Cold and Dark, Clean and Shiny, Battle won

Brrr it’s cold. I took the bus to work this morning. It was still very dark out when I left the house at 7. It was cold too. I guess I might need to take my winter jacket out of hibernation tomorrow. I always put off taking out my winter jacket for as long as possible because I know that once I take it out for the season, there’s no going back. It’s like admitting that “yes, summer is really over, and I won’t actually be outside during the daylight hours again until next March.” I think that we are changing the clocks next weekend too, so I guess we will have a little bit extra light in the mornings, but that won’t last long.

We spent the whole weekend cleaning our apartment. I have never actually leased an apartment 1st hand in the US, but as I understand it, you have to pay a deposit up front, and you don’t usually get much of your deposit back when you move out. It works differently in Sweden. You don’t pay a deposit, however, they inspect your apartment when you move out and they will send you a bill for any damages. They will also bill you if the apartment is not properly cleaned, which means that you have to scrub every little nook and cranny if you want to avoid extra charges. We spent hours cleaning the apartment (not just this past weekend, but several weekends since moving out.) Now the oven looks like it has been never been used (almost,) the tub is shiny, and the windows are so clear that they are a hazard for birds. I also carefully dusted the tops of the doorjambs and hinges, the floor molding, the lights, everywhere. I dare say that the apartment is clinically clean. It’s such a relief to have it finished so that we can focus on other things, like the new house!

We finally won our battle with Telia! You may recall our little phone/internet/TV dilemma? We finally got phone and internet about 1 month after moving in; however, Telia told us that we could not get TV because the “hub is full on our street.” The thing is, we decided to hire Telia because we would get free TV for one year (if we signed up for phone and internet.) We also signed up for everything last July. Needless to say, we were pretty peeved when Telia suddenly told us that they could not provide television as promised! We told them that we wanted 4,000+ SEK in compensation (because that is how much Telia charges for TV for one year.) Well, they actually agreed to give us the money! So on Friday we used the money to sign up for TV with a competitor (Boxer.) Although dealing with Telia has been a real headache, everything worked out for the best. We had originally wanted to hire Boxer as our TV provider because they offer a couple of more channels (channels that we wanted) but we had decided that we could live without those channels in order to save money (since Telia was offering free TV.) Now we still got one year of TV for free, plus we are getting those extra channels that we wanted! So if you’re keeping score, that’s Big Corporation: 1,000,000 points; Consumer: 1 point. Yes!