UCLA Housing

For awhile now, our hall light hasn't been working. That's not right -- it works sporadically. One day, you'll walk in the door, flip the switch, and bask in the electric glow. The next day, you'll walk in the door, flip the switch, realize nothing happened, flip the switch again, realize that just stopped the electricity flow, flip the switch again, get mad that there's no light, feel your way around the corner, hit your hip on the kitchen table, and finally stumble to the switch for the kitchen light, turn that on, and go on to whatever it was you were going to do. We were coping with this inconsistent behavior, mainly because we were too lazy to call UCLA Housing Maintenance to come fix it. The impetus for action came last Saturday when our kitchen light also burned out. Since it's one of those long, neon tube lights, we had to call maintenance to replace it. Of course, being a Saturday, we had to wait until Monday to call, leaving us to spend our weekend in the dark, which actually isn't as romantic as you might think. Monday morning, I called maintenance and placed a work order.
Thursday morning I called again because the maintenance man still hadn't come. We spent the other three days not knowing what we were cooking or eating because we couldn't see anything in the kitchen. You should see our dishes. I talked to the lady in the maintenance office, who put me on hold. When she came back, she said the maintenance man was on break, and that he would call her when he was done. Ok. When I got back from school, it was clear the maintenance man had been there. Not because the lights were fixed, but because the lights were dismantled and placed on our floor. There was no maintenance man in sight. I figured he maybe had just gone to lunch or something, so I waited. Two hours later, I called the maintenance office again. After putting me on hold, the lady told me they were still trying to contact the mechanic and they would call me back. A short time later, she did call back. She said the mechanic would be right over, but it would be a different mechanic than the one that was here this morning. In other words, if I hadn't of called, they would never have known that the mechanic took off half way through the job, leaving our light fixtures strewn about the floor.
The new mechanic arrived and was very nice. He asked me what was wrong and I told him. When I showed him the kitchen light he said, "Oh, the other guy told me had already fixed that. I don't have any bulbs with me." So, he went to work on the hall light. He took apart the light switch, looked at the breaker box, and then asked me what time he could come back tomorrow. In other words, we still can't see, but we now have the added obstacle of trying to walk around disorganized light fixtures in the dark.
As a result, Lorein came up with this joke, which I thought was pretty funny.
Q: How many mechanics does it take to change a light bulb?
A: I'll tell you in the morning.
I guess it's not that funny by itself, but it's pretty good when taken in context.

One of our lovely broken light fixtures

Chris doing dishes in our kitchen--do you think they're clean yet?