P3

Last week was phase 3 of the big LCA house remodel, aka P3. P1 was in 2006, where they (I couldn't make it) tore off the front porch, replaced it with a nice brick patio, did some great landscaping and remodeled the tv room, foyer and chapter room. Last year, for P2, they combined two two-man rooms into one three-man room, bricked the back yard, redid the game room and some other stuff, I can't remember what.

This year was the first year I was able to make it, and it was a good time. I wish I could have been there longer than just during the day on Saturday. It started mid-week with demolition work, and they ate some fried turkey nuts at some point. I arrived on Saturday morning, around 9:30. I had a 10:00 Housing Corp. meeting, so I couldn't really get started on any work. I checked the progress out, took a few pictures and went to the meeting. When we got done 40 minutes later, things were in full swing. The major project was in theme with previous years "the brickyard". We continued the brick patio and sidewalk from the front porch all the way down to the road, put in a new entry way at the road, new doors/windows in the chapter room, which are going to be much nicer during parties, as you could never open enough windows to keep things cool. They were also adding some nice stone accents to the front corners and around the door. They used the same manufactured stone as I put on my house, and it makes the front really pop. In the back, we took out all the gravel where everybody threw their smokes between the house and the parking lot and put some paving bricks down and some nice entries into the doors. They put the old front sidewalk (in chunks) in the back yard to accommodate the snakes walking path to their house. It was a better idea than paying someone to haul off a ton of concrete for sure! They also filled in a trench with concrete, that they dug last year to run power to the back yard bbq pit. up to this point it was just full of gravel.

Inside, we were putting up new doors on some of the rooms, and upstairs doing some major remodeling and masonry work. Jim "P-Nut" Benzing was the driving force behind the design and put together some really well laid out rooms. I have a few pics of it in progress, but hopefully they were able to get done Sunday and get it ready for the actives to move in. Of note, they combined the SAC closet with 250 to make it bigger. Not sure where all the bid-tuesday beer will be kept now... Other rooms remodeled were the slug room and geek room, and the other 2 rooms on that side of the hall. I helped hang some trim in there before I had to get back home. There was still quite a bit of work to do when I left, but I'm sure they pulled together and got the hard stuff done, with mostly cleanup left for the actives when they returned, which is no worse than we ever had it moving in.

Hopefully someone else will post some better/more recent pictures, as they had another day and a quarter to work after I left.

Next year, they're not asking for donations, just sweat equity, and the year after that is the big professional remodel. We're tearing that stupid Mansard roof off and putting a peaked roof and HVAC in! I wish all these assholes would have been around BEFORE I joined!

Property Taxes

So we built our house last year. It was started in March, completed in August. I figured our property tax bill wouldn't go up until 2008, which won't be payable until next July. Apparently, I was wrong.

We got a letter from the bank yesterday to notify us that they paid our property taxes out of escrow, and that it would take our escrow account $1700 into the red by the end of the year...shit. They did tell us we could pay into escrow to keep this from increasing our payment too substantially next year (to make up for the deficit AND the increase in taxes, from $100 pre-house to $1700 post-house). It came a year early, but it was about what I expected for taxes.

I decided to call the assessors office this morning to ask why the house was on our 2007 taxes when the house wasn't completed until 2/3 into the year. They told me that the house wasn't added to our taxes until February 2008, so they'll be on our taxes for next year. This year's tax bill should have just been for the property, but the lady didn't have the tax numbers, just the property assessments. She'd transfer me to the Treasurers office for that.

The lady at the treasurers office was not helpful. she simply told me if the bank paid my tax bill that they could send me a copy of it, even though they were supposed to send all tax bills to homeowners at the same time as they sent them to the banks.

currently waiting to hear back from the bank on this whole debacle. i'm going to be PISSED if my taxes went up 20-fold WITHOUT even having my house on the assessment.

UPDATE: I talked to the bank and the Treasurer's office, and got a fax of my tax statement from the Treasurer's office. It showed the house on the taxes. I called the assessor and she assured me that "the house wasn't added until 2/22/08...oh, it was before March 1st. Our tax year goes from March 1st to February 28th"

Those cocksuckers got me by 7 days (leap year)...that's no coincidence.

The good news is that they assessed the house at a reasonable value and i do have my homestead and mortgage exemptions on it.

Seriously???

During the bad storms last weekend, our landline went out. I sent a trouble ticket the next morning via the tubes. They called me Sunday morning (what?) to come out and look at it, but the guy got stopped at the distribution box before he got to my house. Surprise surprise, that's where the problem was. The repair garauntee was moved from 8pm Tuesday to 8pm Wednesday. Well, the wife called and it finally got fixed at 11:40am Friday. I called AT&T customer service to try and get a 25% reduction in my bill. I FINALLY get through to a customer service rep. To get there, i had to enter my phone number in the phone. The lady proceeds to ask my phone number(2st time), name and last 4 of my SSN. She then tells me she needs to transfer me to repair to get this taken care of. Before she transfers me, she tries to upsell me on some long distance plan for $10/month, pass. Then, she tries to upsell me on one that costs $30/month...what? yeah, give me the more expensive one. that's what i was looking for.

Repair has one of those damn automated voice recognition menus, where you have to say what you want, it doesn't understand you, and you repeat it, it does understand, but asks to verify that's what you said, you say yes, and it doesn't understand that, etc. It also asks me to put in my phone number (3rd time) At one point, it says if you want to speak to an agent, say "Agent". After fighting with the thing for five minutes, I tell it I want an agent, and it puts me on hold for 5 more minutes.



the agent answers the phone, and asks my number (4th time) , name and SSN. i'm real frustrated. he looks at my "file" for a minute, and tells me he's going to have to transfer me to repair to get this resolved...



what









the









fuck?



I'm at a loss for words...I stammer about how they already did that, and it sent me back to him, and then I hung up and blogged this blog. It's worth $5 to not have to go back and forth between repair and customer service eleventy times in a row.

Update! I called back, entered my number, told the lady my number again, and she tried to transfer me to repair AGAIN. I told her no, i just wanted her to take money off my bill. I ended up getting a whopping $1.92 taken off my bill...well worth the hassle and 5 years taken off my life from my head wanting to explode.

Construction Lady

I almost forgot the funniest part about our trip to Attica.

We were headed home on Wednesday, and there was road construction on 41, a few miles south of Attica. There was a woman holding the stop sign for our lane, letting the other lane come through. First off, Gary was rolling pretty hard before he came to a stop, about 5 feet from the lady, so she was nervous about that. Then, she turns away from us, towards oncoming traffic, standing about 18" or so from the yellow line.

A big semi rolls through, and the wind off of it catches her sign, blows it over her shoulder, and she damn near fell flat on her ass. After that, she moved, ever so nonchalantly, a few more feet away from the yellow line, and refused to turn around and look at our car. Lucky for her, because we were laughing our asses off.

Good Tims!

4-wheelin'

Last Wednesday, I went with a group of guys from work to a place called the Badlands Off Road Park, in Attica, IN. We took our 4-wheelers, for a day of mud slinging, hill climbing fun.

We left Bloomfield around 7:45 am, after breakfast at the local DQ. We had six guys going, and we had just enough room for all six quads, two Polaris Sportsmans (400 and 700), a Yamaha Kodiak 450, two Suzuki 400 sportquads and a Yamaha Raptor 700. We got to the park around 9:30 or so, attached our $5 bicycle flags to our 4-wheelers and got riding.

I've not done a whole lot of riding, but this place seemed like it had it all: mudholes, hills, jumps, rocks, sand dunes, and even a jeep sized culvert.

It was pretty cool in the morning, and we took it relatively easy for an hour or so, until we started getting hot, went back and took our heavy gear off and got back to riding. I took a donut kind of hard, and my quad threw me. I was able to kick it back onto its wheels before it rolled over on top of me, but my pride, my back and my arm were hurt. I went back to the truck, dressed the wound and got back to riding. I almost got thrown again later going off a jump, nearly went over the handlebars.

I got hung up in the mud in the morning, and had to be winched out. Later that day, Gary decided to go through a big puddle, that turned out to be deeper than he thought. His quad was up to the seat in muddy water, and when he jumped off of it after it died, it was floating. We pulled it out, turned it on end to drain the water and towed it back to the truck. After changing the oil (the old stuff looked like chocolate milk), he was back on the trail.

One of the sport quad guys went up about an 75 degree hill and got thrown off his bike at the top. The bike started back down the hill, but luckily didn't tumble. He must have had a golden horseshoe up his butt.

Towards the end of the day, we were looking for that big culvert and my belt started slipping. Waterlogged, right? nope, not a drop of water came out when i took the drain plug out. It just gave up the ghost. I had enough to make it through in low gear, but no more big hills for me. We found the culvert and Gary rode his quad through it and jumped out the end into about 18" of water.

In the end, the only real damage was to my elbow and Brian's leg got scraped up. He's lucky it didn't break though. My belt was probably going to go anyway, and after 3 oil changes, Gary's good to go. We rode about 6 hours, and had about 5 hours of drive time. It'd be more worth it if we'd have camped out and ridden for 2 days, but i'm not sure i could have handled a second day!

Sonsabitches!

if you're my mom or my wife, excuse my language, but i'm really pissed about work today.

Tuesday after lunch, I got a call from my customer, asking me to be in VA today, Friday, to answer technical questions in a brief. For some dumbass reason, I said yes, if my travel arrangements would go through. I submitted my request, selected the only flight for the return home that would get me in at a decent hour tonight (before 9pm), and it cost $800 (one way). I advised the customer of this, and she said that was fine. I was off on Wednesday 4-wheeler riding (it was hella fun, will blog a blog about it later), and secretly hoping my request would get denied due to the price of the flight or the short fuse on getting 'r' dun.

Wednesday afternoon, I got an email on my blackberry saying it was approved...shit.

Thursday morning, I get up, get ready, and leave for the airport, sore as shit. I get to the airport and check my email to make sure who my flight was with because I couldn't remember. I scroll through the email and see "Detroit" on the return flight...what? Sure enough, without asking, they put me on a flight that has a connection through detroit, puts me in Indy 3 hours later, saves a whopping $200 (at the cost of an additional 3 hours of OT for me) and basically just pisses me off. If they would have just denied my request, I would have been fine.

Anyway, I call and see if they can put me back on the original flight I requested, but they can't. it's not a contracted carrier. The best they can do for me, out of 4 semi-local airports is a flight that gets in at the same time, but is direct and doesn't leave until 6:30 tonight. at least i won't spend all evening on a damn airplane.

To top it off, I'm not here to "answer technical questions". I'm here to "give most of the brief".

In the words of Aaron Karo, "fuck me"

*changed title to make it more SFW, sorry Bean

quick trip to chicago

A few months ago, the wife started selling Usborne books, and had an opportunity for a training conference this past weekend in Rolling Meadows, IL (Chicago suburb). We decided to make a short famiry vacation out of it, and invited her brother and his gf along for the trip.

Since BIL is in working full time and taking night classes, we decided to leave Thursday night after he got out of class. We drove up to Btown, met him for dinner after class, and left his truck at his dads for the weekend. We ended up leaving btown around 10ish, and drove through a damn monsoon between Indy and Lafayette. I let BIL drive from Lafayette to our final destination, because I felt like I was going to pass out...but I didn't fall asleep the rest of the ride. I navigated through a detour through the heart of "the region", due to I65 being closed between I94 and I90, and we hit the hotel around 2am. IAC slept through about 90% of the drive up, so that was good.

We all crashed, and woke up at 6am, because the previous jackass to have the room left the alarm set on some mexican radio station. I finally got the alarm shut off after nearly yanking it out of the wall, and went back to sleep until 8:30 or 9, and we got up, showered, and headed to downtown Chicago. Since I haven't been to Chicago since I was a kid, and didn't know what driving downtown or the parking situation would be like, we decided to park and ride the CTA (Chicago's mass transit system) from Rosemont (near O'Hare airport) downtown. It was a pretty long ride, but we all got to see the ghetto areas as we made our way to downtown.

We got off the train near the Sears Tower, and walked over there for the ride up to the top. The weather was pretty clear when we got there, and it was a great view from the top. I'm not sure if it was worth the $13 admission fee, but wif, BIL and BIL-GF had never been before.

We ate lunch in a cafe on the 2nd floor of the tower, and from there walked back towards the CTA stop that we got off of. We decided to go to the Navy Pier, even though the tempurature was dropping and it was clouding up. We went inside, walked through the greenhouse type thing, and some of the shops, and then headed back downtown for a carriage ride. By then it was raining, but they had the carriages covered. it was a nice little ride. with the wife, IAC and I in one carriage, and BIL and BIL-GF in another.

After that, we made our way back to the CTA, the car, dinner at Steak and Shake and back to the hotel. It was a long day, but pretty fun.

The next day, the wife went to her training, and BIL and BIL-GF went to the hottub and he proposed to her. He was going to during the carriage ride, but forgot the ring at the hotel, oops :D After that, IAC, BIL, BIL-GF and I went to a late breakfast at Denny's, then back to the hotel to take IAC swimming for the first time. He was pretty tired though, and congested so he wasn't digging it. After that, we lazed around the room until the wife got done at her training. That night, we went to Gino's East for some Chicago Style pizza with a couple buddies from college and their significant others. The place is pretty cool, and you can sign your name to anything in the place. The pizza was good, and was an experience, but I wasn't a huge fan of the corn meal based crust, and the toppings were relatively sparse. It was a cheap meal though, for the 8 of us only $75, and that included 2 beers each for me and BIL. I'm not sure what happened to the guys I knew from college, but apparently imposters showed up, because they were drinking cherry cokes... In their defense, it had started to snow a bit, and they had to drive back home.

We got up Sunday morning, went swimming, and left around noon after a quick lunch at Panera. The drive home was way better than the drive up, and we got to Btown around 6pm, hung out with FIL and SMIL for a while, and got home around 8pm, ate a quick dinner, watched some tv and went to bed.

All in all, I would suggest a short vacation to Chicago, but do it later in the year, when you don't have to worry about the weather turning to snow, and definitely stay closer to downtown if you can help it. Also, take your walking shoes. A day pass on the CTA is $5, and you can ride as much as you want, but you'll still do a lot of walking. From what I can remember from 20 years ago, the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry are pretty awesome to go to as well.