Source: Das Boot
"The ship's taking on water, men! Blow the ballast tanks! Head for the surface!"
St. Louis has been starved for rain lately, but we certainly made up for it on Sunday. Unfortunately, a good portion of that rain ended up in my basement and sunroom. I've never seen anything like it. The water was literally spraying out of the walls like in some sort of WWII submarine epic, and the whole evening was spent franticly bailing out the USS Nickarmadillo.
So that was fun.
Looks like I'm gonna have to seal a few foundation cracks and fix the drainage issues. You know, because I don't have enough projects already.
After all of the issues we've had in just one year, I'm beginning to wonder if it's about time to abandon ship. $25,000 in repairs on a cheap beginner home is verging on ridiculous. One can only sink so much cash into a money pit before realizing that it's best to just cut your losses.
I did do some thrifting though. Yes, thrifting makes it all better. After a pretty long dry spell, I managed to bring in quite a haul too.
A couple of the larger items are still in the van, but here's the smalls: A set of salt and pepper shakers and cocktail glasses.
The salt and pepper shakers came from Portugal, but have a really cool Danish-esque design. I really like the mustard yellow and reddish-brown on these. They're gonna need a new set of corks though. Should be an easy fix.
The cocktail glass set includes 8 small tumblers and 4 shot glasses with a nice orange, gold, and black mid-century pattern on them. With my Dorothy Thorpe tumblers I've now got quite the set, especially for someone who isn't a drinker. It'll be great for parties though.
Does anyone else out there think up back-stories for the second-hand items they bring in? Maybe I'm just a bit odd, but occasionally I do. One of the tumblers was obviously put in the dish washer, as the gold has worn away, but the rest are in perfect, nearly unused condition. In my mind I can see exactly how this went down:
The wife brought home a new set of cocktail glasses, which she thought would really impress the guests at their next dinner party. She implored her husband, "These are NOT to be put in the dishwasher!" "What's the worst that could happen," he thought a short while later as he finished his post-work tumbler of neat whiskey. "Why'd we get this fancy new-fangled dishwasher if we're never gonna use it!" Needless to say, the set was designated "for guests only" when it came up one short and she found the ruined glass that he'd tucked into the back of the kitchen cabinet. Poor guy...
At least that's how I imagine it.
