I Love My Landlord

My landlord, Valerie, is the nicest landlord in the world. Not only does she do my laundry (for a modest fee) and clean my place (for an additional modest fee), but she also works hard to make me feel at home in this gigantic 1970's Soviet-style concrete slab.

For instance, soon after I moved in, she put this on the wall across the hall from my front door:



Some people have speculated that it is meant to signal to the other tenants that "The American lives on this floor, do not anger him or he will shoot you in the face with his chest-high gun." However, I think she put it there as a way to say to me "Have a nice day, American cowboy person, and please don't shoot me!" every time I leave my apartment.

Valerie will often change the plants in the apartment, which doesn't really do much for me because I didn't even notice there were any plants in the apartment until a couple of months ago when they all started to die. She also changes the magnets on the fridge, and rotates in a series of pictures of Key West. All of her efforts really make the place more pleasant, which is a significant factor in her being my all-time favorite landlord.

But the coup de grâce, the thing that put her over the top, was when I noticed that she had put this on the big potted plant in the living room:



I don't know how long it's been there, but after closer inspection I knew exactly what it was:



God I miss Alf.