Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Snow Problem!

Maya before her hair straightening and after. Instagram gives a grainy appearance
No school for a second day as the secondary roads are unplowed still

My second favorite bedroom in the new house. All gold walls and ceiling and a large Palladian window. We will put the white bedroom set in here. What bedspread goes with gold besides white? I just gave up my burgundy spread..maybe I should ask for it back. Or I could go with the maize and blue look.....Note how high up the smoke detector is.

Ms Maya. She will come to see the new house today. Maybe I will bring the Ziggle so she can tool around the huge basement

My spa tub. I actually inherited a bunch of blue bath mats. We do have some shaggy tan towels for now. Sending Steve out for some white towels. The other 3 bathrooms are turquoise.
All this snow!!!! And now we have a driveway that has about five times the area as our current one. Steve awoke early to having snow drifts block our door. He couldn't see any evidence that he spent hours cleaning things the day before making him very crabby. One of the factors in selecting a house was no more west facing houses as the prevailing storm winds can be especially bothersome. Yet we just bought our third west facing house. When will we learn? So more hours of shoveling here and after a hectic day full of additional problems, the snow plows came through filling our driveway with a huge wall of snow. Thanks for that.

The street we will live on was plowed. However the driveway had some huge drifts and lots and lots of snow. I proposed just shoveling a path so we could unload the car while Steve found someone to plow the driveway..unlikely on such a busy day. While I shoveled (this being the exercise for the day), he went door to door trying to get names of services. While I was shoveling (I had almost made it to the garage), a neighbor with a snow blower (boy do we need one of those though we have to wait until people forget that it snows in Michigan)offering to do our driveway. . We really owe this sweet young man something. Steve is out finding a suitable gift basket. One factor making this easier is that the driveway is outlined with tall fiberglass poles. Otherwise, we wouldn't know where to begin. The walkway is not outlined so that needs to be done. Exercise for today I guess. It is a Y day but I bet I can't park. We had plenty of snow last year but never so much at one time. The stuff never melted in between 4 inches here, 6 inches there but the neighborhood cars at least could pack it down resulting in a snow pack that didn't disappear until late March.

Meanwhile, while our sweet neighbor dealt with the driveway while Steve shoveled, I went inside to the sound of incessant beeping. One of the many smoke detectors needs a battery but it is way up there (Steve is buying a fix for that as I type). And then I try to turn on the heat noting that it is only 48 inside (did Steve make it so cold?). It does NOT go on. I search the house for a manual on the thermostat. Am I doing something wrong? The fan goes on but blows cold air. Did the energy company turn off the gas (we were having problems negotiating with them) but the gas stove still worked. Did the pilot light go out? Learned that this furnace does not have one. Eventually Steve came in but he doesn't know anything more about furnaces than I do. I call the seller. No help. I call the guy who is working on our old house. He was busy plowing properties (good to know for the future until we can get a snow blower) and offered some suggestions that didn't help. We were really, really mad. We buy this alleged problem free house and already have  a very big issue. There is a service sticker on the furnace. We call it and they will send someone right way. We also called the realtor as the home has a warranty. What do we need to do to get reimbursed? Well for starters, we could only use their approved vendors. Steve is put on hold forever with the home warranty folks while with the other phone I cancel the service call as I don't know if they will be covered. Steve is still on hold and I read the thermostat book again (it is amazingly thick and complicated with all these programming modes). I note that it says that the whole system might not work if the battery is weak. Stop the presses! Buy some batteries..miles away as we will be living IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Also, buy me some food as a one hour adventure has morphed into three and I haven't eaten.

Well the batteries worked. What a stupid system! No heat if the battery gets weak? But after much wasted time (which we are running out of), problem solved.

As for our fight (our very silent fight), we had to deal with each other  trying to solve the heat problem. He apologized later that night (unsolicited) for being crabby, which in itself is a rarity. Usually his apologies have a big but in them as in but you did so and so and.....which to me negates the apology but no buts.

The battery place was next to a reasonable deli though I was so hungry, anything would taste good.

We made another trip later that day and tried to eat at the only restaurant within 3 miles. Bonus: we had a coupon. Downside, even though their lot was nicely plowed, there was a hand written note on the door explaining why it was closed. Didn't read it. Back home to some avogolemmo soup.

A new paper shredder. My modus operandi? Type a bit here, shred a bucket full of paper. Type more as the engine cools.

Today's chore? unloading everything that the movers will move or at least getting it out of the way. We will also pick up some barstools that we ordered the other day so the kitchen island will be our table until we figure out what to buy. We aren't bringing our shaky table. The dining room table will be the same until we replace it.

1 comment:

Elephant's Child said...

Arrrgh.
Glad you got the heating sorted, a nice neighbour and an apology from Steve.
In the middle of the chaos, three positives. Which I hope are followed by many more.

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