Archive for: ice

Why is delivery so difficult in Canada?

On Monday the car went into Ford to see what was making it vibrate so much and after a test drive it was established that a block of ice had formed inside one of the wheel rims and was causing it to be unbalanced. This was pretty much what we thought it might be.

Ford took off all the wheels and jet washed them for us. In all it was in the garage for about an hour and they charged $30, so not too bad. And most importantly, it no longer vibrates.

We decided last week to change our office around. It was in the fourth bedroom downstairs in the basement, but we felt that one of the rooms we had renovated was not being used, so we decided to use it as an office area.

We ordered new desks for the office as we only had cheap ones that we got when we first landed and they weren’t very good. We decided to treat ourselves to some really nice dark wood desks. We were going to get a couple of desks that were cheaper then these, but they weren’t quite as nice and we decided to go mad. We ordered them off the Office Depot website and were given a delivery date of Wed 21st Feb. We waited in for the delivery, but at 3pm ish a guy from office Depot called to say that he did not have them in stock and would have to get them from another store. I was not happy as we had waited all day for them and no one had called before to let us know the problem. They waited until the last hour of the delivery window to let us know.

After lots of moaning and negotiating, he said that he could get them delivered for the following Wednesday (28th). I asked for compensation for the inconvenience etc and he surprised me by giving me a $100 reduction off each desk. I was happy with that as this made them the same price as the alternative desks we nearly bought because they were cheaper.

So, on Wednesday once again we waited for the desks to arrive. I phoned in the morning to check the progress and was assured they would be delivered before 5pm. At 3.15pm the delivery guy phoned to ask for directions and said he was just leaving the shop. We are about 20 mins from the shop so expected him by 3.45 ish.

He eventually arrived at 5.45pm, better late than never I suppose. He turned up in a Dodge Caravan and the guy was huge, I mean really huge. He could barely walk, let alone pick up the boxed desks. He had another guy with him and they really struggled to get the two desks in the house.

After they left we had dinner then set about putting the desks together. As I said, we had decided to buy good desks, but they had so many parts and they were so heavy, it took us two hours to put one together. After one we decided to stop and do the other the following day.

We now have two really nice desks and our new office space looks really great, we are really pleased with it. Also because these desks had drawers (how posh is that!!!) we can put everything away. Our other desks didn’t, so everything was on top and on shelves etc. I know it is really sad to get so excited over a couple of desks, but what the heck.

It’s a tad chilly here

Well we have finally had snow and our garden looks lovely and wintery. On Wednesday the day time temperature here was -20°C. We have a thermometer set up on our porch which we can see from inside, so can keep an eye on the temps. Today it is a toasty zero degrees.

We have been really sad looking at all the animal tracks that appear overnight. This morning we have two deer tracks which shows them walking round the entire house and then across the front garden into the woods. We are going to set up the night camera and hopefully get some pics. God, we are getting so sad, but we love it!

The raccoons have also been visiting regularly and we have had to put up a new bird food tray out the front as one of them sat on it the other evening and it fell down with him on it. It is now fat raccoon weight proof.

Yesterday we got the van serviced. We have done 20,000 km since we moved her in July. This was a major service and the van was in for over two hours, however it only cost $200 which we though pretty reasonable by UK standards. We only have 75,000 km to use over the three-year contract, so we are well over the amount we should be doing. Hopefully we will not be doing as many in the coming years as a lot of them were when we were traveling about getting things for the house etc. We also did quiet a few before Christmas when we drove down to New York. It should steady out now.

We haven’t yet bothered to travel to Ikea to pick up the shelving unit we want. It is such a pain having to travel to Toronto to get it, but it will save over $130 in shipping costs so will be worth it. We just have to build up the enthusiasm to actually go there!