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14th anniversary hotel experience
Monday, March 2 2015
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
The weather warmed a little above freezing today, and in the afternoon when the sun shone down on the west side of the roof, the resulting meltwater backed up behind the massive ice dam. From there it trickled back through the shingles, into the roof, then down into the wall, and began dripping from the west living room window nearest the piano (the window nearest the bottom of the roof valley, where the ice damming is most severe). The first sign that the leaking was about to happen was when a painting of Noah the Cat toppled from where it had been perched atop the molding of the window where the leaking first manifested. Evidently the moisture had caused the wall to swell just enough to push that painting off the narrow ledge where it lives, a place where it manages to survive all manner of vibration and strong house-deforming winds. I'd expected the ice-dam leaking to begin earlier this year, as it has in other years, but it seems that up until today the weather just has been too cold. I should mention that ice-dam leaking seems to only happen every third year or so, and I don't regard it as much more than a nuissance; the water comes at the wrong time of the year to result in rot or insect infestation, although it does take a toll on the drywall. Today a chunk of it beneath a collar tie broke loose and fell to the floor, knocking over a plastic container I'd placed to catch water from one of the two leaks.
There isn't all that much that can be done about massive ice dams, but they're so big this year that it seemed I should do something. So I attached a loop of electric heat tape to a long piece of PVC and jammed it into the snow just above the ice in the bottom of the roof valley causing today's leak. The wattage of the heat tape was low, so it will take it a long time to melt a channel through that ice. But eventually it will.
February 28th marked the 14th Anniversary of my getting back together with Gretchen after a precisely 12 year estrangement. We couldn't celebrate it then because Gretchen had to go down to the City, but today we celebrated it by checking in for the night at the old Holiday Inn near Kingston's traffic circle. The hotel is now a Best Western, and it's received some impressive renovations since the last time we were there (to see a bar band, and before that, for an ASPCA "Fur Ball"). Because they allow it, we also brought our dogs Ramona and Eleanor.
After checking in, we moved into room 105 and quickly switched on the enormous flatscreen in our room. We also went on a walk through the hotel to check out the amenities. It's much more spacious than I could have imagined. In the middle of the triangular building is massive two-story space centered around a mid-sized indoor pool, the biggest selling point of the hotel. There used to be a jacuzzi too, but unfortunately it was dismantled in a recent renovation.
At 5:30, Gretchen had a court date back in Old Hurley to answer for a speeding ticket she'd gotten on US-209, and while she was gone, I "watched" (that might be too generous of a word) Say Yes to the Dress while surfing the web on my Chromebook and sipping scotch from a flask I'd brought. Gretchen's court appearance went faster than I expected. She soon returned, having pled her charge down to "parking on pavement." The fine was $150 (or was it $125?).
We left the dogs back in the room and went for a swim in the pool. I was reluctant at first, but the pool was surprisingly warm. There was a young woman there whose only job seemed to be to keep an eye on us so we wouldn't drown. She'd been reading a book and surfing the web on her Mac Book, but once we showed up, she watched us like a squirrel.
Normally when we spend the night in a hotel, we order Chinese food. But the memory of mediocre Chinese food in Batavia was still so fresh that we decided to go Italian today. Gretchen ordered a cheeseless pizza, spaghetti, vegetables, and bread sticks from Picnic Pizza, which is practically next door to the Best Western. We're a bit spoiled by the Woodstock pizza places, and the extent of Picnic's vegan-unfriendliness came as a bit of a shock. Not only did they lack soy cheese, but their house marinara sauce isn't even vegetarian. Furthermore, the guy who took our order was the sort of flake who made ordering something of a lingering ordeal.
I'd actually brought two laptop computers with me, which was good because I'd loaded some movies onto the Compaq 2510p and had brought a VGA cable, allowing me to attach it to the room's massive flatscreen teevee. This allowed us to watch Gone Girl as we ate our meal of Italian delivery. With its whodoneit mystery and numerous twists and turns, Gone Girl is much more of a Gretchen movie than it is something I would want to see, but I sat through it and watched the whole seemingly-endless thing (it's about 150 minutes long).
Periodically we'd take the dogs for a walk in the massive parking lot, which, due to the snow, was pretty much the only place they could run. All that plowed acreage actually offered them more exercise opportunities than the meager system of tromped-down trails near our house.
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