Fog, heat and broken things

It all seemed to start on last Thursday afternoon. Actually it probably began early that morning while everyone was sleeping. The hot water in the cafe stopped being, well, hot. It was first noticed when Jessica, living above the cafe, discovered that her shower water began cold and stayed cold. Bit by bit the revelation dawned on the staff that there was trouble afoot and no one knew where to turn. At first. (photo: continuing work at the Schoodic sculpture symposium.)

Calls were made to the owners and other calls were made to various technicians scattered in diverse locations throughout the state. Fortunately it wasn't serious since the dishwashers and coffee machines all heated their own water (convenient, eh?). But this was just the tip of the iceberg, like they said on the Titanic.

Early Friday morning a plumber came by and fixed the boiler problem (a confabulator directing heat to a wacamotor in the boiler was in serious need of replacement). Then it was discovered that the dishwasher in the kitchen was broken. (There is also one in the front of the cafe near the coffee machine.) A solenoid had malfunctioned! "My God, not a solenoid!" Whatever will we do! Where will we go? What will happened to the dirty dishes? What will become of the children?

Then lo and behold the ice machine began leaking water -- something that we're told is not supposed to happen and can cause a fairly tricky flooring situation in a cafe.

Adding to this curious set of coincidences is that we found out just the other evening that there was sewer gas leaking into Mama's Boy, where we've been living. The other day we noticed some odd, off-putting smells in the closed restaurant and couldn't figure out where they were coming from. Well, the other evening when Patrick stopped by for dinner he noticed it right off and said that because the drain traps were empty city sewer gas was backing up into the empty traps. so we ran water down them and voila! the smells have dissipated.

It's Sunday now. The heat set in late Friday and if it weren't for the ocean breezes we'd be steaming like the lobsters trapped every day in the coves around Winter Harbor. Anyway, Susie had a short morning Saturday and we headed off to Orono to drop more boxes off at Joyce and Carl's house. Since Carl was alone for the front half of the weekend -- Joyce and three of their kids were down in Providence for a short visit -- we took Carl out for burgers at Woodman's, a nearby American grill.

It has been wonderful to have the Bergmans so close and we will miss not being able to just "drop over" for a quick visit. They've also been terribly helpful in getting our stuff down to Massachusetts -- Joyce even schlepped a bunch of things down to Dick and Dorothy's for us! But our hope is to have all of our stuff together in one place again soon -- and out of the Bergman's house and D & D's basement!