Putting the super in...

When I got back to New York it was as cold outside as it had been in Calgary, and in that kind of weather my apartment is fuh-reezing. So I called the landlord and asked him to turn up the boiler and he ended up sending the super to my apartment. Actually, two supers - they often show up in pairs, and always Russian. I was in a bad mood because I had been putting out fires since I had arrived back in town (work, school, banks, credit cards, the Department of Housing, etc. etc.), and when they rang my doorbell I was literally on the phone with visa and unpacking and had the shower running (it takes a few minutes to warm up) trying to get ready for work. So I was kind of short with them. And they tinkered around with my radiators (which I had already told the landlord work perfectly fine) and spoke Russian, of which I could glean just enough to know that they weren't complaining about me. And then they wandered over to my sink and I rolled my eyes and shut off the shower and sat down and started catching up on emails. It turns out they were fixing my sink (again), just because they remembered that it breaks all the time. And they told me that the boiler in this building can't be turned up anymore, but they knew of an electric heater lying around somewhere and would bring it by this week. That kind of gratuitous niceness kills me every time.