I started out today at 4 AM. Last night I crashed early, but I seem to
wake up these days at 4 AM no matter what I want.
I had our Worker's Comp audit today. This after having spent last week
in New Orleans & MS.
I was in fear.
The lady had to sit with me in the cold cause I have not ever figured
out how to make the furnace work in the office.
Turns out we had been filed as architects (???) and we are going to get
an undisclosed balloon as CONTRACTORS.
She took sympathy on us.
Well, the furnace worked for about fifteen minutes in the Winter of 2004
and then I got bored? The phone rang, whatever.
I'm not yet tired of business... but I can't for the life of me figure
out why I have nothing to do during warm weather and everyone wants
everything either the day before Turkey or Jesus or New Years.
We have a reputation developing for showing up in Nor'easters, thunder
storms & blizzards.
I don't know how to balance all of this crap... and after NO & MS a
large part of me says I don't give a crap.
Some people say we charge too much, other people want to know why we are
not done yet and they don't seem to care how much we charge.
I'm standing on the beach in friggin Bay St. Louis wondering what our
house would look like after the hurricane of 1938.
There is somethign to be said, Marcus Aerelius, for being able to let
all possessions go to the wind & water.
I asked several times with discretion in the Gulf region re: suicides. I
got to hear about a few.
I recently saw post-1938 hurricane pictures of Spastic Beach.
I get like 6 calls from people wanting us to either get started or give
them an estimate or bend over. I can't always tell quite which.
One architect says, "Well, I don't see anything on your website that
says you have experience with bluestone paving."
Then I'm being told the Regency is an important hotel and I am asked to
look at their terrazzo entry plaza. My comment, "Seems to me every hotel
in NYC is famous."
That and a wall near Sing Sing. If you seen one then you've seen another.
In MS I'm standing on a pile of rubble that was some nice person's
house... do I care about the pre-bid walk about? Do I care to convince
the unsure potential client? No.
My answering machine in the office now says to either call me on the
cell, if you know it, or leave a message on a phone system that I have
no idea how to connect with.
So I get an e-mail... I see the e-mail after the fact... to short - if
you care about this project you will attend the mandatory pre-bid
meeting -- too bad that on that day I'm standing on the beach in MS.
Another customer calls and says they need an invoice before the end of
the week for work that we have not yet done... well, to be honest, we
had not even heard of the work until the phone call.
My kind of client.
White oak is expensive. I figure up a price for a custom faux-heritage
picnic table at like $5,000. I don't even have time to figure out what
the hell that is about.
Got to keep moving.
Then I find myself getting chewed out, yelled at, argued with for
something that I thought we had a handle on.
Transit strike... no subway... throws a kilter... when I was standing on
the beach in MS the client wanting me to hurry up said there would be no
strike. Effin liar!
I wake up not even looking for it. Weather happens and I can't stop to
worry about it.
I want to take a month off and go hide and work on my novel. The hero
made a bologna sandwich and it threw me off my stride. Off stride now
for more than a year.
Damn how they dumped that cigarette machine off the canoe into the lake
in for us on the shore total blackness.
I'm getting chewed out by a whipper snapper.
I can't do diddly about it because the guy we were all depending on, my
hero, does not answer his cell phone.
Contingency plans. Life sucks then we are dead. I'm sorry... but I'm
gonna smile all the way.
I hustle all day and eat lunch at three. Not exactly good maintenance
for a diabetic. The damn cell phone keeps ringing.
My hero calls back. Turns out the reason I got my butt reemed for most
of the day is cause raydome's 86 year old father-in-law has to get
circumsized on Friday.
][<
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To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>
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