Good to be Alive

I must say, after the few less-than-stellar days I've had recently (weather-wise and unemployed Simon-wise) - today was just one fine day to be alive. The temperature reached 60 degrees, the sun was bright and warm and a few wispy cirrus clouds danced across the sky. I drove downtown at lunch to drop off a couple of photo albums to a Freecycler's place of employment. She's the same woman who gave me that trunkload of paper last week. She works for a non-profit, so I offered to drop the stuff off, to make her life easier. I'm nice like that. Did you hear me singing in the car on the way back to the office? First number was a little ditty called Young Girl by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap (reminding me of the first concert Gretchen and I ever saw - Mom & Dad took us - 1968!). My encore performance was Hush by Deep Purple.

Gary looks decent but don't you think it's about time Paul Revere lost the costume??

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Our office has a wall of windows which catch the afternoon sun. I sure hate to close the blinds on the beautiful sunshine but it's a matter of self-preservation really. Today I had to break out my 6" pink fan and clip it to my desk to blow right on me. Here's the email I sent to our facilities manager today, even though he won't read it until he returns from vacation next week. He's a good friend and will get a laugh.

We call dibs on a oscillating floor fan for our office, if there's a spare. Pretty please?

Can you say 3 menopausal women?? Okay, 1, maybe 2. (I wish I was kidding!)

Stefani "Is it Warm in Here?" Tadio

Just for the record it wasn't just me - everyone who came in our office commented on how hot it was. Oh well, that's how it goes during these "shoulder months". (Isn't that a cool phrase? Jen's son, who installed our central air conditioning last year used that phrase, meaning the transitional months between seasons.)

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We had an interesting situation in the basement tonight. Simon went down to get a can of soda and came up to tell us, "You guys know the basement is flooded, right?" Well, no. Steve and Simon investigated while I stayed upstairs and ate my dinner, because it was 7:30 and I have a rule for myself against eating after 7:00. I was hungry, dammit! The water wasn't going anywhere. They thought it was coming from the water heater because water was concentrated around that area.

After dinner, Steve and I went down to look into it. We've never had water in our basement and it was on "both sides". We've had a shit-load of rain in the past few days, so maybe water was leaking in somewhere. (We've had so much rain that there's a pond in the middle of the Christmas tree farm behind us, something I've never seen before.) The parts of the basement that were wet (thankfully not the new carpet under the new pool table), were just puddle-wet. Then I walked over to the laundry side of the basement and back by the Bilco doors, it was fairly deep, like an inch maybe. Then I remembered we have a sump pump but it's never gone on before. And it wasn't on now. Hey, what's this rod do? Oh! It turns the pump on. Seems to be doing a nice job. Thank goodness!

The best part of all this? When I was doing the big basement reorg a few weeks ago, Simon mocked me for insisting that everything be on shelves or the floor stuff be set on pallets.

Simon: Why??

Stefani: Because the bottom of the water heater could rust out and all that water would go everywhere.

Simon: Sure. When has that ever happened?

Stefani: It happened to Gramma and Grampa.

Simon: Just because the Erie Canal broke in that freak accident, once in infinity and they had water in their basement then - like that will ever happen again. (It was about 4" deep, not pretty. I was at college at the time, however.)

Stefani: No, their water heater busted and they had water everywhere.

Steve didn't say anything during this exchange but he probably thought I was nuts too. Tonight, I made them both say how smart and resourceful I was about keeping stuff off the floor. And beautiful. And witty. Okay, not that last part.

Crises averted!