It's been a fairly stressful time, so let me try to put down the main events as I remember them, before I completely forget/suppress this period.
As I said, we didn't get anyone in until Wed. morning. They put down a bunch of plastic sheets heading down into the basement. Ironically, most of the time people go straight out the back door, and don't really utilize the sheets on the main floor, though the cats are having a great time trying to get underneath it and generally just messing with it. They also left some enormous dehumidifiers and driers.
I believe it was Thurs. when I got in the crew to deal with the contents of the basement. They put all the salvageable stuff out in boxes on the deck, and eventually this was trucked off somewhere (and I probably won't see it for a couple of months). I have a pretty good idea of which books were saved, as well as the Futurama toys. I'm not nearly as sure of how much of the quilting material was saved, and whether the half quilt I was working on for my son was saved. If most of the spare material I needed for the other half was tossed and I can't find matching material (and 5+ years on that is a safe assumption), I probably need to just start all over. I'd have to cut way back on the work I do on converting music files (and blogging!) and just get back to quilting. Most projects can be done in a month or two if I just focus. I think I do owe him a quilt after not delivering for so long! At least the sewing machine was salvaged, though I do need to sterilize the pedal and power cord. And I even know where it is, unlike the record player and stereo which got carted off.)
I had really hoped they would be done by 5:45, as I wanted to head over to Carlton to see Sheep in a Box. In the end, they worked later than that, and I felt I had to keep going, sorting out a few boxes of personal effects and papers and such. So I missed that movie. Maybe it's just as well, as it is pretty melancholic, about a family trying to replace a lost son with an android child.
Friday, a new crew came through to deal with the rest of the contents. This guy was a lot blunter, saying there was no way to salvage the wooden screen or the futon frame. Sigh.
There aren't too many bright spots, though I suppose because water didn't come through the walls but up from the floor, the paintings down there weren't effected. They are currently just stacked up in the dining room with some other boxes... And while I was trying to be pro-active and took things like the records and a small kids' rug from upstairs downstairs where they were ruined, I did bring up the musical instruments (as there was a brief moment when my daughter was thinking of learning them), so those were spared. But overall, there is a huge loss of personal stuff and mementos, along with lots of junk, which should have been thrown out ages ago. (I do wish that at some point I moved the Krazy Kat Daily books upstairs to be with the Sunday strips from Fantagraphics. Oh well...)
I think Thurs/Friday was when we had three separate repairmen looking at the furnace, the water heater, the washer/dryer and a "spare" refrigerator that happens to be down there. Basically, all of this will have to go, except for the washer/dryer, which were somewhat elevated.
Sat. I went swimming and then biked over to Factory Theatre to see Soft Squishy Things, which was an odd piece where a person, bored out of her mind, either on a space station or pretending to be on one but in her basement, recreated lots of scenes from sci fi movies, like Star Wars, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element and so on. I believe that she ended by throwing a party for herself with some "robot" friends, which is a scene from Silent Running. (Again, I'm still a bit annoyed that the Paradise's screening of Silent Running conflicted with something else, perhaps Fringe-related, but I'll watch it one of these days.) Then I biked back to work and did the first of many rounds of scanning.
Sunday I went to the gym, then eventually made it over to Carlton to watch an anime film (Your Name). I will say that they have really messed up Carlton yet again for some streetcar repairs. The street is fenced off, and the bike racks aren't even open! This is definitely going to make it harder to get there, and this construction is likely to drag on through December. Sigh. I went back to work and did more scanning.
I don't think there was a lot going on on Monday, though I did get the report back that the dry wall was relatively recently installed and didn't have asbestos in it. This was a huge relief, as the entire process would have been pushed off by several weeks if they needed to do asbestos abatement first. This meant that we could schedule some work on Tues. After work, I ran over to BMV at Yonge-Dundas to see if any of the Motter titles were in stock, particularly Condemned, but they weren't. Then I dropped a few more things off at work, then biked up to Bloor to check out the bigger comics section at the BMV there. Sadly, I only had 10 minutes to look around, but I didn't see them there, so when I got home I ordered Condemned. Then I went over to Robarts and did some research.
Tues. we had the workers come over and start ripping out the carpet and the bottom of the dry wall. It didn't help my mood that we had no water from 10 to 4:15 because of other city work on repairing a fire hydrant. I guess the only positive is that I was finally able to view my water meter, which stopped working, so I will try to get that meter reading uploaded fairly soon.
I asked them not to send any workers on Wed., and I went in to work (pretty much the only time all week), and after work, I went to the Rex to see Allison Au. She decided to bring on a vocalist into her group, and truthfully, I didn't care much for this, and left at the break. I went back to work and scanned some photos, most of which did not survive the water well at all. I think the photos in the photo albums generally will come out better, but there are just so many left to be scanned!
The workers are back today and should wrap up the first stage of the demo. It isn't clear if this crew or a different crew is going to clear out the deck, though they promised it would be gone by the weekend. I certainly hope so, as I plan on having the post-Fringe BBQ next Tues! I may need to call and find out what is going on. I think I will also try to go swimming tonight.
Sat. I head over to Stratford to see Guys and Dolls. I'm going to see about taking the train over, and the bus back. I need to get a lot of Station Eleven read, as we are talking about it at Book Club next Wed.!
Sun. I am toying with the idea of seeing The Odyssey up in Vaughan, as the Scotiabank IMAX (which would have been very convenient for me) has switched over to the new Spiderman movie. Anyway, then I need to make my way back down to York University and meet my wife, as we are going to a concert (Howard Jones and Wang Chung and some other 80s bands). So it will be an extremely long day.
So things are a long way from going back to normal, but I can at least slip out of the house from time to time to do a few fun things.
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