Here
I sit in my hotel room in Richfield, OH watching a snowplow working in the
parking lot. It is Saturday morning and
this may be the best day of the week.
Patricia is downstairs teaching a Template Design class; Devlin is in
South Beloit, IL at a class on how to make Damascus steel.
Let
me tell you about my week. First and
foremost, we are on the last half of winter and normally the weather is much
warmer. For those of you who do not live
in the upper Midwest 30 degrees is much warmer.
This week we have had lows in the negative single digits and wind chills
as low as negative 27. My problem is I
am no longer thinking winter, I have moved on to spring. Last week when it was 20 degrees, I was
winter sowing seeds for my garden. If
you don’t know about winter sewing, it is starting seeds outside in the snow in
covered containers like milk jugs. I am
thinking about Foxglove, Columbine, Shasta Daisies, Lupine and other really
great flowers, it is not supposed to be so cold.
So
the stage is set for the week as we prepared to leave for a quilt retreat
sponsored by Memory Lane Quilting and then on to Virginia.
Monday
we started work on a custom mat order for a really great customer. We had ordered new screens and frames, flood
bars and squeegees. What could go
wrong? Almost everything! Devlin set up the screen, put in a the new
flood bar and squeegee, poured in the ink.
Turned on the machine and two strokes later a $500 screen was ripped and
useless. I was devastated. I was sure we had missed a burr on the new
flood bar. So pull everything out, clean
up, find the burr buff it out and start on the next order. Problem, we never did find a burr. What we did determine is the rounded end of
the flood bar was not the same as all the rest of our flood bars. Get out a grinder and made it the same. Put in the next new screen and everything
worked fine.
Things
are back to normal. We have to put new
silk on the frame and have the image put on it again. Because of the size of the screen we have it
done outside our facility. First we have
to clean all the glue and silk off the frame, transport it 89 miles and come
home. More on this subject later in the
week…
On
Tuesday, my wife is using our Suburban to do some shopping because I have my
pickup taking the frame to be fixed. It is 4:45 in the evening, she is driving
home and tries to stop and the brake pedal gets all soft and sinks to the
floor. Are you starting to get the
sinking picture of how the week is going?
So she calls the shop where we have all our mechanical work done. They close in 15 minutes, but they will stay
open until she gets there. Now tomorrow
is Wednesday and we had planned to load the Suburban and trailer so we could
leave early on Thursday. Plans are just
that and subject to change. Are you
getting the picture of how confused our week is becoming?
Wednesday
is spent trying to determine if the truck can be fixed by the time we need it,
notifying Memory Lane Quilting we are experiencing a few difficulties. It turns out that we have several ruptured
brake lines that have to be replaced; which is not surprising since the truck
has 411,000 miles on the odometer. Having this happen at home is better than on
the road. But everything is corroded and
salt covered and there are a few problems bleeding the new lines. To shorten this up a bit, we normally load
out about 2 in the afternoon. At 2pm we
don’t even know if we will get the Suburban back today. So we clear out part of the warehouse and push
the trailer in to load it. Now hope for
the best. At 6:30pm we finally get the
word the truck is ready to pick up. We
are so lucky Wednesday is the one day of the week the shop works until
8pm. So back to the plant, load the suburban,
hook up the trailer, pull it home, and we are back on track. I guess I should mention that my wife knows I
was having a really bad day so she has fixed one of my favorite winter comfort meals. We got to eat dinner 2 ½ hours after it was
ready. Eloise is really special because
she did not say a thing!
Thursday
morning 4am I am up waiting for Patricia, who hates morning before 9am. She shows up on time at 5am. I have had enough coffee and we load the
suitcases and clothes. The hats are
already in the trailer. Some of you may
not understand the hat reference, but you don’t know Patricia and for you it is
not important. We start off and start
naming all the things we need and have packed.
Forgot the safe, so we head for Patricia’s to pick it up. By the time we get there we have gotten to
coats and mine is still in my pickup.
Remember it is below zero so back to my house to get my coat. So we are now an hour behind. Ok we will change our route through Chicago
because we need to avoid rush hour. That
will add 30 minutes to the trip. We will
arrive in Richfield, OH about 4pm instead of 2:30pm. I am still a happy camper.
We
got to the south side of Chicago, and turned east on Interstate 80. I am thinking maybe if we don’t stop for
lunch we can make up an hour. Remember
it is really cold out and did I mention the wind is blowing out of the
Northwest? Just about the time we get on
the turnpike and go through the first toll we are in a really bad Lake Effect
snow storm. For the next 70 miles we
average a little over 25 miles an hour.
Sit for an hour on the world longest parking lot, pass through several
multiple truck car accidents and continue to fall further and further behind. Back home, Eloise is headed to pick up the
screen that is ready. She calls me
because she is having trouble with her truck, it will not develop enough power
to shift into drive. She is going back
to the house to get my truck and drop her truck at the shop. It turns out her truck will need a couple of
new injectors. The only good news we will
get today is that we have the screen back that we ruined on Monday. We did arrive late for the dinner but we were
there for the teacher meet and greet.
Got the trailer unloaded about 9pm and finished helping set up a couple
of long arms about 10:30pm.
Friday
morning came, Patricia will be teaching and Devlin will set up to screen the
mat order from Monday. Everything is
back to normal until the phone rings and I am told that the image on the screen
is the wrong image!
It
is still snowing you can’t tell that a snowplow was in the parking lot a couple
of hours ago. I have to load the trailer
this afternoon. I really love my job!
Tomorrow
is Sunday, a new week starts we plan to drive part way to the Mid-Atlantic
Quilt Festival in Hampton, VA. We will see….
