back by 3:30, but there was a bizarre form of rationing in the meantime, and several defected entirely.

Tonight, with the power tools silenced and the water restored, I relaxed to "Fame Academy," an Idol-esque show benefiting Comic Relief. Unlike the Idol clones, however, this show takes British celebrities of questionable fame and makes them sing. I laughed. I cried. I wanted to throw a plate at the television to make the warbling stop. The costumes were almost universally bad. But the nice thing was that suddenly I felt much better about my own voice.

Schadenfreude's theraputic at times, such as jackhammer days.