Last weekend, we discovered water on the floor of our basement. This, naturally, precipitated a call to the landlord. He couldn't come out because he needed to take his kid to Little League practice, or some such, but he came out the next morning.

There was no apparent leak in the plumbing; all the pipes were dry. There was some moisture on the cinderblock walls near the floor, but it looked like osmosis had pulled the water up. He promised to call his plumber friend and have him out that evening.

The week dragged on, without any visit or phone call from the plumbers, and the moisture on the floor slowly dried up, removing any clues to its origin.

Today, Saturday, the water returned. After the sixth call to the landlord, he finally got the plumbers to come out. Their opinion was that the foundation wasn't sealed properly, and the heavy rains had saturated the ground enough that it was coming in through the cinderblocks. I relayed their verdict to the landlord.

"Okay, I'll have someone out Monday to clean the gutters."

"Gutters?!" I exploded. "This is coming in underground. The plumbers said the walls aren't sealed! How is cleaning the gutters going to help?"

"Well, you know, it's been awful wet lately. Record rainfall. I'll have someone out Monday." Click.

This after we told him two months ago that the carport ceiling has come loose and is sagging further and further down, and that the tree in the backyard dropped a huge dead limb, and there's another dead limb right over the power lines. When he came over Monday, I made him look at them. He did fix the carport, to his credit, and said he'd have his tree service friend come out.

Well, the friend came out Thursday, took a dismayed look at the tree, and said, "He said this job would only need an eight-foot stepladder. I'm probably gonna have to take the whole tree down. And I don't see any way to get it out of the yard, cause you've only got that little gate on the fence." He and another guy came over later that evening to stare at the tree some more.

I know there are worse landlords out there, but it's extremely frustrating to deal with this guy. He's lucky I'm not a tenant in the same building where he lives; I'd be sorely tempted to reprise Michael Keaton's role in Pacific Heights.