We have been here less than a week and, already, I’ve broken the shower. On Saturday morning, after a lengthy walk, I jumped in the shower. Not literally, “jumped in”, but you know what I mean. Anyway, I let the water run for five minutes and never got anything close to warm water. The handle turned to the point where it normally is all the way open, then continued to turn, not very smoothly. Since I wasn’t getting any warm water, and I’m not inclined to take cold showers, I went to the other bathroom and took a shower there.
When I came back to the master bathroom, there was a half inch of water on the floor. I sopped it up as best I could with the bath mat, but it was still quite wet. I found another towel (white…not a good choice for cleaning the floor) and sopped up the rest. Jean came in, found a reddish pink towel, and we placed that against the spot where the water was coming out. It was the weekend, and we knew we couldn’t get hold of anyone in the office ’til Monday, so we used the second bathroom.
Later Saturday evening, after Robert and Danielle left, Jean went to use the bathroom and the door wouldn’t close. I looked, and the door jamb appeared to be made of pressed wood products, not just plain wood. When that stuff gets wet, it expands like an accordion. It expanded so much that the door couldn’t close all the way. You know me to be not very shy, but bathroom time should be private time. Even when I’m alone in the house, I always close the bathrrom door. Now what? We contacted the office on Monday mid morning. They got back to us later in the day and said they would send a guy from maintenance over to fix it. We waited around until 5:30 and, then, went out to dinner. Apparently the guy came at 5:31 and we weren’t here.
He came yesterday, looked at the problem, and was perplexed about where the water was coming from. I told him I thought it was going into the channel that runs along the molded base and, when it gets to the low spot in the corner, leaks out. He agreed and went back to get a hair dryer and some silicone caulk. He shaved off some of the extra thickness in the jamb so the door would close. I left to go to the pool (yes, I was able to swim with very little itching…hooray!!) and he came back and fixed it. I just went in to turn the water on to see how it works, and now it leaks out from the middle of the base, right before where the silicone caulk starts. Ugh!!
We got roped into being in a parade of golf carts Sunday evening, against my will. We were supposed to meet up with some friends from Hastings who live here now, but they had friends stop by and they had to cancel. That was fine with me. Jean went down to tell another friend from Hastings that we wouldn’t be using her golf cart and, when she came back, I found out we were still going and meeting up with someone from Canada that she just met. We went to meet up at 5:30 and the parade was to start at 6:00. A group of carts met in each of the five or six “villages” and were all riding around looking at Christmas decorations. We were all to meet at the Founders Hall for a Christmas party at 7:00.
What we didn’t realize was that our cart was the slowest in the whole complex. We stayed with the group on the turnarounds, but fell way behind on the straightaways. This went on for about 40 minutes until we got tired of holding everyone up that was behind us. We peeled off and went to the hall to wait. There were lots of people and we stood and talked to a woman from Wisconsin whose husband had gone back to the house ‘cuz they forgot their booze. Jean had a Gatorade bottle almost full of wine and I had a couple of beers. We sat with the Canada friends and the couple from Wisconsin, and talked most of the way through the show (the chorale was doing Christmas songs). We only got “shooshed” once by the people at the next table.
We’re meeting lots of people, many of them our age, and we like it around here. We haven’t found all the good restaurants yet, but we’re trying. Actually, Jean is trying. When we got here, we looked around and they have everything we might need except a frying pan. I was quite disappointed and Jean pretended to be put out, but the wheels in her head were turning and I could tell she was thinking “Thank goodness I don’t have to cook”. We spoiled her fun by buying a frying pan at WalMart yesterday. We need one at home, so we’ll just take it with us. Let me guess…Jean will come back from her morning workout with a sprained cooking wrist.
Just (Dinner Tonight At The Paradise Grill With Friends) Jack