Or at least that is what it feels like!
We're working on getting the new booth ready and the new antique mall. That has taken up a lot of time. It looks like it will be mid-week before we can actually stock the booth. Bill put the pegboard sides up last week and installed the support boards to hold the wall-mounted machines. We went up there Sunday and installed the metal mesh top on the booth. Bill's going to decorate it more than we have done with our previous booths. The mall owner thought that people would be able to build booths last week and stock them last weekend, but she's never really dealt with contractors and construction. So, while we were not at all surprised at the delays, she was! That has taken up a lot of time.
Otter's move is actually going to be Thanksgiving week. It was supposed to be the week before that, but the apartment office said that it will be Thanksgiving week. Probably the day before Thanksgiving, actually. I took her a bunch of boxes and she got several at work, she's been packing and I'm going to go help her pack sometime in the next several days. She knows which apartment, it is in the same building but it's at the other end and on the back side of the building. It's going to be a case of "out her door, down three flights of stairs, across to the other side of the building, in the door and up three flights of stairs then into the new apartment." In other words, exhausting! She will sign the new lease sometime that week, and is going to ask about getting the keys the day before she will be moving because she is probably going to have to work at least part of moving day. We may see about hiring a couple of people through someone I know through work, because it's going to be hard to find people to help move the day before Thanksgiving! If we are not able to get everything moved and the 2-bedroom cleaned in one day, we'll finish up on Thanksgiving itself. Probably the cleaning is what will be done on Thanksgiving. I'm thinking that we might have either frozen pizza or maybe a frozen lasagna for our actual Thanksgiving meal. We were going to have an actual Thanksgiving this year, last year was the stove thermostat having to be replaced and then Otter's dental adventure keeping us from a traditional meal and we thought this year might work out. But then Roomie moved out and all that... Maybe next year?
Bluebell is back in the area today! I had plans to go get some this morning, but I should know better than to actually plan anything because hardly anything has gone according to plan this year. Last night, sometime after 9:00, I got a call from Otter. She had gone to a not-exactly-neighboring town to visit J and to go to the Halloween party he and his mom had. She was on her way back last night when her car started acting like it was overheating. We're talking very small town, the kind that rolls up the streets and turns the lights off when the sun goes down and that is not too far off from reality! She hadn't gotten very far, but she was afraid to drive any longer so instead of going back to J's, she pulled into a parking lot and called me. The restaurant was closed for the night and it was pretty isolated. We got on our way immediately and then she called J. He and his mom came to where she was at and stayed with her until we got there, which we really appreciated. It took us 30 - 40 minutes to get there and that was on the turnpike which is the fastest way. Bill looked at the car and he could tell it had plenty of antifreeze, but it didn't look like the coolant was getting to where it was supposed to. The car had cooled off at this point, it never got extremely hot so there probably isn't any engine damage but he was concerned about getting it home and we didn't want Otter to drive it anyway. So, Bill drove her car, she rode with me and we brought her car to our house. Bill stopped one time on the turnpike, of course there were no lights out there! He said the heat gauge was going up again but he didn't wait for it to get too high. He could still see that there was plenty of coolant, but he was thinking that the water pump might be the issue at that point After letting the car sit and cool for a while, we started back on the road and he was able to drive it to our house without it getting too hot. It was well after 10:00 last night when we got back, and she took my car home. J bought her a microwave, which is now at my house since she didn't want to leave it in the car overnight and was really too tired to carry it up the stairs. She'll pick it up from us in the next day or so.
Bill took her car to work today, it seemed to run fine. He talked to our neighbor who is a part-time mechanic, he talked to the mechanic at work and we both talked to the mechanic at the shop we've been using. The consensus is that the thermostat is probably bad, or at least it had a bad moment. It might be that it was a one-time thing, but it might not be. If it is the thermostat, it has to be replaced. We drove it around tonight and it was fine. I'm taking it to the shop in the morning and they'll check it out. Then, depending on what they say in terms of how long it will take, I will either get it fixed right then or I'll have to bring it back the next day when someone can come get me so I can get to work - or Bill may take the day off so he can take care of it. The thermostat has been replaced once - by the shop we used before we went to Chevy, the shop that we realized were a bunch of crooks which caused us to go to Chevy in the first place. At that time, they were owned by a national company and had a good reputation. But Bill had to take the car back to them a couple of times to get it checked because he didn't think the new thermostat was working right. After that, they were purchased by their manager and that's when they were dishonest in the extreme which is why we went to Chevy. The manager eventually sold the shop back to the national company that owned it before, but we will never go back there anyway. There really isn't any reason to think that they would fix it again, unless we wanted to pay them, and they are not going to have another chance with us.
And we still have to get the pachinko machines to the booth sometime this week!
Maybe I'll actually get my Bluebell ice cream tomorrow!
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