Well Finally!

I’m sit­ting and wait­ing for the chim­ney guys. Again. The chim­ney odyssey has been going on since July 2001. I’m quite seri­ous. And today, final­ly! the whole dan­ged thing (okay, except the stone inside, I guess) is sup­posed to be replaced. Pipes, firebox—everything.

The chim­ney sweep com­pa­ny talked to me about four times to ver­i­fy that they had an 8 am appoint­ment. Today. May 30, 2002. Real­ly. Appar­ent­ly, that was whol­ly the­o­ret­i­cal, as they still aren’t here and haven’t called. I guess I need to call them and dou­ble-check the year on that appointment.

I don’t think this is the com­pa­ny that told me some­one would be here on a par­tic­u­lar Thurs­day, then had a guy actu­al­ly show up on the fol­low­ing Fri­day. Yes, over a week lat­er. I asked him why, and he said, “I was stuck in traf­fic.” I said, “Where, from JUNEAU?” He did­n’t like being questioned.

We’re going to have a prob­lem if this guy shows up reek­ing of cig­a­rette smoke, though. There were two guys here from some com­pa­ny at some point that smelled so bad it made me nau­seous to talk to them when they were just stand­ing on my front porch and I was inside the house with the door bare­ly open.