Part 2: This is why I don't own a house.

Part 1 (if you missed it).

Part Two.....

About 30 minutes later the dog starts going crazy and 30 seconds after that there was pounding on the door. I excused myself to go lock up the dog and returned to let the maintence man in.

He takes one look at the ceiling, mutters something in Not English, and leaves. He left my house. He looked at the ceiling and left my house.

He arrives back 5 minutes later with a ladder and what could only be an enlarged pumpkin carving knife (you know, the kind with teeth on both sides). He climbs up on the ladder(I'm totally not sure why, since this guy was HUGE and the ladder only really raised him about half a foot). He then proceeds to hack a hole in the ceiling:

Just in case you were wondering exactly what is in that hole:

So once he's carved out a nice hunk of my ceiling, he proceeds to jam his huge bear-paw-of-a-hand up in there.... and he yelps like a girl, curses in Not English, grabs one bear paw in the other and looks at me: HOT! Apparently it was the hot water pipe that was leaking. He continues cursing. I spend the next 45 minutes watching him jam his hands in the ceiling. Water continues to leak out. Drywall dust continues to fly all over the place. The maintence man continues to curse, answer his phone, and go back and forth between my house and the maintence office for more supplies. This charade goes on for another 15 minutes, and then he announces - Finshed!

Great. He then explains that the hot water pipe was hot (oh, really?) and he couldn't really get a good grip on it, but it's probably fixed. He then heads towards the door.

Me: Um, what about the hole in my ceiling?
Maintence Dude: Drywall on Monday.
Me: OK, but what about the hole for right now?
Maintence Dude: Monday.
Me: No, now. We need to cover it with something now.
Maintence Dude: Mon-
Me: NOW.

So he goes out to the maintence office and brings back a cardboard box and some duct tape and fashions a hole cover for the ceiling. I wish I had a picture of that disaster, but I didn't think to take one. Probably because I expected that the drywall people would just come on Monday and that would be that.

But that would be waaaaaaay too easy, wouldn't it. The last installment to come...