Jason's post reminded me of our experience living in a manse in Pittsburgh. A manse is a house that a church owns for its pastor and family to live in. Some churches offer it as an option, but with our church it was sort of mandatory. It was an interesting experience and allowed us to save up lots of money to buy our house, but we definitely had some interesting experiences.

This story is my favorite. I noticed a leak one day coming from the ceiling light fixture in the office room. Leaks seem bad. Water and electricity seem bad, so we told the maintenance guy. Took him a few weeks, but he finally came over. Looked at it, declared he didn't know where the leak was coming from and shut off the electricity to the light. The leak continued and a neat little crack circling the light fixture appeared. Again, we urge the maintenance guy to look at it. He pulls down the light fixture, pokes around in the ceiling and declares that he doesn't know where the leak is coming from. Leaves the light fixture dangling from the ceiling by the electrical wires. Now a lot of water is pouring from the hole when it rains or snows, so we have to keep a bucket underneath. Again, we suggest to the maintenance guy that he do something. So he comes over and removes the light fixture altogther and doesn't fix the leak. Now there is a big hole in the ceiling where the light used to be and there is also a crack running the diagonal length of the room with lots of little tributary cracks. Water is leaking all along this crack and there are not enough pots and pans to collect all the water so I just let it leak into the carpet. Eventually paint starts peeling from the ceiling and dangling by big flakes and the cracks continue to widen. One night in bed, I heard a thunderous crash downstairs. I didn't bother to get up. I knew the ceiling in the room had finally fallen down. In the morning, I found chunks of plaster all over the floor. A 3' x 4' chunk of ceiling plaster had fallen from the ceiling. We let the maintenance guy know and he comes over, cleans up the plaster and tidies up the hole in the ceiling. Still, does not fix the hole or leak. And so it remained until we moved from Buffalo. I think from start to finish, this fun event took place over a 6 month period.

So now, when people ask if we live in a manse in Buffalo, I say no and laugh hysterically. I will never live in a manse again (*knock on wood*).