The End of my money

Looking at my bank account last night, I found out I'm running on near-empty and I haven't even gotten the credit card bills for the cabinets and I've already bought. I still have the other half of the cabinets to buy - on credit - before the kitchen project is complete.

I don't know when or how I will recover from this financially yet. I think I'm looking at a year or maybe two years to set things right.

I hope that no one I know ever has a renter like Joshua Bradford in their life.

Happy Birthday to Brenda

Today is my sister-in-law's birthday. Hopefully, my brother has something fun planned this week for her.

What I learned today: There are two basic types of fire extinguishers. One is an environmentally friendlier version of the old Halon gas type and does no harm to to electronics or machinery and leaves no residue. The other is powder, corrosive, and leaves a huge mess but it's only one fourth of the cost of the gas.

buying cabinets

Went to IKEA last night an bought cabinets for one side of the galley kitchen in the condo so that HomeDepot can deliver and install the new range today. I'll be buying the cabinets for the other half of the kitchen tonight. Then I hope this project will be finished by Friday night.

making progress

I bought a lot of things last night.
We went to HomeDepot and ordered the new range and countertops and set the delivery dates. While we were there, a guy from corporate, who just happened to be on the floor, managed to sell a different and much less expensive vent-hood to me that was there. Then we checked on the availability of the new stainless steel sink in the next store and, once we found out they currently had two in stock, made it there just before closing to buy the sink and load it in the van next to the new hood.
That done, we ate dinner across the lot from the second HomeDepot location before coming home.

Monster says there should be nothing to buy and picking up the cabinets because all of that is in stock at IKEA. He will go to the store and double check all of his measurements with a CSR one last time this evening, while we have time within the 24-hour limit to change our countertop order, if necessary.

Next, we need to find someone to help with the demo of the old kitchen and installation the new cabinets.

back to fighting every day again

My old stove and oven are trashed. Because I have to replace them, I now must replace all of the cabinets and countertops as well. Nothing will match unless I replace the cabinets and tops on both sides. I now have to completely renovate the kitchen. I might as well throw in a new sink and vent-hood while I'm at it.

Monster wishes to be in charge of the reconstruction. Fine, since I don't have time, being at work, and he thinks it's a huge waste of money to hire someone to do it. Now we argue about it every day when I'm home from work. It should be simple. I want name-brand appliance from companies that have local representatives and that will be around, in one form or another. Therefore I want to buy all of the appliances at HomeDepot or BestBuy. The cabinets at HomeDepot are all too ornate and old-fashioned. There are no good, affordable sources for simple cabinets anywhere to be found locally, so we can buy cheap modern modular cabinets at IKEA. Cheap white shells with birch doors and facades on the outside.

The latest thing that cropped up last night is he wants me to buy cheap, unknown, quirky appliances at IKEA, like the ugly range fans they sell there, and don't I know how wasteful I'm being with buying the expensive General Electric and Nutone brand names appliance I picked out?

He keeps referring to "when we sell this" which translates into when I sell the only thing I own and pull money out of nowhere to buy a house. No. Not going to happen. He's been listening to the newest neighbors talking about buying into the building because "any day now, some huge developer will come in an buy this place to put a high-rise luxury condo & office building". I've heard that exact argument for twenty years, ever since I first bought this place. I'm stuck with the condo. We will probably have to move back in some day in the hopefully-quite-distant future. Maybe years from now. Unless HE makes enough money to buy a house or pull funds together with me to do so. Right now it looks like there will be no funds left on my side to put a down-payment on a house with. It's all been eaten up in the last year repairing my poor condo.

And now the kitchen has to be remodeled

We had someone look at the kitchen. The stove and oven could be repaired but as old as they are, the one company willing to work on it said they could not guarantee what they could do once they took it apart. In the end it will cost as much to repair and retrofit old parts as it will to just buy a new oven and cook top. We'll still need a plumber to replace as much of the old pipes as possible. If we're replacing the oddly sized appliances, I'll need to have new cabinetry and countertops installed. So the broken oven has turned into a kitchen remodel job. Should I keep the old sink? that seems like the only thing I might not need to replace. And the dishwasher is a nearly new Kitchenaid that I think is still in decent condition. Monster had to make his only workday this week short so he could be there for the technician. Now I need to find a good contractor who can pull all of this together for me while I attempt to remain employed.

I hope the new renter will hang in there. The reward at the end is that he'll be gettin a new kitchen at the same old rent. I hope that works for him.

It never ends!!

My tenant let us know there was a gas leak now in the kitchen of the condo. Imagine, if you will, after all I've gone through with that place, how thrilled I am to hear this. I immediately developed a migrain headache that made my head feel like it was about to explode from the pressure within.

Fortunately my tenant is very understanding and after he figured out how to simply turn the gas line off below the leak, he's assured me he's okay and there's no huge hurry to fix it as the kitchen is his last priority. After phoning friends for referrences on gas repair and checking Yahoo! yellow pages for ads and placing calls, I've already gotten a call back from one company and feel a lot more at ease. I took an excedrine and laid down for a while. Then Monster took me out to dinner at Figo and two glasses of wine. I feel better now, if a bit tipsy.

One of my co-workers today was robbed and cut with a knife today in our parking lot as he was trying to leave work.

A man was casually waiting for the next person to come out the door in back of our building. He walked up to him and told him to give his money, which he did, and for no reason the guy cut him before running away with his cash. First I phoned 911, then I phoned Boss #1, who was making deliveries, and told him what had happened.

Should be interesting to see how this affects things when all of us get back to work next week. Hopefully, the initial shock will lessen over the weekend chill-out. I'm sure some sort of extra security will be in place after this.

unconscious sounds

Sound - odd musical rhythmic electronic sounds - kept invading my sleep in different dreams. First, a repetitive squeal like a dance mix, and later a low hum slowly repeating. The dreams themselves were mostly frustration probably on being between stages of deeper sleep - dreams of being in a house that was never clean and when people came over, the hostess actually decided it was a good time to pull all of the old crap out of the garage or attic she'd been meaning to throw out. Or dreams where I couldn't find my way back to where I'd been. That kinda thing.

fish!

I had sushi tonight after work at Ru San's. Soon it will be warmer, fish-eating weather. I wonder if I could organize a weekly or bi-monthly sushi night.

What I learned last night

What I heard at the birthday dinner -
Almost any drink can be fixed with amaretto.
If it's too bad to fix with amaretto, just put it in a water melon.

Who knew?

the answer to this morning's question

BAD SCENE

A bus carrying a college baseball team has plunged off a motorway ramp in the southern US state of Georgia, killing at least six people, officials say.
A number of people were also injured in the crash that took place early on Friday, reports say.

Rescue teams pulled trapped passengers through the roof to safety. The exact cause of the crash remains unknown.

The charter bus was carrying the team from Bluffton University in Ohio to a tournament in Florida.

It crashed through a fenced barrier on an exit ramp and fell onto Interstate 75.

US television showed footage of the badly damaged bus lying on its side.

"It's bad... It's hard to describe. The bus is completely annihilated," police spokesman Joe Cobb was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

A number of injured passengers were taken to a hospital in the nearby city of Atlanta.

crawling to the end of the work week

It's 9:30 AM and I just now got to work and to my desk.
Traffic was stop and go all the way to Peachtree Street. - The ramp to 75-85 was closed and cops were directing trafffic, even though the lights were still working and I saw no accidents. There was A LOT of construction going on at 8AM though.
I don't know what exactly was up this morning but it took me three times as long to get to work this morning - 90 minutes.

smoke

I have an answer now, thanks to my boss:

Planned forestry fire in Jasper smokes out surprised Atlantans

By Stacy Shelton
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/01/07
An all-day controlled burn on federal land in Jasper County southeast of Atlanta created a hovering cloud of smoke through a large swath of the east metro region on Wednesday. The U.S. Forestry Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducted the burn on about 3,000 acres to prevent a wildfire and make room for regrowth.

The federal agencies do the burns occasionally —- about once every two years —- to enhance the habitat for the red-cockaded woodpecker, a member of the federal endangered species list.

In downtown Atlanta, about 60 miles from the burning forest, workers heading to the Five Points MARTA Station about 6:15 p.m. walked with their hands clasped over their nose, some coughing as they looked up at the sky and wondered where the fire was.

In Decatur, Frida Ghitis immediately went inside when the air started smelling funny around 4 p.m.

"It suddenly started to look very cloudy, almost like an early morning fog," said Ghitis, 46. "To me it smells almost like burning plastic. It was unpleasant enough that I had to go back inside."

Ghitis called the Decatur police department. She was advised to stay inside.

Alan Dozier, chief of forest protection for the Georgia Forestry Commission, said the problem was compounded by about 150 wildfires across the state, including 20 near the federally controlled fire in the vicinity of Monticello. Many of the fires were probably started by people trying to burn their yard waste.

Dozier said the conditions were perfect for the prescribed burn, especially with rain forecast for Thursday. But a strong easterly wind caught the smoke and blew it through McDonough, Lilburn, Decatur and downtown Atlanta.

By the afternoon, people started calling friends, police and fire departments, city halls and state offices to find where the blackish haze and smell was coming from.