Friday, April 21, 2006
What a month!
I can’t believe it’s been a month since I updated, but there you go. I think I submitted an update to this in early April, but it has since disappeared.
Yesterday was a very bad, simultaneously very good day. I got a call early after I got to work from my sister, Laura, and although she was coherent enough for the first sentence to get out (“Did you get my message?!!”), after that, she wasn’t understandable at all. I mean, I could barely make out what she was saying at all, other than that she was in distress of some sort.
Springing directly in to “problem solve” mode, I told her that wherever she was, I was coming there right now, and to just tell me where that was. No matter the problem, I would come and find her. She was hysterical, and I managed to understand that she was IN THE WOODS somewhere near her house. I, of course, had managed to forget my cellphone at home, so I had to borrow my assistant’s phone and run from my office yelling “I’m not sure when I’ll be back!!” as the elevator door closed.
I called Laura back and told her I was on the way, and would call her when I got near her house, and she told me to park near the school nearby, which I did. I met her on the walking pathway, which leads you down a nice, wooded hill. This hill is part of the Paskapoo hill range, which stretches along the South side of the Bow River both East and West of Canada Olympic Park (which used to be named “Paskapoo Ski Hill”, but they changed it when we had the Olympics here in 1988). It’s quite a range, and although she had been walking East of the ski hill, there’s quite a bit of distance you can range over that isn’t built up with houses.
Laura had been out walking with and had lost Penny, her dog, one of the Hurricane rescues – the dog I brought to my mother after my first experience with the dogs at the kennels after they got up here from Louisiana, who was so sick all she could do was sit on my lap, shake, cough and sneeze. My mother agreed to foster Penny, and Laura just fell in love with her. After a sort of dog-sharing arrangement between the two of them, my mother and Laura decided that Penny would just stay with Laura (it was too confusing for everyone to try and share a dog…).
At any rate, I got to the hill, and met up with Laura, who was so upset she could barely talk. On the way, I had called Rob, who suggested he come and help look for Penny, too, and bring our dogs, who might be able to find her more easily than we could, being dogs and thinking the way dogs think… Laura and I made our way down the hill at about 9:15a, about a 15-minute walk from where I parked, to start sweeping the area. We called and called, and walked and walked. My father joined the search, as did Laura’s boyfriend, Shane, on his mountain-bike. He could cover more distance than we could on foot. Rob had gone from work to our home to get the dogs, and initially drove around the area asking if anyone had seen a little black dog.
The hill area stretches, by my rough estimation, about two kilometers East of the ski hill, and then many kilometers West of the ski hill. Penny was lost about a kilometer East of the ski hill, and the hill itself is about a kilometer’s worth of height. I could be wrong about some of those distances, but we walked up and down the hill many, many times, and across it many, many times. My father, The Grumpaw, showed up in his suit and tie, at about 9:45a and walked up and down the hill a few times, and checked the house to see if she had gone home. Shane rode up and down the hill a few times, checked the perimeter all around the area, and went to the area on the West side of the hill, because Laura occasionally takes Penny over there for a walk. Rob showed up around 11a with the dogs, hiking shoes and socks for me, water, walkie-talkies and a backpack for supplies. Laura and I took the NoodleDog and Cooter with us, and Rob took Beau with him, and went to search the Eastern-most areas. From there, he worked his way up into the neighborhoods and started searching the streets individually on foot with Beau.
I wasn’t really worried when we started out, but I was pretty concerned about Laura – she has a condition that causes her to go in to anaphylactic shock, which is a condition that shuts down her respiratory and circulatory systems, if she exercises after she eats, so she hadn’t had breakfast before her walk with Penny that morning. Nor had she had anything to drink until Rob got to us with water. In addition, she was extremely emotionally stressed-out, as I would be if one of my dogs was lost, and I was getting more and more worried about her as the day wore on. I promised her we wouldn’t leave the hill, and I wouldn’t leave her until we found Penny, either way. Laura found a coyote den in the hillside and was absolutely distraught. The Grumpaw had a medical appointment to go to, and had to leave us, but promised to stay in touch.
We searched and searched the entire hill for the next three hours. Laura got more and more upset with each passing hour, and by just after 2p, she radioed me and said she just didn’t know what to do. I told her I’d meet up with her and we could assess the areas we’d covered, and make a plan to section off the hill and go at it in grids, thoroughly, in case Penny was there somewhere, hurt and unable to come to our calls. As I was making my way up to her, Rob called me on my cell and told me Laura owed him a beer, because he had Penny.
The relief was overwhelming. I radioed Laura, and we were overjoyed that Penny was found! I was at least halfway down the hill when I got the call, and started to run (uphill) to meet up with Laura to make our way back to the house, at least a 20-minute walk. I realized part way up I wasn’t going to make it… I can do an hour of reasonably intense physical activity, but had been out searching since 9a, and was exhausted. I hooked the NoodleDog up to his leash and had him tow me up to meet Laura, and from there, we walked the rest of the way.
Rob, who had been searching the neighborhoods, left Laura’s gate open, in the hope that Penny would find her way home and just go into the yard, which she did. I figure she had seen a deer on the hill and had chased it (or them) and got out of earshot. She probably tried to find Laura afterwards, and couldn’t, so she started up the hill towards home on her own, and then probably got lost in the residential neighborhoods. Rob, having had the occasional lost dog in his past, knew that eventually, most dogs make their way home, so he left the gate open for her, just in case.
Yesterday was the warmest day so far this year, about +20C. We spent the rest of the day on Laura’s deck, with the dogs all playing in the yard, drinking our weight in water (beer for the guys, of course). Penny was examined and found to have a small cut on the back of her back foot, which was bandaged with great care and attention. My hips were killing me, and everyone had had too much sun, but we didn’t care because Penny was safe and home.
The first part of the day was terrible, but the last part of the day was fantastic. We relaxed and enjoyed ourselves afterwards, and Penny will not be let off leash anytime in the near future!!
***
My little Fearsome is just a regular cat now, barely any sign of “wild” in him any more. He really enjoys sleeping with us on the bed, and is becoming more and more tolerant of the dogs. He seems to not just not be afraid of Cooter, but might actually like the extra attention Cooter gives him. He comes when I whistle, now, and is pretty friendly, overall. It’s so nice to see him actually enjoying himself and relaxing – it’s a huge change from when you couldn’t approach him without the welding gloves on…
***
Our trailer order has hit a snag. We placed our order at the end of January when the RV show was on here in Calgary. We ordered a Prowler, a Fleetwood product, from a dealer here in Calgary. It was supposed to take six to eight weeks, and we were told we’d have it for the Easter Long Weekend, no problem.
See how it’s past Easter, and I didn’t have a camping story for you? That’s because the trailer isn’t here yet. Nor is it coming anytime soon. The dealer called me on Wednesday before Easter, and said “uh, there’s a problem with your trailer…” It wasn’t built in the production run after the show. It is tentatively scheduled for the production run for that model in mid-May. If it makes that production run, we’ll get it in early June (theoretically). If it doesn’t, there’s no telling when we’ll get it.
Annoyed by this, I called Fleetwood, and they confirmed that the trailer didn’t come off that production run (I half-suspected they shipped it elsewhere or gave it to someone else…). I called the local Fleetwood rep, who said that the dealer had been aware of this for the past month, and just didn’t tell us. Further annoyed, I contacted the salesperson who sold us the thing, and his response was “well, we did the best we could…”.
Even further annoyed, I called the dealership’s manager and spoke with him about it. He said they had been trying to find us another trailer, and that was why they hadn’t called earlier to tell us so we could change our plans. I explained to him that this was my leisure time they were playing with, which is priceless to me, and something they couldn’t afford to tamper with. I asked him what he wanted to do about it, and he said that we could come in and meet with him on the weekend, which we did.
The salesperson was in the meeting, as well. He maintained it wasn’t his fault, and there was nothing more they could do for me, and that he’d done his best, and that if I wasn’t satisfied, I could take my deposit back and go elsewhere. About as annoyed as I could get, I looked at them and asked point-blank whether they really expected to build a business with that sort of lack of customer service attitude. The manager asked me what I expected from them, and I said that we had chosen to deal with them during the RV show, when we could have gone to any of a dozen other dealers, because we trusted them and felt they would provide good customer service. I said that if I was wrong about that, and they didn’t want our business, and would prefer to turn good customers away, I could certainly do that, and would be letting all of my friends, associates and people I deal with know about their decision, because quite a number of people know I had ordered a trailer and were asking me how it was going. I let him know that Rob and I were concerned about the interest rate we would be getting in two more months, because at 7.9% in February, it was already high enough, and would be climbing after the Bank of Canada meets in the next few weeks here to set the rate again. I let him know that in addition to that, this delay was causing us to cancel a number of vacation plans, which are something Rob and I work hard to achieve. We had also sold the camper, which we could have held on to if we’d known it would be four months instead of six weeks, and we could have used it a couple more times, and when we sold it during camping season, which it is now, we might have gotten a higher price for it, too.
The manager asked me what this was all worth to me, and I said “Two grand, if you really want to know.” He said to give him a minute and he’d see what he could do.
Rob and I wandered around a little, and went back to talk with the manager, alone, without the salesperson, and when we did, he said he could knock off $1,200 from the price for us and would try to see if he could lend us a trailer for the May long weekend.
I dunno. I was alright with the arrangement – it nearly covers the extended warranty we’re getting with the trailer, which is pretty good. I’m still annoyed that they chose to deal with us this way, but there’s not much else we can do with it. If we go anywhere else, we either pay an additional $30K for a trailer and probably still have to wait the delivery time, or we wait another six to eight weeks anyway. The trailer we ordered is the one we want – we were very careful about selecting it and the options we settled on. So we’re going to stay with these guys, and see what happens over the next two months. But until then, we are trailerless. It’s disappointing, but not fatal. We’ve decided we’re going to go to Rob’s cabin for the May long weekend instead of camping, which might be nicer anyway – I’ve never seen the cabin in the spring.
***
Work has been hellaciously busy lately. My workload has doubled, simply with the addition of these two new properties I took on April 1st. I’m not really looking for another job, but am tempted.
And now you know!!
Yesterday was a very bad, simultaneously very good day. I got a call early after I got to work from my sister, Laura, and although she was coherent enough for the first sentence to get out (“Did you get my message?!!”), after that, she wasn’t understandable at all. I mean, I could barely make out what she was saying at all, other than that she was in distress of some sort.
Springing directly in to “problem solve” mode, I told her that wherever she was, I was coming there right now, and to just tell me where that was. No matter the problem, I would come and find her. She was hysterical, and I managed to understand that she was IN THE WOODS somewhere near her house. I, of course, had managed to forget my cellphone at home, so I had to borrow my assistant’s phone and run from my office yelling “I’m not sure when I’ll be back!!” as the elevator door closed.
I called Laura back and told her I was on the way, and would call her when I got near her house, and she told me to park near the school nearby, which I did. I met her on the walking pathway, which leads you down a nice, wooded hill. This hill is part of the Paskapoo hill range, which stretches along the South side of the Bow River both East and West of Canada Olympic Park (which used to be named “Paskapoo Ski Hill”, but they changed it when we had the Olympics here in 1988). It’s quite a range, and although she had been walking East of the ski hill, there’s quite a bit of distance you can range over that isn’t built up with houses.
Laura had been out walking with and had lost Penny, her dog, one of the Hurricane rescues – the dog I brought to my mother after my first experience with the dogs at the kennels after they got up here from Louisiana, who was so sick all she could do was sit on my lap, shake, cough and sneeze. My mother agreed to foster Penny, and Laura just fell in love with her. After a sort of dog-sharing arrangement between the two of them, my mother and Laura decided that Penny would just stay with Laura (it was too confusing for everyone to try and share a dog…).
At any rate, I got to the hill, and met up with Laura, who was so upset she could barely talk. On the way, I had called Rob, who suggested he come and help look for Penny, too, and bring our dogs, who might be able to find her more easily than we could, being dogs and thinking the way dogs think… Laura and I made our way down the hill at about 9:15a, about a 15-minute walk from where I parked, to start sweeping the area. We called and called, and walked and walked. My father joined the search, as did Laura’s boyfriend, Shane, on his mountain-bike. He could cover more distance than we could on foot. Rob had gone from work to our home to get the dogs, and initially drove around the area asking if anyone had seen a little black dog.
The hill area stretches, by my rough estimation, about two kilometers East of the ski hill, and then many kilometers West of the ski hill. Penny was lost about a kilometer East of the ski hill, and the hill itself is about a kilometer’s worth of height. I could be wrong about some of those distances, but we walked up and down the hill many, many times, and across it many, many times. My father, The Grumpaw, showed up in his suit and tie, at about 9:45a and walked up and down the hill a few times, and checked the house to see if she had gone home. Shane rode up and down the hill a few times, checked the perimeter all around the area, and went to the area on the West side of the hill, because Laura occasionally takes Penny over there for a walk. Rob showed up around 11a with the dogs, hiking shoes and socks for me, water, walkie-talkies and a backpack for supplies. Laura and I took the NoodleDog and Cooter with us, and Rob took Beau with him, and went to search the Eastern-most areas. From there, he worked his way up into the neighborhoods and started searching the streets individually on foot with Beau.
I wasn’t really worried when we started out, but I was pretty concerned about Laura – she has a condition that causes her to go in to anaphylactic shock, which is a condition that shuts down her respiratory and circulatory systems, if she exercises after she eats, so she hadn’t had breakfast before her walk with Penny that morning. Nor had she had anything to drink until Rob got to us with water. In addition, she was extremely emotionally stressed-out, as I would be if one of my dogs was lost, and I was getting more and more worried about her as the day wore on. I promised her we wouldn’t leave the hill, and I wouldn’t leave her until we found Penny, either way. Laura found a coyote den in the hillside and was absolutely distraught. The Grumpaw had a medical appointment to go to, and had to leave us, but promised to stay in touch.
We searched and searched the entire hill for the next three hours. Laura got more and more upset with each passing hour, and by just after 2p, she radioed me and said she just didn’t know what to do. I told her I’d meet up with her and we could assess the areas we’d covered, and make a plan to section off the hill and go at it in grids, thoroughly, in case Penny was there somewhere, hurt and unable to come to our calls. As I was making my way up to her, Rob called me on my cell and told me Laura owed him a beer, because he had Penny.
The relief was overwhelming. I radioed Laura, and we were overjoyed that Penny was found! I was at least halfway down the hill when I got the call, and started to run (uphill) to meet up with Laura to make our way back to the house, at least a 20-minute walk. I realized part way up I wasn’t going to make it… I can do an hour of reasonably intense physical activity, but had been out searching since 9a, and was exhausted. I hooked the NoodleDog up to his leash and had him tow me up to meet Laura, and from there, we walked the rest of the way.
Rob, who had been searching the neighborhoods, left Laura’s gate open, in the hope that Penny would find her way home and just go into the yard, which she did. I figure she had seen a deer on the hill and had chased it (or them) and got out of earshot. She probably tried to find Laura afterwards, and couldn’t, so she started up the hill towards home on her own, and then probably got lost in the residential neighborhoods. Rob, having had the occasional lost dog in his past, knew that eventually, most dogs make their way home, so he left the gate open for her, just in case.
Yesterday was the warmest day so far this year, about +20C. We spent the rest of the day on Laura’s deck, with the dogs all playing in the yard, drinking our weight in water (beer for the guys, of course). Penny was examined and found to have a small cut on the back of her back foot, which was bandaged with great care and attention. My hips were killing me, and everyone had had too much sun, but we didn’t care because Penny was safe and home.
The first part of the day was terrible, but the last part of the day was fantastic. We relaxed and enjoyed ourselves afterwards, and Penny will not be let off leash anytime in the near future!!
***
My little Fearsome is just a regular cat now, barely any sign of “wild” in him any more. He really enjoys sleeping with us on the bed, and is becoming more and more tolerant of the dogs. He seems to not just not be afraid of Cooter, but might actually like the extra attention Cooter gives him. He comes when I whistle, now, and is pretty friendly, overall. It’s so nice to see him actually enjoying himself and relaxing – it’s a huge change from when you couldn’t approach him without the welding gloves on…
***
Our trailer order has hit a snag. We placed our order at the end of January when the RV show was on here in Calgary. We ordered a Prowler, a Fleetwood product, from a dealer here in Calgary. It was supposed to take six to eight weeks, and we were told we’d have it for the Easter Long Weekend, no problem.
See how it’s past Easter, and I didn’t have a camping story for you? That’s because the trailer isn’t here yet. Nor is it coming anytime soon. The dealer called me on Wednesday before Easter, and said “uh, there’s a problem with your trailer…” It wasn’t built in the production run after the show. It is tentatively scheduled for the production run for that model in mid-May. If it makes that production run, we’ll get it in early June (theoretically). If it doesn’t, there’s no telling when we’ll get it.
Annoyed by this, I called Fleetwood, and they confirmed that the trailer didn’t come off that production run (I half-suspected they shipped it elsewhere or gave it to someone else…). I called the local Fleetwood rep, who said that the dealer had been aware of this for the past month, and just didn’t tell us. Further annoyed, I contacted the salesperson who sold us the thing, and his response was “well, we did the best we could…”.
Even further annoyed, I called the dealership’s manager and spoke with him about it. He said they had been trying to find us another trailer, and that was why they hadn’t called earlier to tell us so we could change our plans. I explained to him that this was my leisure time they were playing with, which is priceless to me, and something they couldn’t afford to tamper with. I asked him what he wanted to do about it, and he said that we could come in and meet with him on the weekend, which we did.
The salesperson was in the meeting, as well. He maintained it wasn’t his fault, and there was nothing more they could do for me, and that he’d done his best, and that if I wasn’t satisfied, I could take my deposit back and go elsewhere. About as annoyed as I could get, I looked at them and asked point-blank whether they really expected to build a business with that sort of lack of customer service attitude. The manager asked me what I expected from them, and I said that we had chosen to deal with them during the RV show, when we could have gone to any of a dozen other dealers, because we trusted them and felt they would provide good customer service. I said that if I was wrong about that, and they didn’t want our business, and would prefer to turn good customers away, I could certainly do that, and would be letting all of my friends, associates and people I deal with know about their decision, because quite a number of people know I had ordered a trailer and were asking me how it was going. I let him know that Rob and I were concerned about the interest rate we would be getting in two more months, because at 7.9% in February, it was already high enough, and would be climbing after the Bank of Canada meets in the next few weeks here to set the rate again. I let him know that in addition to that, this delay was causing us to cancel a number of vacation plans, which are something Rob and I work hard to achieve. We had also sold the camper, which we could have held on to if we’d known it would be four months instead of six weeks, and we could have used it a couple more times, and when we sold it during camping season, which it is now, we might have gotten a higher price for it, too.
The manager asked me what this was all worth to me, and I said “Two grand, if you really want to know.” He said to give him a minute and he’d see what he could do.
Rob and I wandered around a little, and went back to talk with the manager, alone, without the salesperson, and when we did, he said he could knock off $1,200 from the price for us and would try to see if he could lend us a trailer for the May long weekend.
I dunno. I was alright with the arrangement – it nearly covers the extended warranty we’re getting with the trailer, which is pretty good. I’m still annoyed that they chose to deal with us this way, but there’s not much else we can do with it. If we go anywhere else, we either pay an additional $30K for a trailer and probably still have to wait the delivery time, or we wait another six to eight weeks anyway. The trailer we ordered is the one we want – we were very careful about selecting it and the options we settled on. So we’re going to stay with these guys, and see what happens over the next two months. But until then, we are trailerless. It’s disappointing, but not fatal. We’ve decided we’re going to go to Rob’s cabin for the May long weekend instead of camping, which might be nicer anyway – I’ve never seen the cabin in the spring.
***
Work has been hellaciously busy lately. My workload has doubled, simply with the addition of these two new properties I took on April 1st. I’m not really looking for another job, but am tempted.
And now you know!!
