Beethoven In Trance - Episode 28

July

At last, summer is here.

Weekends in summer don't seem to exist. Yard work takes at least half the day, and cleaning up takes another. Last weekend we went to Ikea in PA. It wasn't the nicest drive, 5 people in the car on the road at 86F. Not much new stuff in Ikea. Saw the French-made enamel cast iron oven roast there and could only sigh (did I tell you it was smashed by ...?). It hurt.

Slowly, we started to strike through projects from our list. Our neighbor put in a wall-mounted fan in the kitchen for us, and he will also install two new garage lights soon. He gave us his one-year-old grill the other day as he just got himself a new one. The old grill is in good shape. I seasoned it last weekend with chicken fat, and it came back to live again.

We planned to replace our two entry doors since last summer. We finally went to Homedepot and picked the doors and scheduled the installation. Everything went all right till the day of the installation. I worked at home that afternoon and nobody showed up. After calling Homedepot and installation company couple times, I finally found out they were not going to show up that day. Pissed, frustrated, I called the installation company the next morning asking for same day installation. Nope, no can do. Well, they scheduled the installation two days, and I need to apply for another half day working at home(which fortunately is not such a big deal, but still...). Told my neighbor about this and he wasn't happy about the answer I was getting (well, me neither). We went back to Homedepot the next evening asking for discount (at least some compensation for the time I wasted waiting at home for nothing). No luck. The guy over there through our contract right back to us and said "you can return it". Well, no sales for you then. Off we went, return the whole thing the night before the installation.

Since Homedepot is out of question, Lowes seems to be the only choice left. We went there again that week and picked the doors. Later in the next week, my neighbor and I went back to the Lowes with Homedepot's quote and told them to match the price. Lowes did. Lowes got my business, and Homedepot will not.

Really getting close with our neighbor. That day he sold his brother's PC to me. I checked the setup, and it was a good deal. I was considering upgrading my PC that time, and his offer came in the perfect time.

Three colleagues left the team last month, one went to a online start-up, one went to a software company (which happens to be the one brother-in-law works in), and the last one went o law school. I ran with the guy who went back to law school before you left the company, he was nice guy, we share the same interests in running and investment. He reminds me so much of the character in "Boston Legal" - Allen Shore.