On Watching Paint Dry And Fortune Telling That Works

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Well, the painter showed up this morning at 11:05, worked for eighteen minutes and left for lunch at 11:23 saying she’d be back to put down a second coat. That made me laugh because I was surprised the wall was even getting a second coat. I guess she had to put in those hours this week (or eighteen minutes followed by however long it took that second coat to be done. To my surprise, she actually did a decent above the call job for around here, covering much more than the area that was “repaired” on Friday. The whole wall and part of the other side was done (*shocking!*) and while that made me smile, I’m figuring it’ll be around three months or so when I’ll be having a serious case of deja vu.

You see, when I popped out of bed this morning I decided to carefully look at the plaster job from Friday that was now perfectly dry. Well, dry save for two streaks that signify water was still seeping into the wall. Argh. I have a photo here of the “vampire marks”, but can’t seem to locate my camera’s USB cable (all that moving stuff around and it’s been mislaid). My fortune telling skills (which aren’t real and not needed in any case) show that I’ll be placing a call soon to let the idiots in the office know that they’ve put another plastic bandage on a raging tumor. Fixing the root cause of all the trouble makes more sense (and costs less in the long run). But they prefer to think I’m a dope who doesn’t know and that them just showing up to do their minimalist wall-work on a semi-regular basis is all fine and dandy. You’d figure this would have happened some 20+ years back when there was a small flood here that required the first wall replacement, right?

Anyway, the painter popped back around 12:35 or so and I lost a bet with myself that she’d take lunch until 1pm. Anyway, a few minutes of mucking around outside the door and she came in to finish the job. That second coat went up in much less time and I was signing some paperwork by 12:55 with full realization that she or someone else would be back here before summer was over. Well, the ceilings here still need to be busted into for repairs in a few places so it may be a case of planned serendipity when all is said and done. Back in a bit. I woke up too early thinking the painter would be here at 8am and I need to get out of here and get some air, smacking myself in the forehead as i stroll around outside. Fresh coat of paint aside, it’s still a Monday to deal with (and a busy week ahead)…

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When They Gave My Wall A Hip (And Other Not Tall At All Tales)

Well, at least I got to have a decent breakfast today. To wit:

Breakfast Not so hot deux 

Repair-wise, it was the predictable comedy of errors without the Greek chorus. Two plumbers (well, one plumber and one assistant) popped up at about 8:15 to reattach the legs to the sink and did so in a speedy six minutes. The not so funny thing was they were also supposed to fix the loose faucet that the previous plumbers removed and put back badly when they took the entire sink out and replaced it, “forgetting” to reattach the legs in the process. They were in the process of scooting away down the hall when I decided to check their work and found the faucet still loose. When they popped back in, one of them showed me the work order that only mentioned the leg job, which definitely didn’t make me feel any better. I noted that the inspector who was here two days back said the loose faucet would also be fixed and that years back the plumbers and other maintenance guys would go out of their way to double check what they worked on and would often mention they did a bit of extra work since they were already tinkering away down there. Not that this was “extra” work, mind you.

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