Another week downrange! (Sigh!)
19 November 2011
• Shelburne NS
by Mike
Time doth fly when you are having fun, doesn’t it? I can’t believe that it’s Saturday again and only a week from now we will be on our way to Ottawa to have an early Christmas with my Mom.
Yesterday Lester, the electrician, was in to rewire a new breaker panel for the house. At the same time the Power Corporation came over and put a new pole right on the property line so that we could get the old power lines off the house. I was nervous about hitting the water and sewage line that are running back to the apartments, but the dowser was right. The job went ahead uneventfully, the pole was planted and so was the anchor and we didn’t even get a whiff of the pipes. Whew! While Lester was installing the new panel he had to relocate it from the downstairs bathroom to the basement and re-run all the wiring to the new spot. When he did he saw that the stove wiring was in bad shape, and I do mean in bad shape. When he got it out he showed the old one to me and I couldn’t believe it. It had been lying on the sill in a couple of spots which meant that it was on the ground and the old cloth insulated wire had totally rotted away in a couple of places leaving bare wire! It was a fire just waiting to happen or at least an electrocution. Needless to say that got replaced. We also have a couple of new wall plugs installed in the man cave and the woman cave as well as one in the linen closet which is now doing double duty as an upstairs butler’s pantry where we have put a small fridge and coffee maker so Barb and I can have coffee in the morning on the landing and look out the dormer window at the view down Charlotte Lane to the harbor. Isn’t that civilized?! Lester has also convinced me that we need to save our pennies and get the entire house rewired. He says that he can do it for less than $4K and not have to damage the walls, which was my big fear. I figure getting grounded wire run through the place for safety reasons alone is worth it. Add to that increased resale ability and it’s a no brainer. We just need to get the money together. Maybe in the spring.
Since the power was off for most of the day I didn’t get too much, if anything, done on the woodworking projects, but I did get some coordinating done on my writing projects. We have ordered some floodlights so that we will be able to get some of the inside work, namely plastering and painting done.
And Shelburne’s social swirl strides along! Today some of the stores had a Christmas Crawl where you pop into each of the stores and get a ticket stamped by each. You don’t have to buy anything but you are expected to stop and chat with the staff and owner and have one of their treats that they have laid out for you. We had apple cider, homemade fudge, sausage rolls, and cherry balls just to name some of the offerings. After you visited all five, your stamped ticket goes into a ballet box for a draw on a gift basket. I am writing this at 1800 and there has been no telephone call so I am forced to assume that we didn’t win anything. After the crawl we drove down to the Ingomar Fire Hall where they were having the annual Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary craft fair. We bought some stained glass decorations for this year’s contribution to the tree and I actually won one of the door prizes – a tray of Christmas cookies! I was hoping to use them for some of our Christmas treats this year to save on the baking for Barb, but I think she was slightly insulted at this suggestion and she has been serving one of these cookies every time we have tea! Ah well. They were going to be eaten anyway.
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