is finding the almighty storm drain to start the removal of Lake Holly. Apparently, the previous owner of this house was so disgusted with the horrible engineering job on our street (house is on one, garage entrance is on another, hence a corner lot) where our driveway goes, that she convinced the city to repave and regrade the road. Well, our address is on the other street, and all the houses ON our street got assessed for "improvements". Aforementioned "improvements" made the whole drainage system worse, leading to what our household now (not so affectionately) refers to as Lake Holly or the Holly Ice Skating Rink (depends if we are dealing with water in it's solid or liquid form)
As usual, we get all kinds of stares from neighbors and passersby when we head out with shovels, axes, and brooms. The first picture is taken from the far side of the street. As you see, the majority of the road is covered, and goes up past the sidewalk of my driveway. It doesn't SOUND like a big deal, I give you, but just imagine for a moment, the joy of walking in 8 inches of water to take the trash to the curb. Or, my personal favorite, backing out onto the ice rink, to see a car taking the corner a wee bit fast and hitting the brakes, only to have NOTHING happen because Lake Holly is as smooth as glass after a thaw refreeze. According to the weather, that refreeze begins tomorrow night. My goal, hope, whatever, is to have only half the road covered by Wednesday morning, so I have a chance in Hell of not hitting anything just trying to get out of the driveway.
Yep, it's February, and I'm in my usual crappola mood. Surprise! Yeah, right, whatever. Okay, so today my tire finally came in for my car. Two hours after it's supposed to be done, they call. There's another problem. (yeah, right. they don't like their bottom line?) Something looks totally out of whack with the back alignment, and it looks like either something came loose (naturally because I must have hit something EXCEPTIONALLY hard NOT because they didn't TIGHTEN the sucker after doing my alignment, I am sure) or I've bent/broken something. I tell them to fix it. After all, it was a misalignment that got me into this whole tire mess last fall. They call an hour later, I walk over, and once sifting through the sideways speak...my alignment LOOKS misaligned, but it took ME $25 for them to be safe and not sorry. Yes, I wrote the check. After all, my car is worth WAY more than $25. We take it there out of convenience as it's on my block. However, that doesn't mean we have to do Jeff's repairs there, or have to continue with mine. I've about had it. I may have totally had it, but I'm not sure yet, time will tell when Jeff's out of town, and my car needs work.
why can't anything be easy?
So, in this FINE and FESTIVE mood, I'm off to take D to HS orientation. Yipp-flippin'-eee. An hour in the auditorium to hear what it is she needs to take as a Freshman. Um. Hello. I could GIVE THIS SPEECH. But I'll be good. I'll sit there and grumble. And knit. OH. And I'll be doing so without my coffee. Apparently, there are only a few brews in town that don't mess with my stomach, and all of them are either closed or only brewing the dark stuff after 2 pm.
sigh I guess I'm off to go torture a whole new set of people!.
Pity them.
