Blazin'

It's been in the 30s at night, yet I've been sleeping with two fans on and the window beside my bed wide open. I still wake up about 4 a.m. covered in sweat.

In an attempt to punish the new owners of my apartment building the manager is punishing me with heat. (Well, this is my theory anyway.)

Porterhouse Apartments has been run by on-premise manager Jim for about 25 years. He keeps a meticulous yard, is a master plumber and an all around true jack of all trades. Jim seems able to repair just about anything, and install new flooring while he's at it. What's more, he's super friendly, and whenever there is a problem you just call up Jim on his cell. He's great to have around.

But about a month ago we residents were notified with a note on our doors (rife with typos) that the building now has a new owner and that we need to start mailing our rent to them, rather than walk it across the courtyard to Jim.

Sure enough, the Auditor's Website says the property was bought for a cool $1.7 million to CliftonRents last month. This ends decades of family ownership by the Castleberrys, who still appear to own lots of expensive property in Cincinnati. My building was name for the son, Porter Castleberry. Hence the name Porterhouse Apartments.

(Side note: Imagine if your last name was Castleberry... and your family was rich to boot. What a fairy tale. It's hard for me to imagine people have those lives - Oh, I'm just going to my big fat Castleberry mansion in the sky. Ahhh.)

But back to the story... So Jim is very upset about this sale. (As I am... I love Jim!) The family kinda snuck around and sold the building, and now he's unsure of his standing. CliftonRents has its own maintenance people and they haven't been particularly forthright with him about what will happen.

So I think downtrodden Jim has been cranking the heat in civil disobedience. It is seriously blazing hot in my apartment half the time. While everyone else is snuggled up in down comforters with the windows locked tight, I'm kicking the sheet off me and I have the window wide open.

I don't pay heat so I can't control it. I figure Clifton Rents will figure this out soon enough and I'll be freezing when they cut off the gravy train. So I'm not really complaining, but it's kind of weird to look outside through an open window at 11 at night knowing it's 25 degrees outside.