1:43 p.m. - 2008-12-07
Snowy Sunday Stuff....
It's Sunday, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!!!!!
Ok, time to get caught up on all the news. Not a lot of excitement, in spite of the beginning of the week.
When you last heard, RH (retired husband) was having a go-around with the countertop people, trying to get something accomplished. After RH talked to our wonderful salesman at the Depot of Home... and our salesman left several messages with the countertop people.... and they didn't seem to give a rip...... We finally got a phone call direct from the countertop place. RH talked to them and they agreed to send out their man AGAIN to measure.
RH should be called ARH (ANAL retired husband). He does everything to the ............1% degree and all the professional measures except for one were within 1/16th % of his original measurements. The one measure that was off was WAY OFF......like about 21 inches off!. I knew the countertop man had not measured past the right side of the counter and couldn't figure out what was wrong. As soon as he showed up on Tuesday...as he walked inside the house...he said..."I think I wrote down 86 inches instead of 66 inches but I want to be sure."
Yes, boys and girls, that is just what he did......ooops!!
So as RH talks to him and discusses what the woman from the countertop place said on the phone....the professional installer is telling RH that isn't the way they install...blah blah blah. And then when RH goes to see our salesman at the Depot of Home; the salesman said the woman at the countertop place is telling HIM how it all works and the salesman has been doing this work for years...blah blah blah.
Sooooooooooooooo, anyway. The measurements were turned in, we are supposed to hear back next week when the countertops will be done and installed. We have a ... p.o.s.s.i.b.l.e. installation date of December 15th.
Therefore, RH and I have decided, if we don't have a positive install for the week of December 15th, we will put the install off until January and we will do our Christmas decorating. If we do get the install that week, we will decorate after the install is completed. Either way, we will have our Christmas decorating done before Christmas Eve when we have family members coming over.
In other news, RH was looking for something to do yesterday. He made a suggestion to me that we rearrange our living room. We have lived here 6 years and have had 2 (yes, TWO!) matching couches in our living room for most of that time. We have a large living room. We also have a dry sink and a recliner, 2 end tables and one partial wall which holds our tv. And I almost forgot, an 8 foot tall hutch.
The biggest obstacle in rearranging is the cat condo.
It has 3 tiers plus a enclosed area in the middle with a circle opening. Anyway, it is about 6 feet tall. and takes up a big space. We have kept it in front of our 3 windows in the living room because the 3 cats like to look outside and take a nap in the top tier and scratch the posts and play on and around it. We love our cats and like to watch them play. And, incidentally, we have a smaller cat condo in our basement sitting in front of the fire escape access window too.
So, not that I want the cat condo to be the focal point of our decorating scheme...but it does take up room.
So RH and I are looking around the room and thinking of what we could do to change the appearance and we decided on basically the same idea. So we started pushing and moving the furniture around. It wound up with the two matching couches in an L-shape with a side table and lamp at the end of one couch and another table and lamp sitting in the L-shaped corner with another couch on the other side of it. We moved the dry sink by the front door where it fit perfectly by the way. We moved the recliner into another side of the room and put a floor lamp with a little table connected next to it. It makes a C shape of furniture with the enclosed tv and shelves making the fourth side..
And where is the cat condo you ask? Well, it is nestled between the couch and the dry sink....in front of one window. Actually it kind of disappears...we think. We decided to take a week to see if we like the new arrangement.
In years before the cat condo, we always put the Christmas tree in front of the 3 windows. Since the cat condo has arrived; we have put the tree by the shelves where the tv wall unit is, in the dining area near the patio door and/or pushed into a corner near the end of a church pew in the dining area. Yes, we have a church pew.
Hmm, I guess I need to take pictures. But RH is busy on another project so that will have to wait.
RH finished the project he was doing for his former employer...the city government. Since he left 6 months ago, apparently his replacement hasn't provided any quarterly reports on payments made via the Claims Dept. So RH got the information, went into the database that he had created years ago and processed the 3rd and 4th quarter up to December. The city needed this to balance their budget and do other tax forms etc. During his work; it was revealed that his replacement wasn't always where she was supposed to be during the work day. It was also revealed that she was using a laptop and had many claims that had never been put into the database which, of course, throws off all the data. It took him from Tuesday afternoon to get all the data copied (minus what she had on her laptop since no one could find her) until Thursday to make the charts, graphs, and reports that he turned in Friday morning. After he presented the reports to the Legal Dept. and to the Controller.....he was told they fired his replacement that day! He has told the City, he will do a year end report for them after the first of the year and he will be willing to train the new replacement. He also recommended someone he had worked with within the Legal Dept to be offered the replacement job. He also offered to train her in anything she doesn't understand.
Since RH is so anal, you can imagine how unsettling this lack of accuracy can be to him. I know once he get all the 2008 data input and generates all the reports which includes charging the claims to the correct City Depts...he will feel much more relaxed. Since he created the database and most of the forms and the reports and built the system to reflect exactly what is needed for the quarterly and year-end reports; this is a big deal to him.
Currently as we speak, RH is cutting off the old carpet on the cat condo scratching posts and winding rope around all 3 of the posts. The cats use the scratching posts and eventually the carpet starts fraying and pieces fall off.
It's a good project for a cold winter day.
As for me, after I finish this blog, I will be reading the multitude of magazines I had stored by my recliner. Now that the recliner is not tucked into the corner, the abundance of magazines is embarrassing!
