Sister-land
August 16th, 2006 @ 10:59 by NormMonkey
From the two-of-three department:
My sister has managed to make a house-buying decision approximately five years earlier than anybody expected (for those of you not playing along at home, my sister never does anything quickly, or on time. This trait comes into play later in this story. Now you have something to look for so you won’t fall asleep!) and so she is now in the process of closing the deal. Boy, that was a long run-on sentence. Thank goodness this blog is not about teh good righting and spu-helling and Graham R.
Right. So. Anyways, she had some stuff in storage here in Ottawa, so the time came when she needed to move the stuff out. Naturally I got involved in helping out. My mistake was to ask a friend to help me. Here’s how the story goes:
Prologue
I email back and forth between my sister and my friend to arrange times. They are coming from Montreal to pick up their rent-a-truck in Ottawa, load it and drive back to Boston. We are supposed to meet at the storage place at 13h00 on Sunday. She will call me from the truck rental place.
Chapter 1
P and I are at his house doing some work. The time approaches when I should think about starting to maybe be ready to head out to the storage place. Then I notice that I don’t have my cell phone with me. Suddenly the time is past when I need to be at home getting my cellphone, so we rush back there. Fortunately, my sister is never early in anything and there are no missed calls.
We stop for lunch. Then we head out to the storage place. It is a little bit after 13h00, but no calls.
Chapter 10
We get to the storage place. We head over to the locker. We unpack everything so that loading it will be nice and quick. We had previously stopped by to scope out the locker, but with everything unpacked, it looks like more than would easily fit in the truck. Mental note: when sister calls from truck rental place, suggest getting a larger size.
All the stuff is unpacked now. It’s probably 13h45 or so. Conveniently enough, there is a couch here with cushions and footstools nearby. We sit down and chat. Time passes.
It is now 14h30 or so. We decide that at 15h00 we will just pack everything back up and leave. Clearly there is something wrong. At this point, we have gotten so bored that P has been reading spam out loud from his blackberry and I have escaped this torture with my DAP and a game of tetrox. We continue to chat about stuff. A suggestion is made that they owe us a case of beer for making us wait.
At 14h55, the phone rings. Sister has gotten the truck. I note that I suggested she call *when she arrives* at the rental place, not just as she leaves, and suggest that a larger truck size would be better. We arrange for them to honk at us from the storage place’s gate so we know to get off our (their) couch and let ‘em in.
Chapter 11
Sometime around 15h30, sister shows up with nice big truck. We pack all the stuff inside with room to spare. Better too much room than not enough, eh? They decide to treat us to dinner, which is nice. P tries to call home to see if he needs to get home right away or if the current plan fits, but can’t get through, so we go to have dinner. The catch-phrase of the day, which would also be a great band name, is “Oxygen Problems in the Brain”.
Epilogue
I drop P back home. As we walk in the house, the temperature drops rapidly. The family is in the kitchen, where the frosty feeling just gets worse. M has had the kids all day and expected P would be back a lot earlier. Doh. I should not have involved my friends in sister’s time-warp-delays.
