I finally decided that it was time to replace the fascia, soffits and gutters on the house. Since I used Taylor Construction to replace all the windows and put siding on the house about 4 years ago, I decided to go ahead and get a quote from them for the work that had to be done this time around.
Hence, the title of this post. After getting my “returning customer discount,” agreeing to let them leave a sign in my yard for a month and agreeing to let other potential customers call me to hear me say nice things about Taylor, I got the low, low price of sixteen grand.
I’d like to report that I threw the sales weasel out of my house, but I didn’t. I did tell him – very politely, of course – that there was no way in hell I was going to drop that much money for what amounts to trim. I don’t think he was happy, but he left anyway.
Got a new meeting with his sales manager a week or so later and said I could do without the gutters. The price dropped to around $7,500. Much more betterer.
So, for the last three days, I’ve had a couple of guys showing up at my house every morning at around 6:30 and banging on it with hammers. I’m assuming that they’re also replacing the fascia and soffit.
Julie has changed her plans yet again and is now moving in next weekend. Or this weekend. Or sometime. I don’t pretend to understand the schedule. I just try to stay out of the way.
I’ve got a board meeting with the GBB tomorrow, followed by a birthday dinner for Herb, who will be 75. Another rehearsal with the church on Sunday. Yippee.
NABBA is now two weeks away and I must say that I’m not feeling overly confident about the GBB’s chances in the competition. We just aren’t clicking this year. Yes, we sound awesome; just not championship calibre. We’ve decided to have a combination concert/open rehearsal on the night of the 25th. That’ll be nice, as we haven’t played an indoor concert in close to a year. I’m all for competing, but rehearsing all year for a 23-minute competition gets really boring really fast.
Heard recently that my company, scheduled to close early next year, is now on the fast track to defunctness. That’s a word. Really. The new schedule has us shutting off the last customer as early as next month. It’ll still take several months after that to get rid of our equipment, finalize billing, etc., but the bottom line is that – unless they find a REAL job for me in U-Verse, I’m looking at a severance package a lot earlier than I’d anticipated.
Did I mention that I just dropped $7,500 on my house? Yikes.
After a few days of madness, I did manage to get the week of July 7th off so I can make the trek to Ahmic Lake. Was a bit disappointed that I was not allowed to take a full two weeks off (has never been a problem before and I don’t know why it would be this year, but….). Immediately after being granted that week off, I was informed that I’m scheduled to be on call from June 30-July 6.
That’s a very very bad thing, as it effectively blows away my ability to leave Atlanta on the 3rd, using the holiday and the weekend to drive to Canada. I begged and pleaded with a few co-workers and finally convinced one of them to take my on-call from midnight on the 3rd through midnight on the 6th. In exchange, I’ll be covering his second shift on the 21st and I’ll still owe him a favor at some point.
Really don’t enjoy many aspects of this job. On-call is right up there. Yeah, I was used to being on-call 24x7x365 in my old job, but in a bad year I might have gotten called twice. With this job, you’re pretty much guaranteed that you won’t get much sleep for a week every month and a half. During the last week I had the OC duty, I think I managed to average about 4 hours of sleep a night. Don’t know how I’m going to handle football season.