Carver

I had to complete the taxes and file them right away because I had to pay this year and if I filed late I would get a late charge and have to pay interest as well.  So since our internet was not hooked up, Barb went over to our neighbour's house, Sharon, and asked if we could hook up to her wifi.  Sharon was happy to see Barb and said she just got back in time for the community craft show that day.  Sharon was in the craft show because she is a wood carver.  Barb didn't know that about Sharon.

Plumber

On Sunday morning, Barb talked to our neighbour, Wayne, about our flooded basement and he told Barb that his basement had flooded a few years back and it cost $25,000 to get it fixed but his insurance paid for it.  So Barb borrowed his phone because our phone was not hooked up yet and phoned our insurance company.  She talked to the answering service and they asked her to give a number where she could be reached so that the insurance adjuster could phone her back.  But she didn't know our neighbour's phone number and had to rush around to find out what it was.

Then she phoned the plumber that our neighbour had used.  The plumber said that we should try switching the two cords coming out the sump dump to see whether the problem was the pump or the water level indicating arm.  So Barb went down in the crawl space while talking to the plumber on the phone and when she got half way across the basement the phone died because it was out of range from our neighbour's house.  She switched the plugs and the sump dump came on and started pumping water out of the basement.  So the sump pump did work but we would have to sit there pulling out the plug to let the water fill up and plugging it in again to get the sump pump to pump it out again all day to get the water out of the basement.

So Barb phoned the plumber back and asked him to come over and replace the sump pump.  He said since it was a Sunday he would charge us double time from the time he left his house and he had to go in to the office to get the truck and then drive to our house.  Barb said okay and he came and replaced the sump pump with a new one.  When he was finished, he came into our kitchen and tried to sell us a generator or something in case the power went out and even a backup sump pump.  Barb asked a lot of questions and then when he was writing up the bill, Barb realized that the whole time he was in the kitchen was counting as work time and he was charging us double time.  Then he told us he had to round up to the closest half hour.  Barb was pissed at herself for wasting his time.  He said he didn't know the whole bill and that we would get an invoice in a couple of days by email.  When we got the bill, it was over $500 but Barb was happy that he didn't round up the half hour.

Charger

When we got home, the batteries on our phones were all dead.  Barb hung up the phone on the charger before she went to bed at 3 am. Then when she got up in the morning at 6:30, she was surprised that the phone wasn't charged.  Then she realized she had only been in bed for 3 hours.

Florida

There was nothing we could do about the flooded basement at midnight.  So we just unloaded the car and we went to bed at 3 am. Barb was reading her ebook as usual and she fell asleep reading.  When she woke up she didn't know where she was and tried to find the bedside table to put her ebook on but we don't have a bedside table in New Hamburg like we do in Florida.  She almost dropped her ebook on the floor beside the bed.  Then she remembered she was in New Hamburg and placed the ebook up the headboard and went to sleep.

Basement

I was unpacking the car and I heard Barb scream.  She had gone down in the crawl space basement to turn on the water and found that the basement had flooded while we were away.  The flooding wasn't too bad but the concrete floor was wet and there was water under the plastic tarp over the gravel.  Barb had two cardboard boxes piled on each other and the bottom box was soaked and had collapsed.  The box on top had fallen over and all the wool that was in the box was soaked and she had to throw it all out.  There was damage to a beautiful wood framed mirror that we received as a wedding present 30 years ago.  We had to throw it out.  There was mold on the legs of one our kitchen chairs that we had stored in the basement but we didn't throw that out.  Most of our stuff was safe in plastic containers or on shelves up off the floor.

Mail

Our neighbour Barry collected the mail for us while we were in Florida and it was nicely piled on the counter in a number of piles for different types of mail.  We were impressed.  Then Barb went out to the garage and noticed that Barry had not put out the garbage or the recycling that we had left there.  We thought he would check over the place while we were away but when he said he would pick up the mail for us that is what he did.

Easter

When we got home at midnight, we found that Sarah had put balloons around the house welcoming us home.  She also hid chocolate eggs for us to find.  We found a lot of eggs during the first few days and Barb phoned Sarah and told her we had found them all.  Sarah said she didn't think so.  Sarah was right we were still finding eggs into the late summer.