browser life

Seems my adventures didn't end on Wednesday night when I got home from my trip. On Thursday, we got the heaviest downpour of rain I've experienced so far in Sioux Falls. So much was coming down that you couldn't even see through it to the street.

Fortunately, the rain finished up within an hour, and because Denver gets similar type storms from time to time, I didn't really think much of it. Until Thursday evening when Dan went to use the downstairs bathroom and saw that the floor was all wet. And when he investigated further and found most of the storage room floor completely soaked.

The sump pump didn't kick in once during the storm, so I figured it must be on the fritz, but it was too late in the evening to call anybody about it, so I put it on my agenda for Friday. The bathroom has a linoleum floor, so we were able to just mop it dry, but the storage room had carpet and pad that were all squishy. I had Dan get a couple of cheap box fans to try to dry things out some while I moved what I could out of the room.

Got up early Friday and called the guys who did our radon remediation because they had sealed up the sump pump. The combination of the trip to Denver, the moving things out of the storage room and the getting up early knocked me on my tuckus, so I lay comatose on the couch for about four hours until I got a call back. Someone came out about 5pm, unsealed the sump pump and determined that it was working fine, which was pretty embarrassing, but the guy did figure out that the flooding was the result of clogged gutters (we have 12 trees on our property shedding leaves all over the place), so it wasn't a complete waste of time, but a real bummer for Dan because he got to clean out the gutters on Saturday.

By Friday evening, the carpet in the storage room was dry, but the pad beneath was still soggy and beginning to smell, so I yanked up a corner of the carpet to investigate. Moldy and really putrid, ewwwww! Plus I spied cracks in the floor where the water had probably come in.

Decided the best course of action would be to pull up the entire carpet and pad in that room and toss it. The bare concrete dried much faster that way. When it was completely dry, Dan sealed up the cracks the best he could.

Dan had a really good idea: instead of replacing the carpet, why not put down cheap linoleum that would be easy to mop up in the event of another flood? He got some self-adhesive stuff and was able to put it all in yesterday. It looks surprisingly nice I must admit.

One thing I neglected to mention in my last post was that the airline that managed to lose my wheelchair did give me a $150 travel certificate with an expiration date of one year. At first I thought, why in the HELL would I consent to fly with them again, and where could I possibly afford to travel before June 2008? But then I remembered that Dan is going to Florida in October for his grandfather's 90th birthday with several family members, using the same airline!

So I checked with Dan's parents to see if it would screw up their plans too much should I tag along (I am quite a handful these days what with my limited mobility and dietary restrictions). They said it would be all right as long as I could still find a flight (Saturday to Saturday travel sells out fast). I went online and discovered that while their exact itinerary was no longer available, I could take flights with takeoff and arrival times that were nearly identical so that no one would be too inconvenienced.

Only problem was, how to redeem the certificate? Couldn't find any way to do it with the online travel companies, so I went to the airline's website. After digging and digging, I found no references to travel certificates, but it did say that ticket vouchers could only be redeemed over the phone, so I figured that would probably work for me too.

I called the airline's 800 number and got stuck in voice automated system hell. I got the itinerary set up, but there was no option for redeeming anything, and when I got to the part where you're supposed to state your credit card information, I kept yelling "help" like the system said to do at the beginning, but it didn't work, so I started saying "customer service" every time I hit a prompt, and after at least a dozen tries, I was connected to an operator. Unfortunately, the operator's English was quite poor, and I have particular problems understanding foreign accents on the phone, so it was barely more useful than the voice system.

The operator also was unfamiliar with travel certificates, so I was placed on hold several times. I was just about to give up when she informed me that my itinerary would be reserved for 24 hours. Within that time frame, I would need to appear at the Sioux Falls airport IN PERSON at the check-in counter to redeem the certificate and then pay the rest of the ticket at that time.

Fortunately, Dan was not opposed to taking me back out to the airport on Saturday afternoon. Thank goodness the wheelchair was still in the trunk, because there was a HUGE line at the airline's one and only check-in counter, so I was at least able to wait sitting down. Turns out there were two cancelled flights and that pretty much everyone ahead of me needed to figure out how they were gonna get to Chicago.

After at least an hour, I was finally at the front of the line and discovered to my dismay that the person running the counter was the woman who had picked a fight with me the previous weekend! When she said she remembered me, I just smirked. But the transaction proceeded smoothly, and I got my tickets without any further incident.

So it's a new week, I have a new floor in the storage room, and I'm going on an unexpected trip to Florida in three and a half months. I'll take it.