When we arrived Sunday afternoon, John greeted his parents, Kevin, and
me outside St. Mary’s Seminary, then he jokingly told us that he’d reserved “penitential
suites” for us. He had no idea how true
that would be, at least for Kevin and me.
Our room was freezing cold
when we got there at a little after 8pm Sunday March 9, 2014. We couldn’t get the heat to stay on for more
than maybe five minutes, tops. I was
sitting in the armchair in our room reading while Kevin lay on the bed
listening to music on his MP3 player. I
wrapped up in my big white scarf and draped my winter coat over my legs.
Kevin would get up, turn the
heat on at the control panel for the heating/cooling unit in our room, then sit
back down for a whole two to five minutes before it would cut off, again. I’d have to tell him it had clicked off
because he couldn’t hear it with his earbuds in. He’d get back up and try a few of the other
buttons, turned the temperature up to 80 then 90 to see if that did
anything. Usually the heat would come on
for a few more minutes, but that was it.
When he wasn’t fiddling with
the thermostat, Kevin tried to set the big radio alarm clock on the nightstand
by the bed. Apparently, you could only
go forwards to set the time, and for some bizarre reason, it skipped over the
eight o’clock hour completely. This prevented
Kevin from setting the clock to the correct time, according to his atomic
watch, which read 8:17.
A few minutes later Kevin
realized, no doubt from his excellent vantage point from the thermostat, that
the digital alarm clock had actually gone backwards two minutes. The two of us were laughing so hard we were
both doubled over. Every time the heat
kicked off, we started a new round of LOL.
At one point, Kevin said: “It
feels like it’s getting a bit warmer.”
“No,” I told him. “You just feel a little warmer because you’re
up every couple minutes to try and get the heat to work.”
I took the bag with our
toiletries into the bathroom and discovered yet another peculiar feature of the
penitential suite. The water when on
full-force was not coming out enough that I could rinse the soap off of my
hands. Our prospects for showering
weren’t looking good, but at least there was enough water pressure coming out
of the bathtub spigot that I could get the soap off of my hands, and for that I
was truly grateful.
There was an ice bucket in
our room, so Kevin went to find the ice machine. He returned with an empty bucket, having
searched our floor and not found any ice.
It was probably just as well since we were already feeling pretty cold.
Kevin propped up the three
inch panel blind that had fallen on the floor at such an angle that we didn’t
have quite so much light coming in from the parking lot below.
It wasn’t long after that
when John texted us to ask if everything was okay with our room and if we
wanted him to bring us anything from the lounge.
I texted back: “We’d both
like something hot to drink. Can we meet
you there? There’s heat in the lounge,
right?”
Yes, the lounge had heat and
hot tea. John made us each a nice hot
cup of Sleepytime tea, and the three of us sat and talked for a bit. One of his seminarian friends overheard us mention
about the lack of heat in the room where we were staying and offered us a small
space heater he had. He went to get it
for us before we went back up to the penitential suite.
Fortunately, we turned on the
little portable unit for more than half an hour during which time the Kevin
finally figured out how to reset the thermostat. During the half an hour or so that we had
both the portable heater and the heat in the room working, it warmed up
nicely. We gave the small unit back to
John to return to his friend. I consider
it a major plus that we didn’t need to keep it on all night since with the luck
we were having it probably would have caught on fire or at least set off the
smoke alarm and sprinklers.
We insisted John take a look
at the water coming out of the bathroom faucet.
He was totally baffled by the ridiculous trickle. I was satisfied I’d proved my point. After we talked a little more, John bid us
goodnight, telling us to let him know if we weren’t able to take a shower in
the morning due to a serious lack of water pressure.
The next day, we met the
friar who was staying in the room next to us when we met John for breakfast in
the refectory. We asked the gentleman if
his room had heat. He said that it had
been very cold. We inquired about the
water pressure in his bathroom, and he said it was great and that the water came
out hot right away.
Apparently,
they have some adjustments to make in some of the rooms in the Center for
Continuing Formation wing of St. Mary’s Seminary and University. Either that or they should let people know
that part of their stay will include putting up with a number of standard issue
things not working correctly in their rooms.
If the latter is indeed the intention, a little support group held at a
certain time on each floor might help create community and greater camaraderie. I’m just sayin’
