Got it for $1, so finally read. Cute, entertaining fluffy read. Gossipy entry into the ludicrous world of high fashion. Learned a little trivia along the way. Liked the snarky tone of the book much better than the Disney-fied movie version. What an unbelievable boss.
Yay, the guys were laying more concrete blocks all day. Wow, it takes a long, long time. They did more in one day than Hubby and I could probably do in a week. I'm sooooo glad we decided to eat the cost and hire people. No freaking way we could have done this without some major suffering.
Had a moment of panic when looking at the very tall retaining wall. Oscar agreed to lower it down at the steepest spots, but now I'm realizing I'm being a spaz. It's only tall at one small area, and the majority of it's a regular height. Will tell him to just go ahead as planned on Monday.
Guys removed the board forms from the foundations and started building the concrete blocks.
OMG I am soooo pissed right now I can't see straight. Scheduled between 12-4pm. 3:40pm I call to find out if someone's coming or not. An absolutely abrupt rude person answers, tells me someone's on route, and just HANGS UP on me in the middle of me saying 'thank y...' Miraculously, someone shows up a half hour later. Did they just put in the order after I called? Never mind.
I know something's wrong, because *two* trucks pull up, and I recognize one of the guys as a network guy. I ask if he's the supervisor, he says no, didn't I have network probs? NO!!!!!! I say I specifically was told a *supervisor* was coming out to look at the concrete patchwork problem. Nope, they're not the guys. No kidding. They put in a call, and guess what?? Supervisor will have to call back and schedule *again* to come out. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? I've lost track of how much time I've had to take off to wait for god knows how many appts to date.
I had so much crap to do today. I was hoping to drop by the Arena to show some support. Instead I had to avoid the whole area so I could run home and wait for.....nothing!! I'm so fed up. Think I'll contact that nice Mark guy who commented on my earlier complaint back in Dec.
Great! Excellent news, relatively. Need to get new battery, Kragen's selling for $80 ?!?, want to check Costco's. Services going on at the Arena, so must avoid the area today. Forgot about the Fostoria one until it was too late, I'm tied to the house now until the Comcast guy shows up.
Car - check. Scheduled for testing tmr morning.
Comcast - check check. Supervisor scheduled tmr afternoon to check out the situation.
Hubby - luggage located, but won't get to him in time. Not enough time to fed-ex him anything. No suits for the meeting. Poor thing.
All quiet this morning. No-one around. Ahhhhh. We're all enjoying the temporary peace.
With all the noise from both the front and back yards, I decided to escape. Stressed! Felt bad about having really stretched Oscar's patience to the limit for the day, while freaking about a possible mistake changing the width of the patio landing. I didn't realize he thought I was giving an order, not posing a what-if question. Must be careful in future. Felt soooo horrible about leaving the kitties, considered taking them with me - no, even more stressful for them.
So off to L & L's for an hour break for lunch. Picked up some Chipotle for us. Had a quiet, relaxing time. Until I drove home.
Zooming up (60mph) a packed 101N in the 2nd from fast lane. Suddenly, 4 cars ahead, a car spins out of control in the fast lane, completing 2 circles before thankfully stopping in the divider, no blocking. Simultaneously so fast and so slow. Disbelief as I'm looking directly at the spinning driver, at the smoking tires. 'Not real. Yes real. Oh yeah. Oh shit, will crash. Can't get over, too crowded. Accept. No, maybe you can, look' racing thru my head, before taking a quick glance to my right and behind (what! space? space! go!) and changing to the next lane over. Passing the girl as she got out. Passing 2 cars also just parked over to the right. Continuing on, with my shaken fellow drivers. Thankful I wasn't the 1st two cars on the frontline looking directly at that spinning car. Heart pounding and hands slightly shaking.
Getting back, I have to park on the street for a sec. I look over at the Comcast patch job and can't believe what I'm seeing. A large stripe of tiny dark red aggregate in the middle of my white and grey aggregate. Are you kidding?!? Can't think about it right now, still shaking.
Ernesto tells me I can pull the car in now. He's leaving. I go start my car, and it dies. Try it again. Dies. Frantically waving a departing Ernesto to get a jump. Won't charge. Try again. Nope. Try again. Rev engine. Finally. Must let engine run for 10 mins.
Hubby calls while I'm sitting there. I pour out my little stories. He listens for 5 minutes. Poor man, they've lost his luggage. Lost his *confirmed* seat too, had to buy a 2nd one. I feel so bad. He feels worse, I could have been mangled.
We've both had equally shitty days. That's all for now.
Ok. There's definitely something wrong. Couple days ago, Kayla was laying peacefully on my lap napping. She suddenly leapt up and off my lap like something shocked her. This must have been the same thing that happened back in December when we heard but didn't see it happen. The vet is wrong. Something's up. She's also biting her left back leg joint to the point it's becoming bare skin.
I wish I could figure out what's hurting her. Definitely time to get a second opinion.
In addition to all the stuff going on in the back yard (lots of smashing noises, rebar cutting), surprise! No advance call, I got a doorbell ring just now from the Comcast guys to FINALLY rewire the hub. Well, it includes jackhammering out a section of concrete next to the house, digging a trench to the sidewalk. OMG. I mean, I'm glad they're finally doing it. They said they'll patch it up. But still....
Right now I'm very traumatized. My poor house. My poor nerves. Can't work.
Oh, it's so hard to stay calm. Things are still in flux, lots of choices, and lots more changes possible. Stressful.
For a good few minutes tonight, I thought maybe I did make a colossal error. Wanted to chuck it in. It's such a complicated design, I wouldn't have any of these problems had we just gone with the deck. 2 days and it would have been done. Instead of a month+.
Yesterday, reassessing the area after the deck got junked, he changed the design. (Did warn me that it would happen.) At first I wasn't happy, but I was all for working with the hillside vs. against it. Now I'm pretty much warmed up to the idea. It actually works better than the original.
Lucky I'm pretty confident in his abilities, or I'd be a complete basketcase. Though I'm driving him nuts. I'm just pretty distrustful in general, I'm a control freak, and I'm scared to death that I'm making the wrong choices, so he's catching a lot of that.
Oh for god's sake, it's just a freaking patio. I really need to chill!
Ok, I'm done. I feel much better now. Actually, it's been a lot of fun, looking at all the landscaping pics. I'm excited about the finished product.
The deck is gone. I am very nervous. Very very nervous. It looks sooooo empty and scary out there, with nothing to look at out the window or patio!!! LOL, Oscar calmed me down by telling me, "It's for your own good."
Ginza and Kayla supervising all the activity outside.
Holy cow, that's unexpected. Kayla calmly eating her food while the saws and noise are hitting deafening levels. Ginza and Pixie already bolted the minute they heard the trucks pulling up.
I think Mozart would have been so excited with all the activity he would have been dancing all over the place and rushing from door to door to window to get the best vantage point for the action. I miss him so.
Lc Mini Song, was in bud when bought, just opened, great fragrance. Love that nose!!
These next two are Blc Momilani Rainbow sibs, the first one has a beautiful fragrance, but I wasn't thrilled with the form. Loved the other one, even though the fragrance was much milder.
Like everyone else dealing with a backyard space, we drew up all kinds of pro/con lists for concrete and deck. Back and forth, back and forth for a long while. The main prob was the freaking idiocy of the 3 stepped house foundation and the location of the crawlspace. It took someone very creative to figure out what to do with the whole area. Yay Oscar!
The main appeal of the deck was that if something needed doing, the boards could just be pulled out for access. Resale value - decks more appealing. But we don't think anyone's going to notice if there's a beautiful outdoor room of any type for them to be out in. And it's actually an albatross. It was sold as-is since it was in such bad shape when we got it, we actually had second thoughts about buying it. We knew we'd have to spend a LOT to fix it up. Deck life - finite. Major fire hazard.
In the end, though, concrete. Winner: we could incorporate a big band of growing area around the patios. No can do with a deck. I'm tired of having every plant in pots - a garden, yippee. Retaining wall at the steepest end to level the whole area out. It'll be wonderful to step out onto something solid. The beautiful color and slate look are great. The main con is that everything will be stepped down, so visually I'm nervous about seeing nothing out of my kitchen, since the ground will be so far down. Cracks are inevitable, they'll actually look like part of the craggy design, so we can live with that. He does really solid quality work, so there's little chance of cracking because of worksmanship - issues are earthquakes or time.
The list felt endless - at some point, I had to stop overanalysing it and just pick the one thing that appealed the most to me, and the garden was it.
The guys came over to clear the deck of my million and one plants. LOL. Chatted bit about what kind of plants to put in.
Sat down for a couple hours - little bit to go over and sign the contract, hand over down payment, then discussing design ideas. Lots of fun!
After the tedious tasks, rewarded myself with a visit to McClellan's. Got 5 cute nobiles, and 3 little phals. Probably post pics later.
6/10/09: Here's 1 phal. And the rest:
Dtps Taisuco Luxury x Dtps Taisuco Treasure.
Dend Sanaru Gold 'Sun Glow'
(Phal Taisuco Daisy x Dtps Quevedo) x Taisuco amabilis
Good note to finish the day with. Just called and hired Oscar. Done! Meeting up later in week to discuss project and hand over a check. Feeling excited and nervous simultaneously.
Disappointed when I dropped into McClellan's SF to find the whole lot closed, so dropped by the little show instead. Ok. Bought a little den. nobile hybrid from Fiori, and a cool 3 spike Pinocchio cross from Botanico. Pricey, but that's the cost for instant gratification. So now I have 2 Pinocchios.
The guy was so nice, and offered his card for me to make an appt and see his plants, which I'm taking him up on. Fiori's also having an open house in May, which I'll def. go, since he has a really extensive collection, and always worth a visit.
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| From Blooming Orchids! |
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| From Blooming Orchids! |
Spent the morning chatting with Oscar's references, and they all gave him glowing reviews. In fact, 2 of them invited me over to see his work, which was great. He met up with me at one of the houses, and I got a good look around. The landscaping is superb. He really does have a touch. The couple said that he'd gone with them to the nursery and spent a lot of time with them explaining the plants and helping them pick out suitable types. Then he took me over to two other houses with the concrete patio type he wants to do at our place. Looks excellent.
Very patient listening to all my concerns and answering every question very clearly, even the dumb ones. Yup, he's the guy.
Yesterday. For the same tooth. He found out it was chipped, had to redo the filling he'd put in recently. Didn't think much about it until I got home, and was feeling around the tooth, and found out it's where I'd felt a little space before and would have to extra-floss to get caught food there. So now I'm annoyed. It had definitely been there when he put the first filling in, how'd he miss it then?
Then it's a bit swollen and hurts today, so I call to ask if that's normal or not. Don't remember this happening the last time. No callback! Grrr.
After I pretty much gave up on him, he called today. He is soooo cute - turns out he had done a hell of a lot of drawing, numbers and pictures for us, and guess he's not the type to call back until he's ready to present. Really earnest, 'my word is my bond' type guy. Told him that next time just call back to tell the customer he hadn't forgotten them, just not ready! Numbers look good, yup, we're back on on the project. Yay.
Well, the repairman came today, with a pre-10-minute courtesy call, and tested the line and the modem. Replaced the modem, put in a new filter on the phone, and politely listened to me chat about our cats. LOL. He'd just adopted a 7-mth old black kitty, so we swapped stories.
Very knowledgeable and friendly. Happy now. Great experience, makes up for the previous crap.
Just ok this year. Went on Sunday with couple friends - newbie orchidites. Think I inundated them with orchid trivia and info. LOL.
The displays weren't bad, tons of cyms this year - russet and orange colors predominated. Lots of phals, catts. Back to the safest basics, really. Some masds, other pleurothalids and odds and ends, but nothing like previous years. Or I was just having selective tunnel vision. Either way, it's always nice looking at tons of orchids.
I'd hoped to pick up some phrags and laelias, but there were very, very few, none worth buying. No-one's taking chances and growing specialty items. It was nice to see Andy's Orchids with a large booth, and I badly wanted to spend some money on him, but there wasn't anything that caught my interest.
Finally ended up buying 11 catts, mostly from Kawamoto and Blooming Orchid.
Would be comedy if it weren't so aggravating. Service spotty for a couple weeks now, finally called to schedule service. So far:
3/5 11am - 'Customer Service' in India, complete with an idiot READING stock boilerplate the whole time. Couldn't answer a single question. Basically a human automated response system. Had to put me on hold 2x to confer with a supervisor over minor questions. Blame the wireless - no, working fine. Asked about all the blinking lights. Suggested I unplug the modem and restart - logical, but I ALREADY explained that THAT'S what I'd been doing for the last couple hours!!!!!!! Hello, anyone listening? On and on down her list - insisted I get on Windows instead of Firefox. ???? After 20 minutes of humoring her, I finally just dictated - it's obviously the line or modem, the DSL light blinks RED on and off. Schedule me. So she finally opens a ticket, someone will call.
3/5 12pm - Callback from WONDERFUL knowledgeable Charlie from St. Louis, goes thru a bunch of tests, can actually think instead of reading off stock answers. Sees all the error codes, yup, problem, don't know why, schedules service to come out between 8am-12noon. Excellent, I think.
3/6 8am-12pm - Hubby stays home for the guy (I asked). Noon arrives, no one's here. I call. Gee, no, we've been changed to an AFTER noon service. No-one called to tell us. But we're assured that we're the first on the noon guy's ticket, and he's on the way. Fine. BTW, absolutely zero friendliness or apologies.
3/6 1:30pm. Still no guy. I call again. By some coincidence, I get the same chick, May, from the earlier call. She checks dispatch again. Apparently no-one was going to come out today. !!!!! There were no available guys, and the one they sent out from Concord had a truck breakdown. She took great pains to tell me she wasn't lying the first time, they told her they were really coming out. She was cute. I told her I believed her, and figured it was bad scheduling. I was just really fucking hopping mad that NO-ONE gave us a courtesy phone call AT ANY TIME so that we weren't sitting around the house all day, and Hubby didn't have to cancel his meetings 'cause I asked him, and now I feel bad. Next available spot is next TUESDAY. No, she can't credit my account for the aggravation - I have to call another number.
1:50pm. Nice younger guy. Explain the aggravation to him, and ask for something to be done to our bill to compensate. He says $20 credit. ??? I say the mthly bill is $30, service on the blink for at least 2 wks (really it's about a mth, but I'm not sure, so didn't say that). I'm on hold for 5 mins while he gets approval. He finally comes back and credits me. Little thing, but I've already pursued it long enough. Asked me about speed, but only to offer an upgrade for $5 extra a mth.
Hubby's the one who insisted we switch to AT&T. He catches hell now.
Oh man, after all that buildup, the guy never called back!!! Even after I left a message today. Very puzzled, wondering what happened. Emailed our friends to find out if something we don't know.
Sooooo disappointing. Back to square one, kinda. Hubby pointed out that the guy gave us the best ideas so far - totally different, and better, direction. That still doesn't make me feel any better right now. Still no contractor.
Switched over from Frontline. So far so good. No nasty reactions, skin looks ok. They're just getting annoying-smart - since they can't lick their necks, they've taken to scratching the area with their hind paws then licking the paw clean. Too smart for their own good.
Oh, that little boy annoyed the hell out of me this morning. He would not let us sleep past 5am. He kept nudging the blankets off us, getting right up in my face purring and chatting, stomp all over us, jump off the bed, jump back on and stomp on us some more. Stuck his butt right up in my face. Yeah.
WOOHOO!!!!! After a whole freaking month, I think I've found a fantastic contractor who does seriously quality work at a reasonable price!!!! A referral from our friends whose neighbors got some beautiful work done by him, and still using him. To boot, he came in $5k under the next lowest quote. He services our area types, and he's done some beautiful magazine-worthy stuff.
After looking at the deck, and below it, he flat out asked, why spend that much money replacing it? Stamp concrete the whole area, tier it, create planting areas for the millions of plants. I was very resistant to concrete, as I had nasty gray crack-riddled trashy-low-type images come to mind. But he had tons of pics of some gorgeous work he did, and OMFG, I was in heaven.
He's the first one to actually discuss creating growing areas for me, after seeing all the plants. Without me bringing it up. He's also the first to address saving the real estate at the extreme left drop, which Hubby wanted. Again without me bringing it up. It's so refreshing to have someone who's observant!
Crunching numbers for us now. Hope he doesn't disappoint, so I can get started. I see an end in sight for the hideous deck.
