Fixing Stuff

Lots of my cooking students ask me how late I stay at work after the classes end. The answer is, pretty much forever. I often don't get any baking done during the day, because there is an endless number of errands to run, financial records to update, and phone calls to make (mostly to people I called the day before, who were supposed to call me back but didn't--I estimate that over 75% of the people I call do not return the call or do whatever their job is that I need them to do). So it's not until everyone else leaves that I really get in the zone with baking. The only problem is, after I bake until 1:00 am, I still have to clean the kitchen, which involves hours of dishes and mopping. The amount of cleaning I do on a daily basis is getting to be a drag. Luckily, I'm getting faster at it as well. And yesterday we had cleaners come, which we are planning on doing once every two weeks as a special treat for Jill and me. Not having to mop made it one of the best days of my life. My joy was somewhat mitigated by the fact that I had to repaint the bathroom (during our sewer backup there was some, uh, material that got on the walls). This is at least the tenth time I have had to paint since I first thought the painting was finished.

A lot of other niggling things have gotten taken care of recently, too. We had a repair guy come out to fix the pilot lights on our stove (I've been lighting the burners with matches all this time). He replaced the pilot light supply tubes ($20 in parts, $140 in labor, including charging us for two hours of travel despite the fact that his company is located about four miles away), and also remarked that he really liked our stove set-up (we have the stove inset into a stainless steel prep table), and he'd never seen anything like it. Having the stove repair guy compliment your stove is pretty great. In case you haven't had a chance to fully appreciate it in previous photos, here's a closer view from the front of the room and the back:




Be honest: you really want to cook on this stove, don't you. In other repair news, I also utilized my extensive plumbing knowledge to fix a leak in our pre-wash sprayer (which required use of a wrench) and our dishwasher (requiring teflon tape), plus we made the light store send us replacements for the four (out of 31) long-life fluorescent bulbs that have already burned out, and we got Aaron to help us fix the drip from one of our sink faucets. Why are this many things broken when they are all brand-new, you ask. This is a good question.

And in a very exciting development, we received our cafe tables today--only two months late! We can finally return the really bad rental tables we have been forced to use all this time, and I can begin my campaign to get the table company to reimburse us for the rental fees (it's $400 worth of fees, and my guess is that it will take me eight hours of arguing and I have a 70% chance of getting that money reimbursed, but it's the principle of the thing). Unfortunately the table company forgot to include the hardware for assembling the tables, but that didn't slow us down, we just went right to the hardware store and bought the requisite screws. We put the tables together and are adjusting to the new look (the new tables are very small, which was a design decision we made a long time ago to maximize seating in our limited space, but it's going to take us a little while to get used to the way the place looks now). Soon (hopefully) I will be able to show you good pictures of how the place looks, because Aaron, our contractor, is also a professional architectural/interior photographer, and he's going to take some pictures and let us have copies.