Well, Todd the Birthday Boy managed to scare the crap clear out of me today. I was working and he was at the new house running phone line through the crawlspace and into the home office. I suppose it's about 45-50 feet from the crawlspace opening to where he had to run the line through the floor. It starts out about 2-1/2' high but narrows considerably at the other end of the house. I called him on his cell and he said he was on his way out and would call me right back. When I didn't hear anything from him for a few minutes, I called him back. That time he sounded like he was sick so I asked if he was okay. He said he'd have to call me back and then didn't again. So I called again and he said he was almost out, everything was fine, he just needed to get out of there. I told him I was going to the store and would call back again. When I did try to call about 20 minutes later, I got no answer so I go flying over there and he's in the house but sicker than I've ever seen anybody. Sick enough that he couldn't answer the phone. Ended up having to drive him home and help him into bed. Of course he wouldn't hear of going to the doctor to see what was wrong. He kept smiling this funny smile and telling me how much he loved me which was scaring me even more. To make an already long story short, he slept it off, ate a huge supper and is a lot better now. Still not 100% but way better than a few hours ago. I don't know if he was just cramped up in the dark, cold crawlspace too long or if he breathed in something he shouldn't have. Regardless, I will not let him go clear back under there again. He says he has to go to tie the phone line up to the floor joists so it looks better. Hello??? Who are we going to entertain in the crawlspace? I could care less what it looks like under the house but I do care not to see him that sick ever again.
With his sudden illness and my problems at work we lost some moving time but that's okay. Tomorrow's the busy day anyway. The telephone guy is coming to update the box on the side of the house, the plumbers are coming to run the gas line for the stove and the satellite will be installed tomorrow. A friend who was to help us move this afternoon is coming back tomorrow and hopefully we'll get the bulk of it finished.
The Boston office was plunged into DSL hell again today when we received an email from our provider notifying us that they were beta testing for the new Boston circuit. Sounds good since our circuit was through New York and it was down quite a bit. The problem was that they said we were scheduled to transition today and that if that wasn't convenient, we could reschedule if we gave 24 hours notice. The email was sent at 1AM so of course no one saw it until 8AM and the transition was to start at 11AM. Either way you do the math there's not 24 hours to give notice. I made some phone calls and sent email to try and get it stopped but it was too late. Things like this just drive my boss insane. Understandably so since we rely almost 100% on our internet connection. They originally said we could be down until tomorrow morning while the transition was complete. Luckily it was only about six hours but that's still six hours of lost work. I feel sorry for those of you on the coasts who have to deal with large corporations to get internet service. One of the few benefits of living in the sticks is dealing with a small company who will actual respond to customer service requests. On Monday I put in my request to have our home DSL moved. They called today - one day later - and said we had DSL at both places now and I just needed to call when I was ready to have it shut off at the old place. I don't even want to think how long a change like that would take in Boston.
Got quite a bit of moving accomplished today. Not enough to satisfy Todd but a lot considering the lack of trucks and manpower. My brother helped for a couple of hours this morning. It's hard to pick and choose what to move. There's no water at the new place yet and no gas for the stove so we've got to have the essentials over here for awhile yet. Christopher's dad brought a flatbed trailer this evening and helped move the monster swingset and some outdoor furniture. I tell ya, it pays to play nice : )
There's some pretty bad weather headed this way. My mom just called and said a tornado touched down in the neighboring county. Feels really muggy in the house but not so bad outside. Hopefully it'll break up before it gets here. The new house presents some problems where tornadoes are concerned. I'm the first one in the basement when they give a warning. Over there we have a crawlspace. No basement. Christopher says he'll dive in the crawlspace. I think I'll go into the closet by the fireplace. I'm sure the first few bad storms are going to scare me to death knowing I don't have a real good place to go. My brother has a really cool underground shelter at his place. Maybe some day we'll put something like that in. Todd thinks I overreact a little but he's used to bad stuff. A few years ago he was in the patrol car when a huge storm went over. I was listening on the scanner and could hear that he was pretty much stuck in the middle of it all. I was worried sick about him. Saw him the next day at work and he didn't think it was a big deal at all. He either puts on a brave face for me or he's half crazy. Since he eats hot pepper rings on just about everything, I'm betting on crazy.
