Even if the third time is the charm, I'd rather not find out.

Take a moment to look at the Before & After image above. Now, imagine a light fixture exactly like the "Before", except filled with tea-colored water and soggy chunks of drywall, and swinging on a three foot long wire below the "After", distributing the aforementioned water and chunks in wide arcs all across my kitchen. The sound of that event beginning is what woke me up this morning five minutes before my alarm went off.

In order to explain, I will have to back up. At about 1:45 this morning, I was roused from my bed by an all too familiar sound: rain. Coming out of the ceiling fan above my desk. Yes, again. I rescued my chair and my computer (again), distributed buckets and towels (again) and proceeded to call the emergency maintenance line (again). There was no one upstairs, so I couldn't turn off whatever was leaking until the maintenance guy showed up. The recording said I would be called in an hour, so I waited, and while waiting, fell asleep. I woke several times, but no call.

Eventually, one of the light fixtures in the kitchen gave up the ghost and fell out of the ceiling. I went out into the kitchen/office/living room and found that not only was there dirty water and fragments of drywall everywhere in the kitchen, but every single drywall seam in the ceiling was highlighted by a water stain, and water was dripping from two additional places in the ceiling as well as forming a six inch diameter bubble behind the paint on the wall. (I also found out later that water was leaking out of the bottom of the wall in my closet, and that my closet door is now unwilling to open when closed and equally unwilling to close again once opened.)

I called the maintenance line (again). Finally, after six hours the maintenance guy showed up only to reveal that the line to the ice machine in the refrigerator upstairs had broken (again). Yes, the same one they "fixed" before. I was delighted to see a six foot diameter puddle patiently waiting to proceed downstairs into my apartment. Maintenance guy leaves, maintenance guy returns half an hour later with a shop vac and cleans up the puddle, maintenance guy cuts down the light fixture in the kitchen, maintenance guy leaves. His parting words? "Some one will come on Monday to paint."

If anybody needs me, I'll be spending tomorrow in my apartment cleaning up the boot-shaped patches of drywall that are everywhere in my apartment.