29 July, 2007

Fargo Trip (part 4)

Day 13:
We got up in the morning, packed everything, stopped by the mall to say good bye to Uncle Eddie and Aunt
Renita (of course had some of "the best lo mein ever", then we said good bye to my family and started driving home.
Since we wanted to visit Andrew's parents and sister in up-state NY by Saturday Afternoon, we didn't stop for any site-seeing. When we were driving through Minneapolis, we hit heavy traffic around 4pm. So, we stopped and had early dinner there. We went to Red Robin
. It's a restaurant that famous in burgers. We ordered the Towering Onion Rings as starter, it looked so tall and tasted awesome. Andrew had a burger of course, he said it was pretty good.


After dinner, we started driving again until 10pm, found a hotel somewhere in Wisconsin to rest.

Day 14:
We got up earlier than usual, had our Holiday Inn Express breakfast, and started heading to New York. On the way, we only stopped for bathrooms and McDonald's for lunch and dinner. Around 10:30pm, we tried to find a hotel in a small town in PA(forgot the name of the town), but several of the them were all full, so we had to keep driving until we found the next town. About 11:00pm, we settled down at Erie, New York. Again, we found a Holiday Inn Express. They only had a two rooms left, $150 a night. She said the suite has a queen size bed, 2 sofas... I interrupted her, " Do you have a cheaper room? I don't need the sofas..." she said," yes, we do , but it will be the same price of this suite. Since it is pretty late, the suite will be hard to sell, so I would just give us as a free upgrade." Thanks!!!" I said. When we walked into our room, we couldn't believe what we were seeing... the room was huge. It has 2 sofas facing a tv with a fireplace under it, a tiny kitcken sink with a mircrowave and a fridge, a very nice/big bathroom and a Jacuzzi. It's crazy! but we had to pay $150... We slept really well that night.

Day 15:
I got up around 9am to get breakfast back to the room, so when Andrew got up, we can had eat in the room. After I got back, we got a phone call from my in-laws saying that the security company called them(because they couldn't reach us) saying something wrong with our house's furance. It had happened before, so I called Jhy, my friend who has been feeding my cats while we were gone, to go to my house and turn off the furance. 15 mins later, he called me back and said my basement is flooded, the water was above his knees. We panicked! We were still 8 hours away from home. So we called my in-laws which were 3 hours away from my house and see if they could help. My father-in-law grabbed a pump and some tools and rush to our house. Since our plan was to visit Becky who flew from Phoenix, AZ in my in-laws house, we felt really bad that we had to go home to take care of the flood. But she has decided to go to our house to help us out and see us.
We got home around 7:30pm. The water was gone. everything was still wet, but we didn't see the 18in deep water. We found out that it was because the water heater was leaking. We had lots of stuff in the basement, most of them belonged to Andrew. I know he likes to keep everything, which was why we had so much stuff downstairs. I feel really bad that he has lost quite a lot of things that he has been keeping for long time. The flood also ruined our ping pong table which my in-laws gave us as Christmas gift couple years ago. We did use it a lot. oh well. The washer and dryer are still working and so does the big freezer. But everything else got very moldy.
That night, I finally got to spend sometime with Becky. She showed me her MS3 which is gorgeous. I was so jealous since hers was so pretty and I didn't even start knitting mine. We did have a good time hanging out. I really wish she lives closer, so that we can spend more time together.

Day 16:
With help of Andrew's family, we spent all day cleaning up the basement.

Day 17:
I checked the bank account and online billing. We got the electricity bill and it was double the cost we usually get. So I called UI and asked what happened to the bill. The staff told me that from July 1st, our daily usage has been trible than the regular usage. Ohhhh, the water heater started leaking and warming the basement water the day after the left for the trip, which means it has been leaking for 14 days... I can't wait to see the water bill!!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a mess...but glad we could help out. Also VERY glad you and Becky got to "talk knitting"!! She wishes she could be closer, but the blogs and Snapfish help!
We eat at Red Robin in AZ but never ordered the rings..yummy looking!
Can't wait to see the knitting project!
Mom H.

Octopus Knits said...

That's an impressive stack of onion rings, for sure --but holy cow, sorry about the water damage (and huge electrical and water bills)! What an unfortunate time for that to happen.

Anonymous said...

Oh no!! That's terrible about the leak! Couldn't UI be a little more understanding and give you a break on the bill?