I don't want to get on a rant here but....

If I’m not mistaken, today is the 12th of October. There are two big pumpkins on our front steps and a largish squash. The maple leaves have fallen and the yellowing alder petioles are tippy toeing on the end of their stems, ready to drop. If I’m not mistaken, we called a contractor and asked them to put a simple woodstove vent through our roof on the 14th of August, which they readily agreed to do. When they arrived on the 21st of September (not so readily it turns out), they put a ladder up the wall in the house in the first five minutes and promptly discovered a stud in their way. The ladder was back on the truck inside of 10 minutes and they declared it an impossible job and thanked us for our time. Not to be deterred we called the supervisor. I mean, after all our society has sent people into space. We now do it repeatedly in the private sector. People in other parts of the world build houses out of straw and dung. Surely we can move a stud and put a pipe through the fricking ceiling and live happily, right? After that ensued a complicated dance between the carpenter who worked for the roofer (doing a different job for us) and the woodstove people and us and eventually it was agreed that, yes, theoretically, the stud could be moved or even removed. Today, (29 days later) the carpenter came to remove the stud. Guess what? There never was a stud! The stud didn’t exist! We’ve been wearing sweaters in the house for no reason! We might even have a venting system by this coming Thursday (instead of the pathetic make believe stove pipe I had to invent in Photoshop to make me believe my toes were warm).

posted by Scott in Washington at 8:47 PM |