Well here we are, another wonderful day in the Valley.
Ever notice how bad things travel in packs? Well Jeff from the store was over here at Château D’Isaster working on the decks for some extra cash and a whole herd of bad things happened…
See, Jeff is getting ready to move to Reno and needed some extra cash for the trip. Larry, the fellow who owns the shop where I work and the house I live in, offered to just give him some cash – which Jeff would be honor-bound to repay even if Larry said it wasn’t required… Well Jeff isn’t sure he’ll be making enough money to repay him later and insisted on doing some maintenance around here and Larry has wanted to stain the wood decks for a while now.
Ok, Jeff is in a bit of a panic with this move and isn’t exactly “all here” if you know what I mean. He’s been forgetting things, loosing things; in general he’s in a bad way. The other players in this story, Larry and his wife, are off in San Jose for a few weeks and so I’ve got the place to myself.
Anyways, yesterday Jeff is up on the third floor finishing the front deck when he steps backwards into the tray of dark brown oil-based stain… In slow motion the tray flips though the air, spraying the white stucco of the house with brown on the third floor and as it lands and spills it’s remaining contents onto the deck. The stain falls though the slats onto the second floor deck, spattering the front of the house with more brown stain.
Jeff freaks out and runs though the house and down the stairs to get to the hose so he can wash the stain off before it dries, and tracks brown oil-based stain across the custom fitted light grey Berber carpet. He notices this right about the time he reaches the middle of the stairs, freaks out again and calls me at the shop…
Well, just after all this happens and I assure Jeff that things will be ok because we’ll just get it cleaned up over the next few days, the home rentals place calls and says they’d like to show the house this morning… See, we rent out the house on occasion during the ski season as we can get around $2000 a night having 7 bedrooms, being walking distance from the Beaver Creek ski resort, and about 5 miles west of Vail. But this time, just to add to Chaos’ humor, someone wants to rent the house now rather than the ski season.
Well, to make a long, agonizing story short, this morning at first light I was out repainting the front of the house with Kilz and the carpet guy is here trying to get the stain out of the carpet. Fortunately he’s having some marginal success at it, thanks be to the carpet cleaner god.
I managed to put the rentals lady off till this afternoon.
For me this is all just another example of no matter if it’s good or bad, it’s always an adventure. 🙂