Bumbershoot

So I technically have a new umbrella, right?

Except for the part where I have never opened it since leaving the shop, since I wasn’t sure that I had really settled on the right one.

Stella had suggested I look at Amazon reviews, but that was only partly helpful, since they were mixed (and I didn’t know whether to put more stock in the one who said it was much better quality then the cheap ones he used to buy, or the one who said it fell apart after a year and couldn’t be repaired and he’d never buy that brand again) and since I didn’t find so many different models there. Though I did sympathise with one who said that he felt the rod(?) was too short: I had the feeling when I was trying out the thing in the shop that when it was up and over my shoulder, that it wasn’t as long as my previous one. (Only the other ones the same size weren’t bigger opened up, either.)

I think I’ll have to go back and have a look at the slightly longer ones with the curved handles—and also see whether they’ll still fit into my backpack (since the curved handle obviously takes up more space than the mushroom-end I had had before).

As for today: it’s snowing. But fortunately, Stella let me borrow her umbrella to take Amy to school today.

Now I’m going to see about making some tea, though, and perhaps going back to bed.

And I wonder what Lucozade tastes like. Or wait, I think I’m probably thinking of Lemsip. The thing you drink when you have a cold?

New umbrella, new window

This afternoon, I went to the dentist to see her about my gums which were bothering me. She wondered at first whether it might be the crowned tooth acting up, but she didn’t see anything suspicious on an X-ray she took (and besides, the swelling was in an odd place for the tooth to be the culprit). So she cleaned the area and flushed it, in case the irritation had been caused by something caught there, though she didn’t see anything. So we’ll see whether it clears up by itself. If not, we might be looking at another root canal at some point.

After that, I went to Karstadt to look at umbrellas. I got out one with a curved handle and wanted to pull a short one out to compare it with—and found that it had the same model name as the one with the handle! And it was longer than the other ones, and was an automatic one. Wow. I opened it and was pretty sure: this was the model I had lost.

Oh frabjous day, calloo, callay! I chortled in my joy.

Slightly different in a couple of respects, but I still think it’s the same. (For those of you who are following along at home: it’s a Knirps Topmatic SL.)

So glad to have “my old umbrella” back. And I thought at first they didn’t have them, since I hadn’t seen such longer ones before: just the smaller ones and much larger ones. And they only seemed to have the one Topmatic SL, though the sales assistant found another one for me; they did have about half a dozen Topmatic SL crook wood (with the bent handle), though.

In other news, I called the roofer(? sounds like a drug to me—I mean someone who makes roofs for houses) and he managed to come by the same evening. He had a look at the drip, opened the window, and said that the window should be replaced ASAP—there was also moisture starting to come through at other parts in the frame, and it would only be a matter of time before other bits would start rotting from the moisture.

I also asked him about the roof (whether it would need to be replaced), and he said that while it should last the winter, he wouldn’t wait too long in replacing that, either. (Especially if we wanted a federal subsidy; he said that those come out of a pot that’s currently also being used to bail out other European economies so there probably won’t be any subsidies for such renovations left soon.) However, replacing the window now would not be a problem if we should choose to do the roof later; they could simply lift out the window and replace it in the new roof.

He said he’d try to get us a quote as soon as possible and would try to get the work done quickly, before the winter gets much harder. So I guess we’ll be paying some money for a new window soon.

On the other hand, the window up here in the attic is one of the only ones we didn’t replace when we had most of the other ones done, so it was due at some point anyway. It’s fairly old—possibly as old as the house itself.