Phew - What a Week!

Apart from the snow, of which we got more on today (Sunday), last week was quite the adventure. And not all good.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'd signed up for a writing course. Creative Writing FUN-damentals. (Geddit?) It's at Story Studio if anyone's interested. So far we've talked about using the five senses when writing, which is quite a challenge for me. Not because I don't have all five sense, but because I usually write in either a debate style way (for example when I"m ranting at PowderRoomGrafitti) or a quippy way, as with these posts. I don't usually do touchy feely prose. Last week we looked at points of view, ie. whether you write in the first or third person.

That was before I fainted.

Well, I actually managed to keep myself from crashing to the floor like I've been know to do, but I did feel so out of it that I had to put my hand up and say "I think I'm going to faint". I then got up to get water, which wasn't the most sensible thing to do, so I sat back down again. Naturally, this caused a bit of a disturbance in class, but I managed to will myself back to the land of the living.

Not quite sure why it happened (and NO, I'm not...), but I had two cups of coffee in rapid succession and I'm a tea girl. When I got home at 1pm I felt really, really bad and ended up calling the Ball & Chain at work because I couldn't get off the couch. Seems to have been a 24 hour mini-flu and I was right as rain by Tuesday night.

Just in time for the huge snow storm (see previous post) and the workmen.

Oh yes, the workmen came on Thursday to replace the furnace for the basement underfloor heating. Apparently the existing one was incorrectly vented and we needed to vent it to the outside. Given that the furnace is situated right in the middle of a mainly terraced house, this presented a huge problem. I came up with the idea that we could take the pipes straight up, into the coat cupboard and out through the external wall there. I did offer to find the blue prints, but it was declared unecessary.

Should have insisted on looking at the blue prints.

First the guy drilled two three inch holes through the wooden floor in my coat cupboard (just off the living and dining room). He didn't feel the need to wear a dust mask, and consequently had to open the door to prevent choking to death. Before I knew it the entire living floor of my house was covered in a film of brown dust. (Remember it's below freezing round these parts so no throwing open of windows and doors.) I was aghast. All over my furniture and wooden floors.

Meanwhile the guy in the basement is merrily sawing through plaster board on the ceiling next to the furnace - which has about the same effect only the layer of dust is white. Aarrgghh!

Only to find that the hole near the furnace isn't actually below the coat cupboard at all but comes up right under the basement stairs. We now had holes upstairs and downstairs that didn't remotely connect, and this fetching look going on.

It goes on for about another three feet to the left.  Apparently the guy who's coming in to do the re-drywalling is really good.

He better be!