Life in Lynch Lair at Wildcat Station

[Greg]

It's pouring. The dogs do not want to go out for their pee and poop excursion. So, we wander around the house.

The cats (Mama and Fergus) live in this small space that is a section of the garage, a cat door to the outside, and a small enclosed are tacked onto the outside of the house. The enclosure is about 10 x 20. The previous owners used it for a dog run. It was full of poop when we arrived, along with a bathtub full of dirt and dead plants. But that's another story.

The cats are still in their freaked out mode. Fergus tends to cower in the garage. Mama huddles out in the closure, occasionally climbing the chicken wire to see if she can find an egress.

Did I mention the pouring bit. Well, mama decided, because of her freak out, she'd rather be outside in the rain than in the dry garage. Nothing sadder to see than a soaking wet cat.

I opted to find one of my tarps and throw it over the enclosure. I also found some stove pipe wire to attach the tarp to the enclosure.

At this point, our standing water lake is pushing up against the foundation blocks at the edge of the enclosure. I should have gotten some waders. I struggle for a fifteen minutes in the rain shifting the ladder around to stovepipe wire the tarp to the mesh covering the enclosure. The beauty of cut stovepipe wire is it's sharpness. One piece slid effortlessly into the tip of my finger. The blood flow was quite prodigious.

But the tarp is up. Mama has decided to hide in the garage.

[Drunk Monk]

Yay!

I feel like one TV show got cancelled but a better spin-off just premiered.

Congrats on the new crib!  We can't wait to visit.

[cranefly]

You sure you didn't just move into a mirror universe?

Our cat Geek from a few years back:

[Drunk Monk]

You sure you didn't just move into a mirror universe?

Wait...wut?

I thought this WAS the mirror universe.  

[Greg]

If I take the shed apart without filming it via time-lapse, did it really happen?

[Drunk Monk]

If I take the shed apart without filming it via time-lapse, did it really happen?

Nope. Without vid, we can only assume it was elves.

Can you soundtrack the vid with yakety sax and have some random groping scenes?

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Hmmmm...sounds like someone is having Daly City flashbacks.


Also: Daly City Flashbacks is a decent band name

[Greg]

We have introduced ourselves to the neighbors via a Raymond Facebook Group. They all seem very nice and they all want us to join them at Church.

That's not going to happen.

I'm also in charge of the Raymond Nextdoor group. I was the lucky 10th neighbor to sign in and got handed the keys to the location. Unfortunately, it still doesn't recognize my street as an actual location and is sending me a postcard to verify my existence.

[Drunk Monk]

Oooooooh.

What church?  

[Greg]

The Update post

As the Queen stated, she caught the Fergus. Easy as pie. At first I thought it was going to be a long slog since he didn't pop up when we pulled into the driveway. It did feel weird parking in the driveway since it was no longer our house. Even the package on the porch was addressed to someone else.

So, nine hours of driving to rescue a cat who probably didn't want or need to be rescued.

Thursday was also to be the drop off day for our third storage UNIT. I told them we would be unavailable due to cat capture. Originally they told me Saturday which is why I thought it was safe to do the cat run on Thursday. They rescheduled it for Friday.

Thursday was also to be the delivery of the replacement refrigerator for our stolen refrigerator. To recap, the homeowners sold the refrigerator in the house after saying they were leaving it. They left the garage refrigerator in its place. The realtors knowing they had erred bought us a new fridge.

There was back and forth between me and Leslie about delivery of the fridge. Since it was raining, they needed to tarp it. Or they could come Friday when we would be there. Many, many options.

We returned from the cat capture to find a trailer in the driveway with the refrigerator on it. Okay. I called Leslie. They were going to come over and put it in the house. They were also going to leave the garage fridge with us. Which is okay, since the Queen likes the idea of having a garage fridge for overflow. It could come in handy since we live so far from a market.

Leslie and her fiancee and her fiancee's father show up to get the fridge off the trailer and into the house. First kerfuffle: the dolly they brought has a flat tire. My compressors are still buried in the garage. I can't help them. But I do have a tragically small dolly that we opt to use.

There is a lot of negotiation and shifting to get the fridge across the backyard mud flats to the door. Lots of groaning to get it into the house using the little tiny dolley.

The Queen and I are very excited by the arrival of the fridge. It's the last point of contact we will have to have with our realtors. I won't be too sorry to see them go. 

As Garrett, Leslie's fiancee and co-real estate agent, unboxes the refrigerator, he notices a giant dent in the top of refrigerator. Something heavy must have fallen on the  top edge of the refrigerator. It's on the left side. The exposed to the kitchen side. If it was on the other side, no one would ever have to see it and I would have called it a day. But, no.

Our real estate agents suggest just putting it in until we get a replacement. I suggest no. I'm not moving the food from the fridge to the fridge only to move it into a third fridge at some later date. Leslie called her boss. Her boss calls whoever sold them the replacement fridge. There is lots of silence from that end. They delivered it and nothing was said at the time. How do they know we didn't damage it in installing it?

The replacement fridge is moved out to the back patio. It will stay there blocking the view for the foreseeable future. Leslie tells me she will get back to me tomorrow with a game plan regarding the replacement fridge. Maybe they can fix it?

This means I'm still involved with my real estate agents until this is resolved.

[cranefly]

I was going to ask about the fridge debacle.
Oh dear...

[Drunk Monk]

maybe if you went to church...

[Greg]

Ah, Friday, my love.

I had the POD storage container in my driveway by Wednesday. The UNITS storage container was going to be delivered to my house between 8-9am on Friday. I was told by my friend Maria (No Christmas cards for her this year) That I should have the crew to unload the UNIT by 8am because Bill the driver wanted to get right back on the road. Okay. It says in the contract I can have the container for a month as part of the rental agreement. You would think turning it around in a hour would get me a bonus. Not so much.

I had some idle time on my hands Thursday night so I thought I would look into POD just to see how everything faired. During a commercial break, I grabbed my keys and headed outside. An hour later, I returned into the house.

The POD and soon to be arriving UNIT were both packed by the professional. They made it a point to show how solid and secure they had packed everything. They used miles of tape and saran wrap to make sure everything was safe. They used every packing blanket I purchased.

They didn't secure it quite as well as I would have liked. When I went to pull up the roll-up door, it got about a foot up before it stopped and would go no further. Swearing ensued. No matter how tightly things are strapped down, things shift during the move. Except in this case, things weren't strapped down and were now wedged against the door.

I pushed several things back through the door to get a little more room. I was able to open the door another couple inches. I did some more pushing. I gained a few more inches. I finally got the door up far enough that I could remove a portable air conditioning unit. This created enough room for me to slip inside and see what the problem was.

A stool that I had got from the film Tremors had both it's legs on the lip of the doo. Every time I pushed the door up, the top of the stool hit the roll for the roll up door. The weight of the contents of the POD was pushing against the stool so I couldn't move it back very easily.

Secondly, an air compressor that had just been placed on top of some cabinets without being tied off was now wedged between the door and the cabinets. More swearing.

I pushed. I prodded. I sweated copiously. I finally managed to hold the compressor far enough away from the door to push the door up. I also was able to bend the door enough to get it by the legs of the stool.

I don't think the Queen even noticed the length of my absence.

Friday rolled in and I was ready to unpack the storage units. Too ready.

I had a couple of guys coming in to help with the unpacking. They were going to show up 7. I figured we would unload the POD and the UNIT would show up at 8. Nothing could be smoother. 

I headed out to the POD at 6:30. I figured I would unload some of the smaller stuff so the Movers could get to the bigger stuff. I started picking away. Before you know it, 2/3rds of the trailer was empty before the movers even arrived.

The nice men from Turlock showed up and the rest of it went really fast. Too fast. They had the POD emptied well before 8. So, they were going to hang out for a few minutes waiting for the next truck. I had them shift some boxes around in the garage for when the white fridge got moved to the garage into it's original spot.

By 8:10 I realized I had miscalculated. I checked the email and confirmed it said arrival between 8 and 9. 8 was rapidly disappearing and still no sign of the truck.

I hung out with the movers. They were ready to work but had nothing to do.

When the truck didn't show by 9, I called my friend Maria at UNITS. She was unsympathetic to the fact I was paying two nice men from Turlock to hang out at my house. She also didn't care that I should have the rental unit for a month rather than the hour it would be in my driveway.

When Bill finally showed up at 9:15, he, too, was unsympathetic. He had hit traffic. He told Maria between 8 and 9, not just 8. So, he was going to go get breakfast and the truck should be unloaded by the time he got back.

The Turlock movers unloaded the UNIT in a jiffy.

While we were doing that, the POD driver arrived to pick up the small POD. The only problem was the UNIT was in the way. I told the driver the UNIT would be moved shortly if he just wanted to wait. He didn't. There was a way to drive around to the other side of the property to get the POD from the other side. I just had to move my car. He also gave me shit for not having swept out the POD. I asked if him would it be better for me to sweep out the POD or move my car so he could pick up the POD? He grabbed the broom.

Now, the funny thing about the POD pick up was that they were supposed to wait until they got a call from me before picking up the POD. I had never called. I was busy driving back and forth to Los Angeles. I told this to the POD driver. He didn't know who had scheduled the pick-up.

But we sorted it out. The POD driver got the Robo-Truck to pick up the empty pod and he was on his way. Meanwhile the UNITs storage unit was also empty. Our house now had furniture in it. And a ton of boxes in the garage. We had a couch to sit on. A bed to sleep on. A kitchen table at which to eat.

Although the new mattress we got for the guest room it doesn't compare to the bed we have for us. It's a brick and I sleep like a mason.

I didn't even talk to Bill when he came back for the UNIT. He loaded up the truck and was on his way.

[Greg]

One of the first concerns I had about the house was the fact that our main power line coming into the house or service rests on an Oak Tree at the edge of the property. It seems I heard stories from last year about fires being started from just such conditions. I was thinking I should call PG&E and ask them to come out and deal with that.

I hadn't gotten to that call yet.

But as we were out walking the beasts yesterday, I bumped into our nearest neighbor for the first time. He was out moving his flat bed trailer into a slot behind his house. When I introduced myself I noticed he wore a PG&E shirt. Excited, I asked him if he worked for PG&E. He said yes. Rudely, I told him about the service resting on the tree. He just shrugged. He said there were a lot of services in similar situations around the area.

Oh.


In other news, I still don't have long distance service for our landline. I've been playing this game with ATT. I call their main number or use an online chat service. The person on that end is confused and doesn't understand why I don't just get Local and Long Distance through ATT. Well, in my area, that's not how it's done. Much like it was done in decades past, I have a local carrier and I need a Long Distance Carrier. Sierra Tel is my local carrier and they are the only one who offers local phone service. No one else.

After much discussion with the first gate keeper, I'm told to call Legacy Services. This sounds appropriate. The only problem is that when you enter a phone number that isn't in the ATT system, they boot you back to square one. Today, I talked to a second level person who kept mumbling about me getting Sierra Tel to change their code to allow ATT in. But Sierra Tel already does that.

It is not frustrating at all.

[Greg]

Our refrigerator was supposed to be replaced today.

In news of no surprise, it won't be delivered today.