My Apartment

My apartment is off of Rt 52. Its kind of Japanese style – with tatame mats in three of the rooms. There are two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and a large bathroom. Its probably almost twice the size of our apartment in Evanston. The space is great, but the tatame mats create a strange smell that is distinctly Japanese. There’s no hot-water heater in the apartment. If I want hot water, I have to turn on the gas and heat the water as needed. Its different, but I’ve gotten used to it. The one problem appliance is the clothes washer (there’s no dishwasher). I have what must be the first washer in Japan. Calling it automatic is a stretch. I turn on the hose to fill the wash chamber, put clothes and soap in, and set the timer. Once it gets going, it just sort of swishes the clothes around – kind of slowly. If I stuck my arms into the washer during its cycle, I would be in absolutely no danger. Once its done swishing, the clothes just sit there in the soapy water. I then have to move them over to the rinse chamber. I haven’t quite figured this part out. Basically the idea is to rinse and spin at the same time, but I’m not sure if I should keep the water going as it spins or fill it up with water and let it drain as it spins or some combination of the two. I think I need to sabotage it so the Board of Education will get me a new one. I mean, I would gladly pay for it, but I don’t think they would go to the trouble of helping to get me a new washer unless the old one was broken beyond repair. So the sabotage will have to be bad enough to make it not worth repairing, but not so bad that they suspect foul play…