Saturday, the day of pain
I hope everyone had a good weekend. As I did not. And it was so promising too. Here was the plan: 1) Take Sarah to Flea Market and help her set up; 2) Take kids back home and play for a while; 3) Go back and give Sarah a break around 10; 3) Pick Sarah up around 1:30; 4) leave from Flea Market with Nick and go to the new Chicago Fire Stadium to watch World Cup Match; 5) go home to unpack the stuff from Flea Market; 6) Go to Govner's Pub for dinner. Sounds pretty good.
Well things did not get off to a good start. First, the Flea Market was on the shadeless blacktop parking lot of the Berwyn VFW hall. So it was hot as an oven. Second the Flea Market did not seem to be well advertised, since the traffic was very low. We only made around $80, and that's not very good for 5 hours. Especially if you consider the fact that I sold $20 worth of stuff during the 10 minutes I was watching the stand.
After the kids and I gave Sarah a break, we decided to visit the small park across the alley. But as it was hot and early, there were no other kids for Nick to play with. And since I had to keep an eye on Scooter, he quickly became bored. So we left.
Nothing bad happened while we were home. But Scooter, tired from the heat fell asleep before lunch. And since her regular naptime is after lunch, she got all out of sorts.
When we went to pick up Sarah, most of the other vendors had already left. I packed up the van for Sarah, who was quite disappointed with the low turnout and heat. And I took Nick to th Fire Stadium. The nice thing about the stadium is that it is right down Harlem. It only took us 15 minutes to get there. The stadium itself is quite nice, and since both parking and admission was free, not a bad way to watch US v. Italy. Once we arrived, we settled in with about 400 or so other fans sitting in the stands watching the game, pretty cool. Except there was nothing for Nick to do. I thought there was going to be other things up and going, but I was wrong. Within 20 minutes he was bored out of his skull and tired. So, since we didn't pay to get in, I was ok with leaving at halftime.
Once home, I began to unload the van. And when I finished I was putting away the tables when I made a huge blunder. In rolling the table next to the downstairs fridge, I clipped the wires for my temperature controller (which I use to lager my homebrew). The controller flew off the fridge and broke the release value on the water heater. As the release valve sat on the floor, the heater began to release 30 gallons of water on to my cluttered basement floor.
The rest of my plans washed away with this water. Since I had to shut off the water, we needed a place to stay. So I called up my folks to put us up. And then I arranged with my dad to spend father's day putting in a new water heater.
But the day was not done. Before we could go up to my folk's house the dog got out. So I wasted 20 minutes looking for the dog. This put us way past dinner so we decided to go to a fast food restaurant. Since we don't care where we eat we asked Nick where he wanted to go. Nick replied that since Burger King has GI Joe toys in its Kids Meals, he wanted to go there. Of course once we get to Burger King, they're out of toys.
Finally we get to my Folk's house. But my day isn't over. Since I could not get a hold of my neighbor, I have to go back to my house late at night and let the dog out. He can't hold it for 15 hours and I like my stuff to be as free of dog urine as possible. So at 9:00 I take the hour drive back to my place. When I get there, I find that not only do we have no water, but the power is out for the entire block. Nice, at this point I can only laugh.
I drive back to my folk's home and arrive at 11:15. Naturally, Scooter refuses to go to sleep and she cries until around 11:45. Finally, around midnight I get to sleep and the day is over.
Well things did not get off to a good start. First, the Flea Market was on the shadeless blacktop parking lot of the Berwyn VFW hall. So it was hot as an oven. Second the Flea Market did not seem to be well advertised, since the traffic was very low. We only made around $80, and that's not very good for 5 hours. Especially if you consider the fact that I sold $20 worth of stuff during the 10 minutes I was watching the stand.
After the kids and I gave Sarah a break, we decided to visit the small park across the alley. But as it was hot and early, there were no other kids for Nick to play with. And since I had to keep an eye on Scooter, he quickly became bored. So we left.
Nothing bad happened while we were home. But Scooter, tired from the heat fell asleep before lunch. And since her regular naptime is after lunch, she got all out of sorts.
When we went to pick up Sarah, most of the other vendors had already left. I packed up the van for Sarah, who was quite disappointed with the low turnout and heat. And I took Nick to th Fire Stadium. The nice thing about the stadium is that it is right down Harlem. It only took us 15 minutes to get there. The stadium itself is quite nice, and since both parking and admission was free, not a bad way to watch US v. Italy. Once we arrived, we settled in with about 400 or so other fans sitting in the stands watching the game, pretty cool. Except there was nothing for Nick to do. I thought there was going to be other things up and going, but I was wrong. Within 20 minutes he was bored out of his skull and tired. So, since we didn't pay to get in, I was ok with leaving at halftime.
Once home, I began to unload the van. And when I finished I was putting away the tables when I made a huge blunder. In rolling the table next to the downstairs fridge, I clipped the wires for my temperature controller (which I use to lager my homebrew). The controller flew off the fridge and broke the release value on the water heater. As the release valve sat on the floor, the heater began to release 30 gallons of water on to my cluttered basement floor.
The rest of my plans washed away with this water. Since I had to shut off the water, we needed a place to stay. So I called up my folks to put us up. And then I arranged with my dad to spend father's day putting in a new water heater.
But the day was not done. Before we could go up to my folk's house the dog got out. So I wasted 20 minutes looking for the dog. This put us way past dinner so we decided to go to a fast food restaurant. Since we don't care where we eat we asked Nick where he wanted to go. Nick replied that since Burger King has GI Joe toys in its Kids Meals, he wanted to go there. Of course once we get to Burger King, they're out of toys.
Finally we get to my Folk's house. But my day isn't over. Since I could not get a hold of my neighbor, I have to go back to my house late at night and let the dog out. He can't hold it for 15 hours and I like my stuff to be as free of dog urine as possible. So at 9:00 I take the hour drive back to my place. When I get there, I find that not only do we have no water, but the power is out for the entire block. Nice, at this point I can only laugh.
I drive back to my folk's home and arrive at 11:15. Naturally, Scooter refuses to go to sleep and she cries until around 11:45. Finally, around midnight I get to sleep and the day is over.
posted by Peter Young @ 3:41 PM
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