For my birthday I got a hooked-up stove! It arrived Saturday and just getting it into the kitchen was an adventure. There were two delivery men, a short wiry one and a tall skinny one, and the skinny one really could not manage his share. Also the kitchen counter protudes into the doorway, which we knew, but so much so that the range had to go up and over it, which was a surprise. Skinny nearly dropped it, but RDC supported it. There it hulked, the gorilla in the room, for only two days. The universal fitting kit wasn't universal, but RDC was able to find the connection bits he needed at a specialty plumbing shop. So Monday afternoon he and SPM got it into place, with gas and electricity, and Monday night he made his grandfather's favorite dish of sausage and peppers.
(What you're not supposed to notice, but which I will not scruple to remark upon to all and sundry, is now it becomes obvious that the left wall cabinet was installed too far to the left. While the hood and stove are flush to their cabinets and counters, the hood is not centered over the range. What stands out is that between left cabinet and shelf are four inches and on the right, two and a half. It is a more important error than the notch in the tile...sshhhh.)
Is it common for permanent, established, on-the-grid residences to use propane instead of natural gas? My mother assumed it was the former, while the latter strikes me as obvious. Even rural areas of Connecticut are on the gas grid, so it shouldn't've been so mysterious to her.
I also received a fresh batch of pictures of Emlet, who continues to be delightfully beautiful (but apparently in for quite a shock when Siblet arrives next month), and a phone call from KREL in Paris, and a gardening hat from my mother (which I asked for, floppy and with a wide crown, and which she embellished with a lavender ribbon, and which would be perfect except it doesn't absorb sweat), and a check that will become books from my father, and from my sister a book of historic photographs of Old Lyme that would have been much better with a few more useful captions and a few less foolish ones about the lack of computers in 1930.