Friday, March 02, 2007
Let's Focus On That Other Element Instead
The weather out there has been craptacular. Why do I care? Let me tell you.
In an effort to drum up a bit of business for our shop and pay some bills, not to mention ourselves, we decided to send out mailers to our client base and have a sale this week. That's nearly 2,000 postcards that we had printed, plus the same amount of stamps to mail them, plus the designer's fee and the printer's fee. That's a couple grand. With the major snow and ice storm we've had this week, the people are staying away in droves. Crap, I tells ya!
So, the business partner and I have been hanging out here at the shop, waiting for the odd customer who braves the elements and brings something in. We've had a few, but it certainly hasn't been like sales of past years when we had lineups at the door. We're hoping that things clear up by the weekend (that would be tomorrow), and people come in. Saturday sale days are usually the busiest, even though most of our clients are retired, go figure. Why not come in during the week? Oh ya...the weather. But I'm talking in years past. It's always the way, but if they're willing to wait, we're willing to postpone our lunch and look after them. Of course if people come in with the mailers next week citing the weather for their delay, we'll gladly honour it.
After work on Wednesday I trudged my way home, had dinner with The Squeeze and retired to the rec room to watch a bit of TV. My favourite thing about this new house is the wood fireplace in the rec room. I decided to go out to the garage and bring in some firewood and have a nice warm fire while we watched one of the Looney Tunes classic cartoon DVDs I got The Squeeze for Christmas.
While I was loading up the log carrier with wood, I heard a constant dripping sound behind me. It didn't sound good. I turned around to find water pouring from the ceiling near the downspout that leads into the wall near the garage door. Streams of water were pouring down the wall, through an electrical junction box and onto a number of boxes filled with things that we didn't yet find a home for in the house.
I called for The Squeeze to give me a hand, and we moved boxes that poured water on our feet as we moved them to higher ground in the basement. We started to empty them to see what was in the boxes. There were a number of framed photos, some old photos of The Squeeze's mother from her graduation, a highschool yearbook, my binder of collected recipes and newspaper clippings, some very old sheet music, stuff along that line.
We set up pails, squeegeed the floor as best as we could, went up onto the deck above the garage and shovelled off a pile of snow that covered the drainpipe, and discovered that there appeared to be solid ice inside the downspout. I poured down some ice salt in hopes that it would melt the ice and allow the water to flow where it should.
After yesterday's horrible ice storm, I went home and checked the garage and I could hear the water flowing down the pipe. Yay, it's working. So far so good.
The Squeeze called the condo corporation to report the problem and they called me back today. They said they will send someone by to check things out, maybe do some caulking. If nothing else, it's a learning experience. And certainly incentive to get the place done so we can unpack all that stuff out there and avoid this mess again.
Perhaps tonight I can have that fire I've been longing for.
In an effort to drum up a bit of business for our shop and pay some bills, not to mention ourselves, we decided to send out mailers to our client base and have a sale this week. That's nearly 2,000 postcards that we had printed, plus the same amount of stamps to mail them, plus the designer's fee and the printer's fee. That's a couple grand. With the major snow and ice storm we've had this week, the people are staying away in droves. Crap, I tells ya!
So, the business partner and I have been hanging out here at the shop, waiting for the odd customer who braves the elements and brings something in. We've had a few, but it certainly hasn't been like sales of past years when we had lineups at the door. We're hoping that things clear up by the weekend (that would be tomorrow), and people come in. Saturday sale days are usually the busiest, even though most of our clients are retired, go figure. Why not come in during the week? Oh ya...the weather. But I'm talking in years past. It's always the way, but if they're willing to wait, we're willing to postpone our lunch and look after them. Of course if people come in with the mailers next week citing the weather for their delay, we'll gladly honour it.
After work on Wednesday I trudged my way home, had dinner with The Squeeze and retired to the rec room to watch a bit of TV. My favourite thing about this new house is the wood fireplace in the rec room. I decided to go out to the garage and bring in some firewood and have a nice warm fire while we watched one of the Looney Tunes classic cartoon DVDs I got The Squeeze for Christmas.
While I was loading up the log carrier with wood, I heard a constant dripping sound behind me. It didn't sound good. I turned around to find water pouring from the ceiling near the downspout that leads into the wall near the garage door. Streams of water were pouring down the wall, through an electrical junction box and onto a number of boxes filled with things that we didn't yet find a home for in the house.
I called for The Squeeze to give me a hand, and we moved boxes that poured water on our feet as we moved them to higher ground in the basement. We started to empty them to see what was in the boxes. There were a number of framed photos, some old photos of The Squeeze's mother from her graduation, a highschool yearbook, my binder of collected recipes and newspaper clippings, some very old sheet music, stuff along that line.
We set up pails, squeegeed the floor as best as we could, went up onto the deck above the garage and shovelled off a pile of snow that covered the drainpipe, and discovered that there appeared to be solid ice inside the downspout. I poured down some ice salt in hopes that it would melt the ice and allow the water to flow where it should.
After yesterday's horrible ice storm, I went home and checked the garage and I could hear the water flowing down the pipe. Yay, it's working. So far so good.
The Squeeze called the condo corporation to report the problem and they called me back today. They said they will send someone by to check things out, maybe do some caulking. If nothing else, it's a learning experience. And certainly incentive to get the place done so we can unpack all that stuff out there and avoid this mess again.
Perhaps tonight I can have that fire I've been longing for.
# posted by Dave @ 1:25 PM 
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Nothing so much fun as thinking you're going to have a nice night in front of the fire only to end up in a cold garage dealing with unwanted water. I hope you drank copious amounts of wine while dealing with it.
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