Cariboo Christmas

We had a white Christmas, but only just. The "pineapple express" brought ridiculously warm temperatures to our area for the last few days, causing meltage and mud. To backtrack a little:

I picked up Mike's dad, who got safely installed at Hawthorne the previous week, on Thursday morning and took him up to stay at Dori's. When I arrived to collect him, I had the dogs in the car, and darling Lucy managed to step into my latte and spew milky coffee all over the car. After some mopping up, we were on our way. I dropped Allegro with Dori, and headed for our new home. It's very sparsely furnished at this point, but is very cute and is going to be very cozy when completely moved into.

The nice Telus man dutifully arrived Friday morning to install the already installed phone line, and just shook his head. He said things were ever so much better in the days of BC Tel. No kidding. Anyway...the phone works now!

We spent Christmas eve with a nice roaring fire in the woodstove, and some big mugs of Bailey's coffee.

Christmas morning we opened gifts, and took the dogs for a trek along the fenceline. Mike napped while I prepped huge quantities of vegetables, and in the afternoon we headed to Dori & Gary's for a fabulous Christmas dinner.

I headed south this morning with the dogs. Mike is coming down today too; he's dropping Allegro off at Hawthorne on his way home, and tomorrow has to make some sort of order out of the garage!

The movers come one month from today!

@#$%* Telus

The phone now doesn't work. It won't work until the 23rd, because, according to Telus, it hasn't been installed yet. It worked on Monday. Jesus, they're stupid.

What Can Go Wrong...Will Go Wrong.

Mike moved in as of Saturday. I brought up a few boxes of household "basics" to get us started, and he and Gary got the spare room bedroom furniture out of storage. Todd was still working inside until Saturday afternoon. After arranging things and a quick trip into town, we headed over to Cliff & Elaine's Christmas party. There was a great spread of food, and we met some nice people, but we turned into pumpkins early, as Mike had been up since the previous night, and I'd only slept for four hours on Friday night.

Sunday we fired up the woodstove, and once we got a decent ash base built up, it burned beautifully.

Sunday night we discovered there was no hot water when Mike turned the shower on. At the same time, we discovered that the shower drain trap was frozen solid. Monday morning, we had no water at all. Mike went out to the wellhouse to investigate, and found a geyser inside. He shut that down and eventually determined that the pipes under the house were frozen, supposedly because we used the woodstove instead of furnace and there being no warmth under the floor from the forced air heating...soooo...Todd spent the day under the house installing some vents underfloor from the furnace, and we think we'll be fine with the woodstove if we use the circulating fan on the furnace to circulate the warmth. Growing pains. Oh, and we got a new element in the water heater too. The gas guy arrived during the morning and announced the furnace needed adjusting, based on tests the previous week. Butch the pump guy turned up to investigate the Old Faithful incident in the wellhouse, which turned out to be related to the frozen pipes.

Telus arrived yesterday morning and announced that the teleduct underground couldn't be used and promptly disappeared. They eventually came back and laid a line on the ground that can be buried in the spring.

We have water, heat, electricity and telephone. It's almost civilized.

Inspection Day

The building inspector comes this morning to inspect the woodstove installation, and to do the occupancy inspection. Mike moves in on Saturday! Willowridge needs to get in and complete their finishing work - it seems to be dragging on a bit. Butch will be by in the next day or two to install the pressure tank in the wellhouse, and we'll have running water! Telus hasn't gotten back to us about when they might grace us with their presence. I hope it's soon.

From the "I'll believe it when I see it" file...

There are rumours circulating that our wood stove is getting installed today! There are other rumours hinting that a gasfitter may arrive on Monday! I'm hoping for optimal planetary alignment over the next few days so these things actually happen. Then all that needs to happen is the pressure tank, and the building inspection, and voila...ready to live in.

I'm heading north tomorrow morning to spend the weekend with an unshaven trucker. I understand the goatee is morphing into a full beard.

Telus something new...

Telus arrived. Telus connected a line from road pole to meter pole. Telus didn't have enough wire to run underground. Telus left. Telus sucks.

Utilities!

BC hydro snuck in early this morning while nobody was looking and installed a transformer on its street pole, and connected to our meter pole! We have power! Terasen finally arrived today and we have natural gas! - well, we almost have natural gas - now we need a gasfitter. Mike is contacting someone to do it asap. Telus says they'll be arriving on Monday to run our phone line in. Things are very good on Inman Road today.

Mike is renting a large electric heater so Todd & crew can work inside next week and get finished. After inspection we'll be move-in ready. The woodstove needs to be installed next.

I'm staying "down on the coast" this weekend to attend to mundane chores, exciting things like cooking, cleaning, & laundry. Such fun!