... and some things are not
Nov/16/05 14:00
However. I am beginning
to believe that you can’t outrun your luck. The
first sign that things weren’t all going to go
our way began a week ago, when we woke up in the
morning to find we’d lost the heat and hot
water. Tried all the usual fixes, including shutting
and restarting all of the components, checking for
pilot light, etc. Just as in the States, plumbers are
difficult to get hold of, particularly when the
weather is changing and everyone’s heating
system is deciding whether or not to act up after
having the summer off. We finally managed to get one
in, and he reported that we need a new control box,
now we are awaiting its arrival, hopefully by the end
of this week. Nearly the same time, I discovered that
water was somehow making its way into Hannah’s
room (or failing to escape it), and the wallpaper on
one wall was moist and beginning to mold. Our
landlord is trying to line up someone to fix up
Hannah’s room; we have moved her temporarily
into the office until it is cleared up. Then, on our
aforementioned trip to Cardiff, we managed to lose
our debit card, the one piece of plastic we’ve
managed to acquire in the UK. (It’s amazingly
difficult to do much banking in the UK unless
you’re a permanent resident. The only reason we
even have a bank account at all is that Cliff still
has the one he set up when he was a Fulbright student
in London; otherwise we literally just could not have
opened a new account.) Cliff has been battling an ear
infection, and Hannah is trying to kick a nasty
cough. And on a general things-can’t
possibly-be-this complicated note, we had been having
trouble playing rental dvds on the dvd player here,
so we’d ordered an inexpensive one from Amazon,
which had gotten great reviews in the “plays
anything” category. Tried setting it up by
unplugging the leads from the old dvd player and
hooking them up to the new dvd player—and it
doesn’t work properly.
So it is in this spirit of “my goodness, things have been cropping up lately,” Cliff and I put Hannah to bed and (having re-set up the old player) sat down to watch a movie-- “Shaun of the Dead,” a rather black comedy about a handful of British slackers who end up in a mess when London turns into a city of zombies. When the film was done, Cliff went into the kitchen and noticed the back door was open. This was a little annoying, as we have little heat as it is. But then he saw that the sliding glass doors were open as well… and we never ever use them, we were told that they’re broken and difficult to close. We have a walled patio in back, and the door to that, which was unlocked because we hadn’t been able to get what we thought was the key for it to work, had also been opened. We immediately grabbed household implements of self-defense, turned on every light in the house and checked every closet. Then we spent a fun-filled half-hour trying to get the glass doors shut, and called the police. Who came, and were very nice. The Crime Scene Unit was equally friendly, and it was actually kind of interesting to watch that whole procedure. Don’t think anything was taken—a wallet full of CDs was carried outside, but it looks like they just dropped it when they saw the CDs were childrens’ software. The lights in most of the house were out to save energy, and we think the burglar(s) broke in thinking no one was home, but then immediately left as soon as they heard the TV. Our digital camera and Shel’s computer were right there on the kitchen counters, but not taken, which was lucky. But the police told us that crooks often return later once they’ve checked a place out, so now we are, to say the least, a little unsettled. Well, no, I am a lot unsettled. Bah.
So, even more than usual, we would welcome e-mails, hellos and general words of encouragement.
On a happier note, Thanksgiving is nigh and we would like to wish everyone a safe, healthy holiday with their loved ones, as we hope to do here. (I think I may have even managed to find a substitute for those french-fried onion thingies that go in green bean casserole—yeah! What exactly are they used for the other 364 days a year?).
So it is in this spirit of “my goodness, things have been cropping up lately,” Cliff and I put Hannah to bed and (having re-set up the old player) sat down to watch a movie-- “Shaun of the Dead,” a rather black comedy about a handful of British slackers who end up in a mess when London turns into a city of zombies. When the film was done, Cliff went into the kitchen and noticed the back door was open. This was a little annoying, as we have little heat as it is. But then he saw that the sliding glass doors were open as well… and we never ever use them, we were told that they’re broken and difficult to close. We have a walled patio in back, and the door to that, which was unlocked because we hadn’t been able to get what we thought was the key for it to work, had also been opened. We immediately grabbed household implements of self-defense, turned on every light in the house and checked every closet. Then we spent a fun-filled half-hour trying to get the glass doors shut, and called the police. Who came, and were very nice. The Crime Scene Unit was equally friendly, and it was actually kind of interesting to watch that whole procedure. Don’t think anything was taken—a wallet full of CDs was carried outside, but it looks like they just dropped it when they saw the CDs were childrens’ software. The lights in most of the house were out to save energy, and we think the burglar(s) broke in thinking no one was home, but then immediately left as soon as they heard the TV. Our digital camera and Shel’s computer were right there on the kitchen counters, but not taken, which was lucky. But the police told us that crooks often return later once they’ve checked a place out, so now we are, to say the least, a little unsettled. Well, no, I am a lot unsettled. Bah.
So, even more than usual, we would welcome e-mails, hellos and general words of encouragement.
On a happier note, Thanksgiving is nigh and we would like to wish everyone a safe, healthy holiday with their loved ones, as we hope to do here. (I think I may have even managed to find a substitute for those french-fried onion thingies that go in green bean casserole—yeah! What exactly are they used for the other 364 days a year?).