Daily Archives: February 21, 2008

Foundational Issues

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We had a trickle of water coming in the basement on Sunday during a thaw with plenty of rain, and since then it’s been really cold, so everything froze up again. Even the streets – where on Sunday there were running streams of water, trying to find their way to the storm drains (which were mostly blocked by snow and ice dams left by the village plows) we now have sheets of hard frozen ice.

The bottoms of everyone’s driveways are also either ice dams or sheets of smooth, glassy ice, and in some suburbs, there’s so much ice left that there are all kinds of accidents all the time. Also, there are tons of big potholes all over the area, and more and more appear every day. So there’s lots of people getting flat tires, and there are accidents because drivers have to zig-zag around the worst of them.

Eh, this winter is a big mess.

So tonight we had some guy come over to give the old sales pitch for a solution to the “occasional water in the basement” problem, which of course could be a very expensive fix to the foundation of the house. His company’s deal is a waterproofing/extra drainage/air purification and mold filtering combo. Quite expensive, and we were offered at least two inducements to reduce the price if we signed tonight and put down a deposit.

This kind of sales pitch is guaranteed to FAIL with us, because it just doesn’t make sense to decide on the first estimate. We have to check with the other guys. We sat through the presentation and it was illuminating, but also rather horrifying… supposedly, we wouldn’t have to get a backhoe in to expose the entire foundation on the three sides of the house (the fourth side of the basement doesn’t go under the house, but under the concrete pad for the garage and family room). We would have some fat guys digging trenches all around, putting goop on the foundation and making it water tight, and adding extra drainage…. and then they would come in, break up the basement floor, and install more drainage and an air filtering system. Sure, and then we’d be replacing all the crappy landscaping plants on all three sides.

Good thing we never got around to getting the deck I want put in, that would have been the first casualty.

Oh, dear. But there is mold down there, so we know we’ve had an occasional problem in the past. Something will have to be done.

Career: IMPOSSIBLE

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My husband David will be so disappointed to hear this:

‘Fraudulent’ British celebrity chef faces sack from US TV show after claiming he made Diana’s wedding cake | the Daily Mail

A celebrity British chef who has his own TV show in America faces the sack after he was unmasked as a fraud. Robert Irvine claimed he had helped make the wedding cake for the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana. And in a bid to impress Americans the former royal chef said he was knighted by the Queen – and even boasted that he had been given a castle as a reward for his work in her kitchens.

Irvine, who presents a show called “Dinner: Impossible” on the Food Network channel, has now admitted he cooked up huge parts of his CV. He claimed to have cooked at the White House and received an award for his work from a prestigious US based cooking academy. But following a failed business in St Petersburg, Florida, which left a trail of bad debts he has now been exposed as a liar.

We’re big fans of his cooking show, but I have to admit I’d wondered a bit at how he’d managed to cook for both the British Royal Family and at the White House, as a relatively young man, and still have time to do all the other things in his breathlessly delivered bio at the top of the show. It takes a lot of time to work up to a point in your career where you get to enter such famous kitchens, unless you manage to slide in as a young sous chef on a lucky internship.

Turns out Irvine had been a chef on the royal yacht Brittania for a decade, but not in one of the royal residences… he had been a Royal Navy cook at the base where Prince Charles was based, and must have been but a pup at the time. And he still had to fit in his time in culinary school, which took place around the time of the Royal Wedding.

I hope that he manages to satisfy the Food Network as to his credentials, and comes clean about anything that he may have fudged, but it may be that his show won’t return. Damn, it’s been a fun show to watch, too.

h/t ***Dave, forgot to mention before.

Also, I should have wondered more about Irvine’s working-class accent, which is actually a bit of a cachet these days. It might have mattered more when he was starting out as a chef-in-training on the Royal Yacht, though.

[tags]Robert Irvine, Food Network[/tags]