This building process is going. as. slow. as. molasses. DH is about to blow a cork. The builder was told on 5/17 the shop slab was ready and 5/18 the garage slab was ready. He was actually told two days before that that it would be done by those days, so the builder could get the plumber scheduled in advance. Plumber didn't come out until the 25th. Then he told us last week that concrete would not be poured until today. (it should have gotten poured last week!) Then yesterday morning he texts DH and says concrete will not be poured until Monday 6/4. That pretty much did it for DH.
The builder told us it would take 60 days to build the shop. We signed the loan papers to have funds available to start work of March 20th. DH told builder it would be about one more week before rockery wall was done (that needed to be done before foundation could be dug), plus it was too muddy yet to start on foundations anyway. Rockery was done on March 28th and weather/ground was good to go. Builder was kept apprised during that week, so he actually knew a few days prior to that when the rock wall would be done. So, we are using that date 3/28 as the builder "start date" and not 3/20. The excavator could not start digging the foundation until the builder got out there and staked it all out for him. He didn't come and stake it for another 6 days, on 4/3. (after DH had to get on his case to get out there and get started on this!). The excavator got started and the foundations were finished being dug 4/6. Builder did not show back up to start setting foundation forms until 4/13. He said it would take 7 days to set up the forms and pour the concrete. It was May 3rd when they got it done and by then the excavator guy had to go onto another job, he couldn't keep waiting around. So, by the time our builder was ready for him, he was off on another job for a week and couldn't get back to us until May 8th and then he only came one day, with one guy, and pulled off for a flooding emergency. It was May 14th before he got back to us and finished up the backfilling and slab preps on 5/18. Here it is 5/30 and nothing's been done since then except the plumber guy was here for a couple hours last Friday. 63 days and we still don't have the concrete work even finished. It will (supposedly) be poured on 6/4. That will be 68 days into this and still a complete shop to frame, roof, side and finish inside. We should have been able to have our house listed (and most likely sold) by now, just waiting on it to close and move into the shop and be starting on the house soon. We'll be lucky if the shop is even done in another 60 days.
Our holes for the gate pier foundations have been sitting open since beginning of April, because the builder couldn't listen long enough to make sure enough concrete for them also got brought out for those to get poured at the same time as the foundations, so then the excavator could fill those back in same time he was backfilling every thing else. Now it won't get done until way down the road - when the excavator comes back to do electric and water lines dug.
I called the lender this morning to ask her what our options are if we decided to find another builder. Just so we know what our options are in advance. She said we certainly can do that (though, of course we are under contract with the builder and it would have to be a mutual "break up"). I explained it's been over 60 days and we haven't even finished with the concrete being poured and the shop was supposed to be done (or at least close to it) by now. She offered to call the builder and get on him to get going with this and stop putting us to the back of the bus because he's taking on other work and putting them before us (who he's known he was going to build our house since last year, for sure he's known 100% since end of December). She called him - of course he blamed it all on the excavator! The excavator delayed it 10 days. He's delayed it almost 5 weeks so far.
DH ended up having a blow out with the builder yesterday. He tried to blame the excavator again and DH would have none of that. Sure, he was a small part of the problem, but if the builder had gotten the foundations done in the 7 (or even 9-10 days) days he said he'd have it done, the excavator would not have had to pull of his equipment and go to his next job. Plus he tried to say to DH "I'm working Saturdays and Sundays, too." DH said well, no one has worked on our place on any weekend, they don't even work WEEK DAYS most of the time! When we met with the builder last January he told us he had two houses to build this spring. Now his excuse is he has 10 houses he's trying to build. DH said he didn't give a crap about those other houses, that obviously came after we signed our contract to get ours built. Now he's saying slabs will be poured Monday, as well as the lumber for the shop will be delivered. Builder had the nerve to say to DH "you're not motivating me to want to build this". DH said "well, I wasn't aware it was my job to motivate you to do your job. I would assume getting paid for it and your business reputation are what motivate you".
We expect some delays, of course. Honestly, we were expecting about a 90 day build. We aren't naive, but this has gotten way off schedule. DH figured it out. So far there has been 15 days of actual work done in the last 63 days. At that rate it's going to take 6 months to build this shop. The plumber guy that was out last Friday told DH "the one that yells the loudest is going to get it done faster". I don't know if he was specifically referring to dealing with this builder in particular or just contractors in general, but from the whole conversation DH was having with him, it kind of sounded like he was referring to this builder, specifically. DH was like well, I hate having to be like that - especially when I'm the one paying them!
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
An eventful weekend
I hope everyone had an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend. It was really nice having half of Friday and yesterday off. We didn't do much on Saturday. We ran out to the property for a short visit. It had rained again Friday night and DH wanted to see how bad this is affecting the slab area's. Good grief - if they don't get these poured soon, they are going to have to end up re-prepping them. On the way back it was later afternoon and DH was already hungry for dinner so we decided to stop at the town grocery store deli and pick up some fried chicken for dinner. Another easy dinner. I just got a 4 piece and some jo's. They make really good chicken there, it's always really juicy. Much cheaper than stopping at the restaurant.
Sunday morning we went over to the big flea market and walked through it all (showed 1.1 miles on our phone app, haha). We didn't buy anything this year. A few things we of course liked, but $200 or more was not in our budget this year. We did come across a guy selling bear chain saw carvings that we really liked. The one we both liked best was a bear about 4' tall with a fishing pole and a fish on the end of the pole. $200. He's fairly local, so we got his card from him and will check back with him after the house is built and we are ready to spend $200 for it. It would look super cute on our back patio. We got back home, had lunch and took a nap.
Sunday evening I let the dogs out the front door. A few seconds later they barked and I looked back out the door. Two deer were in the field across the street. So, I sat down on our porch and watch them eat for a bit, until they wandered off. I walk back in the house and hear DH talking loudly (he always talks loud on the phone) and sounding kind of mad. I was like what the heck?! Turns out it was his brother he has not talked with in years and years. Oh great. LOL. I've been expecting this call since we moved here (he lives about an hour away). DH is pretty sure he had been drinking some, but since he hasn't had a conversation with him in 10 years (and that last time 10 years ago BIL was definitely drunk) he wasn't sure if he had been drinking or was now normally a bit confusing and irrational sounding. Mostly I think he called because he thought their dad is about to die any day (he's not). But, maybe he'd know that if he ever called and talked to his dad. DH's dad said once in awhile he gets a text from him....DH's dad is 80 years old and doesn't text.
Long story: DH has 4 other siblings. Two sis's and two bro's. One of the sis's and her DH, that we were very close to, decided for whatever reason (other than it must have been jealousy) to turn on us, very badly. They even tried to sue us and when that didn't work they tried other ways to basically try to put DH out of business and ruin our lives any way they could by lies and sneaky things. The 6 months leading up to all this we knew they were acting very strange, but no one would tell DH what was going on, even though he asked his parents and other sister many times. Of course he had even asked the sis and her DH directly, which of course they lied and said nothing. Though we found out later DH's parents knew. When they tried to sue us, DH even showed his parents they were lying by having them listen in on a phone call with sister's husband. Sure enough, he told DH something opposite of what he had been telling in-laws. Even that wasn't enough for the family to realize how bad it was. The rest of them just said "well, they haven't done it to us" or in the case of BIL he basically said he didn't want to get involved or hear about it. No problem. We broke contact with all of his family and rebuilt our lives. We weren't going to make them choose between us and them and we knew that (and still feel this way to this day, even more so) that we do not want anyone who associates with this sister and her family to have any insight or connection to what is going on in our lives. Honestly, the sister and her dh are pure evil in our book. I have disliked people over the course of my life, but I have never ever hated anyone. I sincerely hate them.
Just before we moved here and we were trying to get a hold of our son we found out he was staying with our in laws. So, DH called his dad, so we could try to get a hold of DS. Unbeknownst to us DH's parents and his other sister had also broken ties with this sister and her DH several years earlier (but several years after we did). Guess what?! She eventually, turned on them too, just as she had done to us. We do not know the whole story of what she did. One thing we were told is that she got into the parents bank account and snooped around, trying to figure out how much money they had and where it was being spent. It sounds like she thought money had been given to us and the other siblings and not her. (it hadn't - well, it hadn't been given to us, we don't know or care if they gave any to the others over the years). This sister also told them she should be the one to inherit when they die (which totally cracks me up because there will be pennies to inherit, especially once they have to go into assisted living) because: the oldest brother got all his loans over the years written off, the next two siblings got their college paid for (they had loans) and my DH got loaned money (which we paid back a long long time ago) and she never got anything. Good grief. Not to mention she and her DH are well off, they don't even need the money.
So, the past year and a half or so we have had somewhat of a relationship again with in-law parents and DH's one sister. DH calls his dad at least every week and we help the sister who is taking care of them in what little ways we can. The other two brothers are still in good with the bad sister (though both brothers live in this state), so we certainly haven't bothered to contact them. Neither were ever very close with DH anyway. The one brother is 7 years older and has basically been out of DH's life since DH was 11. Not to mention he's an alcoholic and pot head. The other brother (that called DH Sunday night) is 15 months younger than DH. He moved out of the state we all lived in and back to his home town/state (where we are now) over 20 years ago. While over the years we had always stopped by to see them, if we were driving through (on our many racing trips) they never made any attempt to come and see us when they were in town.
So, BIL wants to know why DH hates him and is mad at him. DH says (several times during the conversation). I don't hate you nor am I mad at you. I am disappointed in you that you wouldn't hear/listen to what our sister did to me and my family, nor did you seem to care. DH reiterated several times that we are not having anything to do with anyone who has this sister and DH in their lives. Period. Finally, BIL asked to hear the story (which of course took DH awhile to tell). DH ended the story with them 3 times forwarding our mail to a PO Box they had set up! BIL said he didn't know any of that. Of course he didn't, he didn't want to. Then BIL tried to blame DH for their parents and the other sis not having anything to do with this sister. DH ways "whoa! that's not on me! That happened years after what she did to me and I don't even know the whole story what she did to them. All's I know is that when I called dad to try to get a hold of my son, Dad apologized to me and said now he understood what we went through because that sister had betrayed them too." I think his parents and good sis somehow thought we knew they had broken ties with her a few years earlier, but we had no clue.
This brother rarely calls anyone in the family and when he does he doesn't want to know why/what happened, anyway, so that is apparently why his parents and the good sister never told him the details either. A couple of times during the conversation he even said "I moved here to get away from you all and now two of you are here (the older brother moved back here several years ago). DH just laughed and said it's a big state. Pretty sure we can co-exist and I have no problem leaving you alone. LOL
It sounds like this brother has a ton of "issues", especially related to their childhood. Dh doesn't remember most of it that way (though it wasn't the easiest childhood) and the few things that were kinda crappy, well he grew up and got over them. Doesn't sound like this brother has (at 52 years of age). They did talk for over a couple of hours. Dh said later in the call he did seem to calm down (probably wore off his buzz) and seemed more rational. DH told him if he did anything in their childhood that caused him pain, then he apologizes for it. Mostly it sounds like normal big brother picking on a little brother type of stuff (I don't know I don't have any siblings to know what that's like).
I don't really know where, if at all, it will go from here with the BIL. Our lives and what is going on is not going to be passed on to anyone who can keep the bad sis apprised. And believe me, she is the type that would want to know and use it against you, if she could find a way. I know I could care less if we have a relationship with this brother and his wife. We really do not have anything in common with them. We'll see. I guess BIL mentioned getting together somewhere to have dinner, so we'll see. I could honestly care less, one way or the other if it happens.
Sunday morning we went over to the big flea market and walked through it all (showed 1.1 miles on our phone app, haha). We didn't buy anything this year. A few things we of course liked, but $200 or more was not in our budget this year. We did come across a guy selling bear chain saw carvings that we really liked. The one we both liked best was a bear about 4' tall with a fishing pole and a fish on the end of the pole. $200. He's fairly local, so we got his card from him and will check back with him after the house is built and we are ready to spend $200 for it. It would look super cute on our back patio. We got back home, had lunch and took a nap.
Sunday evening I let the dogs out the front door. A few seconds later they barked and I looked back out the door. Two deer were in the field across the street. So, I sat down on our porch and watch them eat for a bit, until they wandered off. I walk back in the house and hear DH talking loudly (he always talks loud on the phone) and sounding kind of mad. I was like what the heck?! Turns out it was his brother he has not talked with in years and years. Oh great. LOL. I've been expecting this call since we moved here (he lives about an hour away). DH is pretty sure he had been drinking some, but since he hasn't had a conversation with him in 10 years (and that last time 10 years ago BIL was definitely drunk) he wasn't sure if he had been drinking or was now normally a bit confusing and irrational sounding. Mostly I think he called because he thought their dad is about to die any day (he's not). But, maybe he'd know that if he ever called and talked to his dad. DH's dad said once in awhile he gets a text from him....DH's dad is 80 years old and doesn't text.
Long story: DH has 4 other siblings. Two sis's and two bro's. One of the sis's and her DH, that we were very close to, decided for whatever reason (other than it must have been jealousy) to turn on us, very badly. They even tried to sue us and when that didn't work they tried other ways to basically try to put DH out of business and ruin our lives any way they could by lies and sneaky things. The 6 months leading up to all this we knew they were acting very strange, but no one would tell DH what was going on, even though he asked his parents and other sister many times. Of course he had even asked the sis and her DH directly, which of course they lied and said nothing. Though we found out later DH's parents knew. When they tried to sue us, DH even showed his parents they were lying by having them listen in on a phone call with sister's husband. Sure enough, he told DH something opposite of what he had been telling in-laws. Even that wasn't enough for the family to realize how bad it was. The rest of them just said "well, they haven't done it to us" or in the case of BIL he basically said he didn't want to get involved or hear about it. No problem. We broke contact with all of his family and rebuilt our lives. We weren't going to make them choose between us and them and we knew that (and still feel this way to this day, even more so) that we do not want anyone who associates with this sister and her family to have any insight or connection to what is going on in our lives. Honestly, the sister and her dh are pure evil in our book. I have disliked people over the course of my life, but I have never ever hated anyone. I sincerely hate them.
Just before we moved here and we were trying to get a hold of our son we found out he was staying with our in laws. So, DH called his dad, so we could try to get a hold of DS. Unbeknownst to us DH's parents and his other sister had also broken ties with this sister and her DH several years earlier (but several years after we did). Guess what?! She eventually, turned on them too, just as she had done to us. We do not know the whole story of what she did. One thing we were told is that she got into the parents bank account and snooped around, trying to figure out how much money they had and where it was being spent. It sounds like she thought money had been given to us and the other siblings and not her. (it hadn't - well, it hadn't been given to us, we don't know or care if they gave any to the others over the years). This sister also told them she should be the one to inherit when they die (which totally cracks me up because there will be pennies to inherit, especially once they have to go into assisted living) because: the oldest brother got all his loans over the years written off, the next two siblings got their college paid for (they had loans) and my DH got loaned money (which we paid back a long long time ago) and she never got anything. Good grief. Not to mention she and her DH are well off, they don't even need the money.
So, the past year and a half or so we have had somewhat of a relationship again with in-law parents and DH's one sister. DH calls his dad at least every week and we help the sister who is taking care of them in what little ways we can. The other two brothers are still in good with the bad sister (though both brothers live in this state), so we certainly haven't bothered to contact them. Neither were ever very close with DH anyway. The one brother is 7 years older and has basically been out of DH's life since DH was 11. Not to mention he's an alcoholic and pot head. The other brother (that called DH Sunday night) is 15 months younger than DH. He moved out of the state we all lived in and back to his home town/state (where we are now) over 20 years ago. While over the years we had always stopped by to see them, if we were driving through (on our many racing trips) they never made any attempt to come and see us when they were in town.
So, BIL wants to know why DH hates him and is mad at him. DH says (several times during the conversation). I don't hate you nor am I mad at you. I am disappointed in you that you wouldn't hear/listen to what our sister did to me and my family, nor did you seem to care. DH reiterated several times that we are not having anything to do with anyone who has this sister and DH in their lives. Period. Finally, BIL asked to hear the story (which of course took DH awhile to tell). DH ended the story with them 3 times forwarding our mail to a PO Box they had set up! BIL said he didn't know any of that. Of course he didn't, he didn't want to. Then BIL tried to blame DH for their parents and the other sis not having anything to do with this sister. DH ways "whoa! that's not on me! That happened years after what she did to me and I don't even know the whole story what she did to them. All's I know is that when I called dad to try to get a hold of my son, Dad apologized to me and said now he understood what we went through because that sister had betrayed them too." I think his parents and good sis somehow thought we knew they had broken ties with her a few years earlier, but we had no clue.
This brother rarely calls anyone in the family and when he does he doesn't want to know why/what happened, anyway, so that is apparently why his parents and the good sister never told him the details either. A couple of times during the conversation he even said "I moved here to get away from you all and now two of you are here (the older brother moved back here several years ago). DH just laughed and said it's a big state. Pretty sure we can co-exist and I have no problem leaving you alone. LOL
It sounds like this brother has a ton of "issues", especially related to their childhood. Dh doesn't remember most of it that way (though it wasn't the easiest childhood) and the few things that were kinda crappy, well he grew up and got over them. Doesn't sound like this brother has (at 52 years of age). They did talk for over a couple of hours. Dh said later in the call he did seem to calm down (probably wore off his buzz) and seemed more rational. DH told him if he did anything in their childhood that caused him pain, then he apologizes for it. Mostly it sounds like normal big brother picking on a little brother type of stuff (I don't know I don't have any siblings to know what that's like).
I don't really know where, if at all, it will go from here with the BIL. Our lives and what is going on is not going to be passed on to anyone who can keep the bad sis apprised. And believe me, she is the type that would want to know and use it against you, if she could find a way. I know I could care less if we have a relationship with this brother and his wife. We really do not have anything in common with them. We'll see. I guess BIL mentioned getting together somewhere to have dinner, so we'll see. I could honestly care less, one way or the other if it happens.
Saturday, May 26, 2018
Saturday morning chillin'
I did end up going shopping by myself yesterday afternoon. First stop was to pick up the vapor barrier and rolls of tape DH ordered. I guess DH thought it would be folded up in a big box. The guy brings a big roll out to my car on a forklift and says "um...I don't think this will fit". I asked how long is it? he said 7 1/2 feet. I said it will fit! It did. LOL.
Then I went to Target for a few things. Soda was on sale for 4/$10 so I got 4 more. The dogs were getting low on Beggin' Strips so I got a big bag and used a $1 off coupon. The Bertolli frozen skillet meal we like was on sale for $5.99 (usually they are $8 at grocery store), so I got 2 bags. We both really like this meal. It's very quick and easy and tasty. But one bag isn't almost not quite enough (for how much dh likes to eat) for two of us and two bags cooked up is way too much. Last time I made it I decided to also make some white rice. The skillet ends up with quite a bit of sauce/gravy leftover so I poured that over the rice. It was a great addition and helped fill the meal out. Hmm.. I was just looking at my Target receipt. The sign in front of all the soda said $4/$10 - that is $2.50 a 12 pack. My receipt says they $3 each. Wonder what's up with that. Also, I know I handed her my dog treat coupon for $1 off and that is not reflected on my receipt either! I guess I will have to watch my receipts more closely there from now on, while checking out!
DH is wiped out. He got up this morning around 7am. Had some Cheerios and sat on the computer a bit and then went back to bed. He needs the rest, that's for sure. Sometime this weekend I am going to go to the big flea market going on - whether he wants to come with me or not! I even remembered to get a little cash out of the bank cash machine when I was in the city yesterday. I realized I had not used this debit card yet and couldn't even remember if I had picked out a PIN or not. I decided I'd better try it out and see and not need to use it in an emergency and not know my PIN LOL. It worked with what I assumed I would have picked as my PIN. I made my goal of another $25 earned in M-Turks this week.
The plumber guy made it out yesterday and got his work needed to be done before slabs are poured. Builder had said that will be done Tuesday. Now he's saying Wednesday. Delay delay delay.
Wood miller guy has started cutting our logs up into boards yesterday.
I guess DH's dad has lung cancer. He had told DH's sis that he told DH about it, but he hadn't. While they were seeing him about that the doctor said he was more worried at this time about what is going on with his heart and wanted him to go to ER and get checked out. I guess this was awhile back and FIL didn't go. I guess he went back to dr. yesterday and they determined his one lung lit up in the x-ray and for sure has cancer, but dr. said it's slow growing and again, he's more worried what is going on with his heart. Honestly, I can't say I'm too surprised - he's smoked for at least 60 years - what do you expect to happen to your lungs? I'm glad DH and I don't smoke or drink. FIL also said when they left the dr. office yesterday to go home - a 10 mile drive - it took them an hour and 15 minutes to go 10 miles. Boy, I sure do NOT miss that at all.
Then I went to Target for a few things. Soda was on sale for 4/$10 so I got 4 more. The dogs were getting low on Beggin' Strips so I got a big bag and used a $1 off coupon. The Bertolli frozen skillet meal we like was on sale for $5.99 (usually they are $8 at grocery store), so I got 2 bags. We both really like this meal. It's very quick and easy and tasty. But one bag isn't almost not quite enough (for how much dh likes to eat) for two of us and two bags cooked up is way too much. Last time I made it I decided to also make some white rice. The skillet ends up with quite a bit of sauce/gravy leftover so I poured that over the rice. It was a great addition and helped fill the meal out. Hmm.. I was just looking at my Target receipt. The sign in front of all the soda said $4/$10 - that is $2.50 a 12 pack. My receipt says they $3 each. Wonder what's up with that. Also, I know I handed her my dog treat coupon for $1 off and that is not reflected on my receipt either! I guess I will have to watch my receipts more closely there from now on, while checking out!
DH is wiped out. He got up this morning around 7am. Had some Cheerios and sat on the computer a bit and then went back to bed. He needs the rest, that's for sure. Sometime this weekend I am going to go to the big flea market going on - whether he wants to come with me or not! I even remembered to get a little cash out of the bank cash machine when I was in the city yesterday. I realized I had not used this debit card yet and couldn't even remember if I had picked out a PIN or not. I decided I'd better try it out and see and not need to use it in an emergency and not know my PIN LOL. It worked with what I assumed I would have picked as my PIN. I made my goal of another $25 earned in M-Turks this week.
The plumber guy made it out yesterday and got his work needed to be done before slabs are poured. Builder had said that will be done Tuesday. Now he's saying Wednesday. Delay delay delay.
Wood miller guy has started cutting our logs up into boards yesterday.
I guess DH's dad has lung cancer. He had told DH's sis that he told DH about it, but he hadn't. While they were seeing him about that the doctor said he was more worried at this time about what is going on with his heart and wanted him to go to ER and get checked out. I guess this was awhile back and FIL didn't go. I guess he went back to dr. yesterday and they determined his one lung lit up in the x-ray and for sure has cancer, but dr. said it's slow growing and again, he's more worried what is going on with his heart. Honestly, I can't say I'm too surprised - he's smoked for at least 60 years - what do you expect to happen to your lungs? I'm glad DH and I don't smoke or drink. FIL also said when they left the dr. office yesterday to go home - a 10 mile drive - it took them an hour and 15 minutes to go 10 miles. Boy, I sure do NOT miss that at all.
Friday, May 25, 2018
It's Friday!!
TGIF - and a half work day at that! I'm dealing with a new-ish employee and her learning curve pains, LOL. She's been given a job to do that seems to be a bit more than she can handle. She is behind and of course, a lot of it is manufacturer specific, so she'll need time to learn all the differences. I had sent her some very detailed (but fairly easy to follow along) instructions awhile back. I had a feeling she was missing one of the components and asked her about it. She said "oh, she didn't realize it, it was never in the instructions". I went back to my email to her, because I was 98.5% sure I had included that part and yes, I had. I didn't correct her that I had sent it, I just sent her that part again :) I miss my previous guy that used to do this job - but of course he got promoted....because he does a great job, haha.
After I'm off work I'm going to the city to pick up something for DH (a roll of vapor barrier) and do a bit of grocery shopping. I had to drop DH off at the property this morning (why he couldn't just take his pristine pick up, I don't know). On my way back home, I almost hit a deer. He got past me just in the nick of time, thank goodness. He startled me, to be sure!
I'm kind of looking forward to going shopping by myself again. Gives me time to look at prices, compare things, etc. It's a big help having him push a separate cart and getting soda and water, but it tires him out easy, so I try to get it all done as quickly as possible. I'm trying to find some coupons this morning to use, and hopefully pay for my gas for the trip :) I've loaded all the deals with the grocery store app on the things I'm going to buy.
Last week when we went DH decided to stop at Harbor Freight for a few things. As we were walking thru the store I found a 20% off one item coupon on my phone and used that (saved $4) and then the guy asks do you want one of the freebies too? I said, nah, we forgot to go look for one of them (didn't want to hold up line) and he said no problem, which one do you want and showed us the ad. DH said he'll take the tape measure and a girl helping him at the checkstand quickly grabbed one. That was nice of them to do a little extra customer service, I thought.
oh darn. Now DH texted me he might be done working for the day at the property (he was meeting plumber) by the time I'm passing by to head to the city, so he might go with me. Oh well, I guess it will be a quick grocery shopping trip then, LOL.
After I'm off work I'm going to the city to pick up something for DH (a roll of vapor barrier) and do a bit of grocery shopping. I had to drop DH off at the property this morning (why he couldn't just take his pristine pick up, I don't know). On my way back home, I almost hit a deer. He got past me just in the nick of time, thank goodness. He startled me, to be sure!
I'm kind of looking forward to going shopping by myself again. Gives me time to look at prices, compare things, etc. It's a big help having him push a separate cart and getting soda and water, but it tires him out easy, so I try to get it all done as quickly as possible. I'm trying to find some coupons this morning to use, and hopefully pay for my gas for the trip :) I've loaded all the deals with the grocery store app on the things I'm going to buy.
Last week when we went DH decided to stop at Harbor Freight for a few things. As we were walking thru the store I found a 20% off one item coupon on my phone and used that (saved $4) and then the guy asks do you want one of the freebies too? I said, nah, we forgot to go look for one of them (didn't want to hold up line) and he said no problem, which one do you want and showed us the ad. DH said he'll take the tape measure and a girl helping him at the checkstand quickly grabbed one. That was nice of them to do a little extra customer service, I thought.
oh darn. Now DH texted me he might be done working for the day at the property (he was meeting plumber) by the time I'm passing by to head to the city, so he might go with me. Oh well, I guess it will be a quick grocery shopping trip then, LOL.
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Relief in resolution
The concrete slabs are supposed to be poured on Tuesday. The plumber is supposed to come tomorrow. It rained a big bunch last night. Not good. Can't pour slabs if it's all soaked with water. But, it does look like (keeping fingers crossed!) the weather is now supposed to change to hot and 80 between now and Tuesday. Let's hope it all dries out. The weather report changes almost daily, so it's hard to say. DH got the forms set for the shed/chicken coop yesterday. Overall it's all looking so much better and "finished" there, rather than big piles of dirt everywhere. Too bad we are a month or more behind now.
DH chatted a bit yesterday morning with our property neighbor as she was leaving for work. She is very bummed about her job, of course. She is going to get transferred to an office in the city and have to commute, which she isn't looking forward to. But she said she has 5 more years to get vested for retirement and be able to retire (I think she is around 62 or so). She said in the winter months, she does have a friend she could stay with overnight, if the roads are too bad to drive back and forth on.
as for my website issue(s). I was able to at least figure out how to get into the Joomla admin control panel and check the caching and Gzip compression. The caching was set to default as disabled, so I enabled that. The Gzip compression was already set at disabled, so that was correct. I replied back to the "ticket" on the issue and got a reply back that CPU usage was still high and he pointed me in the direction of some large databases on the account. Well, at that point it's completely beyond me. I sent DS an email to the address he's always had, hoping it was still good. I then texted DD and asked her if she she still had the ph# he texted her from, which she gave me and I texted him, letting him know I sent an email with the info, if he could help me. He did reply back and went in and deleted the databases (they were for some old website that isn't really active anymore, so he's not sure how that would make high CPU usage) and I emailed Host Gator back on my "ticket" and they replied back that that fixed the issue. I have to say Host Gator is very quick to reply back. I'm impressed with that.
In my asking DD for his ph# I asked her when the last time she heard from him was (last I knew was around last May/June, when he told her his GF was pregnant, due in January). She said around September. I said last we could figure out on him (because we had figured out who his GF was on Facebook) was they must have broken up around August, as her status changed. DD said that he told her she had a miscarriage and the reason they broke up was because they were living with her brother and DS wanted them (she already has a 10 year old) to move out to their own place and she did not want to because living there she had a babysitter for her son, so she could go out and party on weekends. Nice 30 something mom, eh? The miscarriage is most likely a blessing in disguise, is all I can say. It was a actually a relief to me.
I also had to fix two other issues last night, while I had my "computer tech" hat on. Both Dh and I still use AOL for email. Every login to check mail an "enable location" box pops up. No matter how many times we check yes (or no) and save setting, it pops up. It was just getting plain annoying. I googled how to turn it off in Firefox and now that seems to be fixed. The other issue was DH sat down to work on a video he had started a previous day. None of the video or pics would load into Movie Maker. They were just blank squares where the pictures should have been. All his video and pics are saved on an external drive. When I hovered over any of the squares in Movie Maker it showed a link to his F: drive. But for some reason his external drive (he plugs and unplugs it when not using it) was now showing as G:drive so it wasn't recognizing any of his pics or videos. I have no idea how/why it got changed from F to G, but another google search and I was able to find out how to easily rename it from G to F. Problem solved.
Gosh, I'm ready for the weekend to be here.
DH chatted a bit yesterday morning with our property neighbor as she was leaving for work. She is very bummed about her job, of course. She is going to get transferred to an office in the city and have to commute, which she isn't looking forward to. But she said she has 5 more years to get vested for retirement and be able to retire (I think she is around 62 or so). She said in the winter months, she does have a friend she could stay with overnight, if the roads are too bad to drive back and forth on.
as for my website issue(s). I was able to at least figure out how to get into the Joomla admin control panel and check the caching and Gzip compression. The caching was set to default as disabled, so I enabled that. The Gzip compression was already set at disabled, so that was correct. I replied back to the "ticket" on the issue and got a reply back that CPU usage was still high and he pointed me in the direction of some large databases on the account. Well, at that point it's completely beyond me. I sent DS an email to the address he's always had, hoping it was still good. I then texted DD and asked her if she she still had the ph# he texted her from, which she gave me and I texted him, letting him know I sent an email with the info, if he could help me. He did reply back and went in and deleted the databases (they were for some old website that isn't really active anymore, so he's not sure how that would make high CPU usage) and I emailed Host Gator back on my "ticket" and they replied back that that fixed the issue. I have to say Host Gator is very quick to reply back. I'm impressed with that.
In my asking DD for his ph# I asked her when the last time she heard from him was (last I knew was around last May/June, when he told her his GF was pregnant, due in January). She said around September. I said last we could figure out on him (because we had figured out who his GF was on Facebook) was they must have broken up around August, as her status changed. DD said that he told her she had a miscarriage and the reason they broke up was because they were living with her brother and DS wanted them (she already has a 10 year old) to move out to their own place and she did not want to because living there she had a babysitter for her son, so she could go out and party on weekends. Nice 30 something mom, eh? The miscarriage is most likely a blessing in disguise, is all I can say. It was a actually a relief to me.
I also had to fix two other issues last night, while I had my "computer tech" hat on. Both Dh and I still use AOL for email. Every login to check mail an "enable location" box pops up. No matter how many times we check yes (or no) and save setting, it pops up. It was just getting plain annoying. I googled how to turn it off in Firefox and now that seems to be fixed. The other issue was DH sat down to work on a video he had started a previous day. None of the video or pics would load into Movie Maker. They were just blank squares where the pictures should have been. All his video and pics are saved on an external drive. When I hovered over any of the squares in Movie Maker it showed a link to his F: drive. But for some reason his external drive (he plugs and unplugs it when not using it) was now showing as G:drive so it wasn't recognizing any of his pics or videos. I have no idea how/why it got changed from F to G, but another google search and I was able to find out how to easily rename it from G to F. Problem solved.
Gosh, I'm ready for the weekend to be here.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Wishing for a website expert :(
UGH! DH is still doing the website updating for this racing club we used to belong to with the kids (well, we are still members, technically, just do not race anymore). Our son (the IT guru) set up the web hosting account with Host Gator years ago and also set up how DH was to go about updating the website, through some program called Joomla. The website went down and I got this email from Host Gator. In exactly this format! (see below). How in the world am I supposed to understand this?! Good grief. I contacted support to ask about it and how do I fix it? Part of the problem is I (and DH) know nothing about this Joomla program. Apparently one of the fixes *might be to enable caching. Of which neither of us has any idea how to do. DH just knows the very basics of how to get into it, add or change something on the website and that's it. And up until now that's been working fine for several years.
Apparently the site is using too much CPU resources on their server. The guy I talked with put in a ticket and said an admin would look at it and email me back. They did quite quickly and "whitelisted" the account (what does that mean?) and said to notify them when the changes have been made and they will review the website. I emailed back: well, that was part of my question to the first person I talked with - I don't know how/what changes need to be made. Do we just need an upgraded account?
GRRRR! I really hate this, since we really out of our depth in dealing with this. And of course there is no son now to have help fix, which he could probably do in minutes. I've tried looking into Joomla help online but it's all way too techy for me to understand.
Hello, Your account on gatorxxxx.hostgator.com has been overusing CPU resources for an extended period of time and has been disabled in order to ensure continued performance and stability of the server. While we do limit each account to no more than 25% of a system's CPU in our terms of service, we do not actively disable accounts until they greatly exceed that number, which is what happened in this case. Unfortunately, there is no way of predicting an account's resource usage in advance. A sudden increase in traffic, a bot crawl, or a change in site activity can cause a site to dramatically increase its resource usage in an instant. When this happens, the server's ability to function properly is jeopardized, and we must, by necessity, restrict the source of the problem to keep the server functioning. Please take a moment to review this email in full as it contains important information and resources to assist you in resolving this issue. Please note that this permanent restriction requires you take further actions to gain access to and resolve the issues on your account. -How can you resolve the issue? We have two solutions available. Moving the account to a dedicated server, which will allow far greater hardware resources or you may try following some of our tutorials for optimizing popular scripts. http://support.hostgator.com/articles/specialized-help/technical/optimize-cpu-resource-usage. If you feel your scripts have already been optimized, it may simply be time to consider the hardware upgrade. -Important note While an upgrade to a dedicated server would increase resource availability, an upgrade to a VPS would not, in most cases. A VPS offers a root environment in which custom installs and configurations can be made, but only the very highest level VPS packages offer the same level of server resources available on your current plan. Moving to a VPS in this circumstance would likely make the problem worse, rather than better. Additionally, our cloud platform is also a shared environment, and does not offer an increase in available resources. -What do I do next? If you reply back to this email with your IP address (http://www.hostgator.com/ip.shtml) we will be more than happy to go ahead and enable HTTP access for you, allowing you to safely work on the script while minimizing the negative effects on the server and its other users. If your IP address changes frequently, you can reply back requesting password-based restrictions. -How does a CPU issue occur? Many times popular scripts may perform inefficient tasks repeatedly leading to CPU overuse. Below please find helpful articles outlining resource restrictions set on HostGator accounts: https://support.hostgator.com/articles/pre-sales-policies/rules-terms-of-service/cpu-resource-restriction https://support.hostgator.com/articles/pre-sales-policies/rules-terms-of-service/cpu-resource-usage -How can I rate-limit search engine crawlers? All major crawlers respect robots.txt to restrict them from crawling certain pages. Additional steps may be needed to limit the rate at which Googlebot and Bingbot craw your site: http://support.hostgator.com/articles/hosting-guide/lets-get-started/how-to-use-robots-txt http://support.hostgator.com/articles/telling-google-how-often-to-crawl-your-website http://support.hostgator.com/articles/telling-the-bing-network-how-often-to-crawl-your-website CPU Seconds used in the past hour: 3114, 87% CPU Mon May 21 11:03:58 CDT 2018 Running Processes: 420779 5.0 0.0 300760 32220 ? RN 11:03 0:00 /opt/php52/bin/php-cgi /
Apparently the site is using too much CPU resources on their server. The guy I talked with put in a ticket and said an admin would look at it and email me back. They did quite quickly and "whitelisted" the account (what does that mean?) and said to notify them when the changes have been made and they will review the website. I emailed back: well, that was part of my question to the first person I talked with - I don't know how/what changes need to be made. Do we just need an upgraded account?
GRRRR! I really hate this, since we really out of our depth in dealing with this. And of course there is no son now to have help fix, which he could probably do in minutes. I've tried looking into Joomla help online but it's all way too techy for me to understand.
Hello, Your account on gatorxxxx.hostgator.com has been overusing CPU resources for an extended period of time and has been disabled in order to ensure continued performance and stability of the server. While we do limit each account to no more than 25% of a system's CPU in our terms of service, we do not actively disable accounts until they greatly exceed that number, which is what happened in this case. Unfortunately, there is no way of predicting an account's resource usage in advance. A sudden increase in traffic, a bot crawl, or a change in site activity can cause a site to dramatically increase its resource usage in an instant. When this happens, the server's ability to function properly is jeopardized, and we must, by necessity, restrict the source of the problem to keep the server functioning. Please take a moment to review this email in full as it contains important information and resources to assist you in resolving this issue. Please note that this permanent restriction requires you take further actions to gain access to and resolve the issues on your account. -How can you resolve the issue? We have two solutions available. Moving the account to a dedicated server, which will allow far greater hardware resources or you may try following some of our tutorials for optimizing popular scripts. http://support.hostgator.com/articles/specialized-help/technical/optimize-cpu-resource-usage. If you feel your scripts have already been optimized, it may simply be time to consider the hardware upgrade. -Important note While an upgrade to a dedicated server would increase resource availability, an upgrade to a VPS would not, in most cases. A VPS offers a root environment in which custom installs and configurations can be made, but only the very highest level VPS packages offer the same level of server resources available on your current plan. Moving to a VPS in this circumstance would likely make the problem worse, rather than better. Additionally, our cloud platform is also a shared environment, and does not offer an increase in available resources. -What do I do next? If you reply back to this email with your IP address (http://www.hostgator.com/ip.shtml) we will be more than happy to go ahead and enable HTTP access for you, allowing you to safely work on the script while minimizing the negative effects on the server and its other users. If your IP address changes frequently, you can reply back requesting password-based restrictions. -How does a CPU issue occur? Many times popular scripts may perform inefficient tasks repeatedly leading to CPU overuse. Below please find helpful articles outlining resource restrictions set on HostGator accounts: https://support.hostgator.com/articles/pre-sales-policies/rules-terms-of-service/cpu-resource-restriction https://support.hostgator.com/articles/pre-sales-policies/rules-terms-of-service/cpu-resource-usage -How can I rate-limit search engine crawlers? All major crawlers respect robots.txt to restrict them from crawling certain pages. Additional steps may be needed to limit the rate at which Googlebot and Bingbot craw your site: http://support.hostgator.com/articles/hosting-guide/lets-get-started/how-to-use-robots-txt http://support.hostgator.com/articles/telling-google-how-often-to-crawl-your-website http://support.hostgator.com/articles/telling-the-bing-network-how-often-to-crawl-your-website CPU Seconds used in the past hour: 3114, 87% CPU Mon May 21 11:03:58 CDT 2018 Running Processes: 420779 5.0 0.0 300760 32220 ? RN 11:03 0:00 /opt/php52/bin/php-cgi /
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
Books, Netflix snd more
I think the book club I belong to has kind of been a disappointment. We only met about 4 times last year. It's supposed to be monthly. Finally, at last September's meeting (the only one I could not go to - as I was visiting mom and DD) they just met about the future of the book club and supposedly decided no more cancelling. If some couldn't make it, oh well. Well, we are right back to same old. Last month got canceled for a reason never said. Yesterday the one hosting the upcoming one this week emailed everyone. She emailed back this morning that only two had said they were coming, so probably should cancel. You'd think with a little over 20 members we could scrounge up enough each month. The most that has ever attended to one I've been to was like 12. Usually there are around 6 of us and for the most part, the same 6, give or take one or two. Oh well.
More excavating - or rather I should say the opposite - got done at the property yesterday. The house foundation is almost done getting backfilled. DH did hear from the builder. He said the plumber he uses is working out of town and won't be back until Wednesday. Get this - all these contractors (most are from the nearest big city) complain it's too far to want to come out to work where we live - a whole 45 miles/35 minute drive, but this plumber will go work 2 1/2 hours away! Makes complete sense (rolling eyes). DH said even the excavator guy, when we was smoothing out where our back patio will be, said this is going to be really nice.
Did I mention that all this time, going along this year, I thought my company was meeting it's sales goal for our bonus, but found out we really aren't? I was going off the "quota" column in the daily sales report and thought we were ok. Apparently that isn't the right number. It's way higher. So, I doubt we'll make it. We'll be fairly close. Seems like in that case they could give us the percentage of what we made. Like 80 or 90% of our bonus, LOL. I guess we'll know one way or the other by the end of June. If we don't make the mid year, we still have a chance to meet our sales goal by year end and get the full bonus then.
I finished watching Rectify yesterday. I very much enjoyed it. A complex and thoughtful show. Now to figure out what to watch next.
More excavating - or rather I should say the opposite - got done at the property yesterday. The house foundation is almost done getting backfilled. DH did hear from the builder. He said the plumber he uses is working out of town and won't be back until Wednesday. Get this - all these contractors (most are from the nearest big city) complain it's too far to want to come out to work where we live - a whole 45 miles/35 minute drive, but this plumber will go work 2 1/2 hours away! Makes complete sense (rolling eyes). DH said even the excavator guy, when we was smoothing out where our back patio will be, said this is going to be really nice.
Did I mention that all this time, going along this year, I thought my company was meeting it's sales goal for our bonus, but found out we really aren't? I was going off the "quota" column in the daily sales report and thought we were ok. Apparently that isn't the right number. It's way higher. So, I doubt we'll make it. We'll be fairly close. Seems like in that case they could give us the percentage of what we made. Like 80 or 90% of our bonus, LOL. I guess we'll know one way or the other by the end of June. If we don't make the mid year, we still have a chance to meet our sales goal by year end and get the full bonus then.
I finished watching Rectify yesterday. I very much enjoyed it. A complex and thoughtful show. Now to figure out what to watch next.
Monday, May 21, 2018
Weekend recap
We did enough to keep busy this weekend, while relaxing at the same time. I just cleaned house a bit Saturday morning. Vacuumed while DH mowed the yard and sprayed for weeds. Then we went out to the property. There is a small strip of natural grassy area between us and neighbors yard that DH wanted to cut down, so he just took his weed eater and quickly trimmed it all down. I just walked around with the dogs. It's looking a lot "neater" out there at least. They have a couple of hours this morning of work to finish up the slabs for the shop and garage. We have heard nothing from the builder again. DH texted him 2 or 3 times last week. Wednesday he let him know they were ready for the plumber, for some part he needs to do in setting up the water lines, etc. Friday DH texted him that the slabs would be ready for concrete Monday morning. Not even a text acknowledging he got the text. No plumber has shown up, of course.
On the way home we noticed the guy out working, who will be cutting our trees up for lumber. DH thought he might be working on our stuff (he had told him he'd help him) so we stopped and chatted with him. He was working on cutting up some other logs, that unfortunately had sat too many years (like 4) with the bark still on them and they were rotting inside. He also told us the people down the street from him, that just sold their house, well, I guess the lady is looking to buy a house here in town and he said he told her ours was going for sale soon. He said she and her husband are divorcing, so they sold their nice little house. He's moving to a different town and she's staying here in town. Maybe she'll buy our house?! I know their house should be closing soon, because I had already texted with our realtor about it...it's had a for sale sign on it for a couple of months and we were really surprised it hadn't sold yet as it's a very nice place. Realtor said it has sold (it took like 3 weeks) and should be closing soon, and then he'll know how much it sold for (so we can use it as comp). They were asking a pretty high price, for around here, so if they actually got that, that will be good for us and what we can ask.
These are the wildflowers growing every where around here this time of year. This is looking toward the vacant lot next to us.
Yesterday we went to Lowes and got flowers for here at the house. We decided not to put as many around in pots as normal and I spent that money on buying 3 hanging baskets that were already growing well and pretty full. Usually I fill my own hanging baskets, but they never get very full and takes half the summer. I want them to look good for when we (soon?!) get to list our house for sale. They weren't too bad of a price. $22 each. Last year the grocery/hardware store here in town had some really nice hanging baskets that I thought were around $25 each. I checked the other day and they were $33 and they didn't look as good as last year. I just bought enough petunias and lobelia to put in my whiskey barrel and a couple of other pots. Last summer we had a wheel barrow (that had been left in the shop by the old owners) that we put flower pots and big rocks in and set in our back "rock garden" area. DH decided he'd just use the wheel barrow out at the property and we'd skip all the flower planting in it. It needed new front tires (it has two) so we stopped at Harbor Freight and picked some up and now it's usable again. It really wasn't a wheel barrow that looked that great sitting as a yard decoration anyway. It was blue plastic type. A yard one needs to be old and rusted, in my opinion. LOL. It didn't take long to plant flowers this year. We hung the 3 baskets up and just the planting in the whiskey barrel and few small pots and I was done. But it was enough bending over that my back needed the heating pad. Gave me a good chance to sit down with it on my back and read a book. We also bought two day lily plants. Two of the ornamental grass type plants we had planted on the side of our house last year did not make it through the winter. It's hard to know what will or won't. I guess I assumed if they are selling them here, they must be for this type of climate.
We also stopped at the grocery store in the city to stock up on some more water and pop. We hit a really good sale on the cases of water. $1.49 each, so we got 6.
My neighbor friend across the street texted me early this morning. She's leaving all week for a work thing and her hubby is home and not working due to a bad shoulder that he's waiting to get operated on. She wanted me to babysit him and if we see him weed eating or mowing to go put him in time out. I texted back I'll try but I was having trouble babysitting my own, who is overdoing it and won't listen to me!
In other news (cuz this is a SMALL town) we also learned that our property neighbor lady will be out of a job at the end of summer. The place she works (only 3 work there, I guess) is going to be closing that office here in town. If she wants to stay employed with the company she would have to commute 45 miles to the city. Maybe she could find something else here in town, but jobs are few and far between around here. That probably explains why DH thought they were acting very distant the past week or so. Like they were avoiding talking to him, when they see him out there. Of course, he ALWAYS thinks it's something he did or didn't do. I remember commenting at the time (we didn't know about her job yet) "you know, it's not always about YOU. People have other stuff going on in their lives that don't have anything to do with you". He, of course, then admitted I was right. That has most likely been what has been wrong. At least she does have several months to prepare and look for a new job.
On the way home we noticed the guy out working, who will be cutting our trees up for lumber. DH thought he might be working on our stuff (he had told him he'd help him) so we stopped and chatted with him. He was working on cutting up some other logs, that unfortunately had sat too many years (like 4) with the bark still on them and they were rotting inside. He also told us the people down the street from him, that just sold their house, well, I guess the lady is looking to buy a house here in town and he said he told her ours was going for sale soon. He said she and her husband are divorcing, so they sold their nice little house. He's moving to a different town and she's staying here in town. Maybe she'll buy our house?! I know their house should be closing soon, because I had already texted with our realtor about it...it's had a for sale sign on it for a couple of months and we were really surprised it hadn't sold yet as it's a very nice place. Realtor said it has sold (it took like 3 weeks) and should be closing soon, and then he'll know how much it sold for (so we can use it as comp). They were asking a pretty high price, for around here, so if they actually got that, that will be good for us and what we can ask.
These are the wildflowers growing every where around here this time of year. This is looking toward the vacant lot next to us.
We also stopped at the grocery store in the city to stock up on some more water and pop. We hit a really good sale on the cases of water. $1.49 each, so we got 6.
My neighbor friend across the street texted me early this morning. She's leaving all week for a work thing and her hubby is home and not working due to a bad shoulder that he's waiting to get operated on. She wanted me to babysit him and if we see him weed eating or mowing to go put him in time out. I texted back I'll try but I was having trouble babysitting my own, who is overdoing it and won't listen to me!
In other news (cuz this is a SMALL town) we also learned that our property neighbor lady will be out of a job at the end of summer. The place she works (only 3 work there, I guess) is going to be closing that office here in town. If she wants to stay employed with the company she would have to commute 45 miles to the city. Maybe she could find something else here in town, but jobs are few and far between around here. That probably explains why DH thought they were acting very distant the past week or so. Like they were avoiding talking to him, when they see him out there. Of course, he ALWAYS thinks it's something he did or didn't do. I remember commenting at the time (we didn't know about her job yet) "you know, it's not always about YOU. People have other stuff going on in their lives that don't have anything to do with you". He, of course, then admitted I was right. That has most likely been what has been wrong. At least she does have several months to prepare and look for a new job.
Friday, May 18, 2018
TGIF
The rain (other than some light rain) is holding off and they got a lot done at the property yesterday and should be finished up with the shop and garage floors to be ready for concrete pour, which then I'm sure will happen next week.
The big mounds of dirt are going away, there is only one left, as they use it all back up to backfill around the foundations. Things are starting to look smoothed out and not like a bomb went off. The other day our cut down trees got hauled off to another place down the road to be cut up into lumber for our gate and chicken coop/shed.
I just placed a Target order online. I had $10 in Target gift cards from previous purchase deals. I was ordering a couple of pet supplies and they were having a deal $10 off $40 in pet supplies. Of course my total came to $39. I added a second box of brushing chews for $11.79 and got the $10 off, so it was basically like getting the second box for $1.79.
We don't have any plans for this weekend. Hopefully DH can just rest up some.I was chatting with DD online last night. She hasn't been to work much this past week and a half. She said she's going to work from home a half day today and then back at the office on Monday. She said she's ready to get back to a regular routine. I don't blame her. Routine is good for helping get over a loss like they have suffered.
The big mounds of dirt are going away, there is only one left, as they use it all back up to backfill around the foundations. Things are starting to look smoothed out and not like a bomb went off. The other day our cut down trees got hauled off to another place down the road to be cut up into lumber for our gate and chicken coop/shed.
I just placed a Target order online. I had $10 in Target gift cards from previous purchase deals. I was ordering a couple of pet supplies and they were having a deal $10 off $40 in pet supplies. Of course my total came to $39. I added a second box of brushing chews for $11.79 and got the $10 off, so it was basically like getting the second box for $1.79.
We don't have any plans for this weekend. Hopefully DH can just rest up some.I was chatting with DD online last night. She hasn't been to work much this past week and a half. She said she's going to work from home a half day today and then back at the office on Monday. She said she's ready to get back to a regular routine. I don't blame her. Routine is good for helping get over a loss like they have suffered.
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Can it be Friday today?
DH is completely over doing it. He was at the property almost 11 hours on Monday and when he pulled in he could barely get out of the car. His muscles were so stiff and he couldn't feel his right arm much, it has basically gone numb a couple days before. After he got inside and sat down his muscles started cramping all over. At one point both his legs went into a cramp at the same time. He was in such pain and crying. There's really nothing one can do for it. I was surprised he slept as well as he did. Usually when doing too much, he'll get woken up with cramping.
He's been trying not to do as much the past two days. Tuesday, since no one showed up until late afternoon, he basically got a break (though mentally Tuesday was probably just as hard for us). He was out there all day yesterday (though less physical work done by him) and of course out there again this morning. It kind of rained all night and he was honestly not expecting anyone to show up today. It hasn't been raining since daylight, so they did show up. This time the excavating co owner guy showed up with his worker. He apologized to DH for how long this is taking and said he has just taken on too much work. He promises to have our shop and garage floors ready for concrete by tomorrow at the latest.
I've had a headache the past two days I can't seem to get rid of. Ugh. I wish today was Friday already. I'm looking forward to next week. Our office closes at noon next Friday for the 3 day weekend. The big annual flea market in the next town is that weekend. We had such a good time at it last year and I'm really looking forward to going again and seeing what little treasures we can find (though we have a much smaller budget for anything this year, due to all our building expenses going on). But we should be able to manage $75 budget and see what we find. I'm working M-Turk as much as I can. A few days ago I transferred $28 and am back up to $13.35. I'll have also earned about $50 in cash back rewards between my credit and debit cards, which will be crediting soon.
I've really been trying to manage our food better. I now have 3 of my regular meals (2 casseroles and meatloaf) that I now split in half and freeze half for another meal. Which I'm finding I really like to have in the freezer on a day I don't feel like prepping a meal. When I buy a loaf of french garlic bread, I freeze half. I have another dinner recipe we eat quite a bit I'm able to cut in half. It's a chicken sandwich ring with crescent rolls, so wouldn't freeze well, but is one I can cut the ingredients in half. I save leftovers more often and eat them for lunch. Chips, crackers, and cookies are sealed up good, after opening, so that nothing gets stale. I still throw a lot out, but am pleased that I'm doing better with it all and I'll keep working at it. Though when we have to move into our shop and bascially "camp" there, I'm sure it will all go out the door for 6 months. We'll be eating whatever we can bbq, cook on a hot plate or in a microwave.
He's been trying not to do as much the past two days. Tuesday, since no one showed up until late afternoon, he basically got a break (though mentally Tuesday was probably just as hard for us). He was out there all day yesterday (though less physical work done by him) and of course out there again this morning. It kind of rained all night and he was honestly not expecting anyone to show up today. It hasn't been raining since daylight, so they did show up. This time the excavating co owner guy showed up with his worker. He apologized to DH for how long this is taking and said he has just taken on too much work. He promises to have our shop and garage floors ready for concrete by tomorrow at the latest.
I've had a headache the past two days I can't seem to get rid of. Ugh. I wish today was Friday already. I'm looking forward to next week. Our office closes at noon next Friday for the 3 day weekend. The big annual flea market in the next town is that weekend. We had such a good time at it last year and I'm really looking forward to going again and seeing what little treasures we can find (though we have a much smaller budget for anything this year, due to all our building expenses going on). But we should be able to manage $75 budget and see what we find. I'm working M-Turk as much as I can. A few days ago I transferred $28 and am back up to $13.35. I'll have also earned about $50 in cash back rewards between my credit and debit cards, which will be crediting soon.
I've really been trying to manage our food better. I now have 3 of my regular meals (2 casseroles and meatloaf) that I now split in half and freeze half for another meal. Which I'm finding I really like to have in the freezer on a day I don't feel like prepping a meal. When I buy a loaf of french garlic bread, I freeze half. I have another dinner recipe we eat quite a bit I'm able to cut in half. It's a chicken sandwich ring with crescent rolls, so wouldn't freeze well, but is one I can cut the ingredients in half. I save leftovers more often and eat them for lunch. Chips, crackers, and cookies are sealed up good, after opening, so that nothing gets stale. I still throw a lot out, but am pleased that I'm doing better with it all and I'll keep working at it. Though when we have to move into our shop and bascially "camp" there, I'm sure it will all go out the door for 6 months. We'll be eating whatever we can bbq, cook on a hot plate or in a microwave.
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Another day
Life must go on. Some how, some way we all get through the loss of loved ones and DD's soon to be in-law family will get through it, too. Makes one sure realize we should never ever take life and our loved ones for granted. Some we get years and years to love (like my grandma at 95) and some we get a short time with (like my cousin who died at age 5).
I'm very thankful my test turned out ok and nothing to worry about. My mom had several cysts in her breast in her 20's and early 30's. Back then they used to drain them. The doctor who looked at my ultrasound yesterday said this, too, but that they realized it was not necessary to do that anymore, especially for such a tiny cyst. I am done with all my tests now and shouldn't have to go back to the doctor for a year until my next annual check up.
Our site work on the property is going painstakingly slow. The excavating guy sent one guy out to do a 2-3 person job. Not much got done. He didn't show up yesterday. DH got a text around 9am that the guy had to go to another job and would be there in an hour or two. I think he showed up around 4pm for an hour or so of work. He is there today, but again. One guy on a machine, without shovel helpers is going very slow. This should be about a 2 days job at most, with the right number of crew. DH is way beyond frustrated. We can't get the shop and garage slabs poured until this gets done....and of course starting this afternoon the weather is supposed to completely turn to crap for at least a week.
DD had good news last Monday, though very hard to deal with it while dealing with everything else. Her immediate boss (he's the supervisor of her department) needs to take off for a month or two to go back to UK for a dying parent. They asked DD to be temporary supervisor! 22 years old, others in the department with more tenure/experience, but they asked her. I'm not sure if she will do it or not. Any other time would have been no problem, and she would be glad to gain the experience on her resume, but she's not sure she wants the added stress and responsibility (and with no extra pay!) right at this time. I think it will all kind of depend on how soon her boss needs to leave.
I've been watching Rectify on Netflix - so thanks to whoever suggested that one. Good show. I also watched a few episodes of Father Brown. I like it, too, but it's not a type of show I find myself anxiously wanting to watch the next episode and see what happens in the story line. I think it will be something I watch off and on, when just want a quick break and not have to be involved in an ongoing story.
Cherish your loved ones even if they drive you crazy!
I'm very thankful my test turned out ok and nothing to worry about. My mom had several cysts in her breast in her 20's and early 30's. Back then they used to drain them. The doctor who looked at my ultrasound yesterday said this, too, but that they realized it was not necessary to do that anymore, especially for such a tiny cyst. I am done with all my tests now and shouldn't have to go back to the doctor for a year until my next annual check up.
Our site work on the property is going painstakingly slow. The excavating guy sent one guy out to do a 2-3 person job. Not much got done. He didn't show up yesterday. DH got a text around 9am that the guy had to go to another job and would be there in an hour or two. I think he showed up around 4pm for an hour or so of work. He is there today, but again. One guy on a machine, without shovel helpers is going very slow. This should be about a 2 days job at most, with the right number of crew. DH is way beyond frustrated. We can't get the shop and garage slabs poured until this gets done....and of course starting this afternoon the weather is supposed to completely turn to crap for at least a week.
DD had good news last Monday, though very hard to deal with it while dealing with everything else. Her immediate boss (he's the supervisor of her department) needs to take off for a month or two to go back to UK for a dying parent. They asked DD to be temporary supervisor! 22 years old, others in the department with more tenure/experience, but they asked her. I'm not sure if she will do it or not. Any other time would have been no problem, and she would be glad to gain the experience on her resume, but she's not sure she wants the added stress and responsibility (and with no extra pay!) right at this time. I think it will all kind of depend on how soon her boss needs to leave.
I've been watching Rectify on Netflix - so thanks to whoever suggested that one. Good show. I also watched a few episodes of Father Brown. I like it, too, but it's not a type of show I find myself anxiously wanting to watch the next episode and see what happens in the story line. I think it will be something I watch off and on, when just want a quick break and not have to be involved in an ongoing story.
Cherish your loved ones even if they drive you crazy!
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
No words
How does one process two opposite emotions at the same time? Happiness.....I had my ultrasound done on my breast today. It was just a very small cyst. Nothing to worry about or do anything about. I'm driving home, relieved, happy, enjoying the sunny drive. On the drive home get a call from DD....her fiance's sister has died. Complete heartbreak for that family. I cried all the way home. I'm still crying for them. I don't know how one gets through the loss of a child. I can't even imagine it. It is just devastating.
Monday, May 14, 2018
Let's get this week started
I hope everyone had a nice Mother's Day. I was up my normal 7:15 or so and DD saw I was on Facebook, so she called me. An hour earlier where she is. She was up so early because she had house full and they were all getting ready to go to the hospital for the day. Still no good news on that front, I'm sorry to say. Her fiance and his dad stayed the night at the hospital and his mom, future SIL's bf and some other relatives who came to town to see her, all stayed at DD's house. They were able to get fiance's boss to come over and let their dog out for a break around noon or so. He said he put him on a leash and took him for a jog around the block, so I'm sure that helped get his energy out. Today DD is working from home for a half day and then going to the hospital again.
I called my mom later in the morning, as I know she doesn't get up that early. LOL. We didn't have a whole lot to chat about, as we had just talked a couple days prior. DH called his mom. She doesn't talk very long these days and half the time he tries to talk to her on the phone she accidentally hangs up, LOL.
We didn't do too much yesterday. Just relaxed mostly and in the afternoon DH mowed the lawn and sprayed for weeds. I just made an easy skillet dinner meal. We were going to sit on the porch and eat, but by then it was getting a little "buggy" outside.
DH was up and at 'em early this morning to get out to the property, where work is being finally started again after almost a week of nothing done. The craziest thing happened to him on Friday, while he was out there, working by himself. He turned around and there was some lady, with a shopping cart and two dogs standing in our street! What. In. The. World.??!! The nearest town grocery store is almost 10 miles away. The nearest town from the direction she appeared to have come was 20 miles away. DH couldn't really tell how old she was. She asked how far it was to our town and DH told her 9 1/2 miles. She said "oh wow. I've already been walking a long time". DH asked her where she came from. She said the city....umm...that is 45 miles away! Then she asked if she could use the sanican. Ok, sure. And then off she went. Later, when DH was coming home he saw her walking on the road toward town, about halfway there. So strange. That is definitely not something you see out here in our rural area. Not to mention it's still getting almost to freezing at night.
I'm hoping some good progress gets made on the property today. The older retired guy who is going to cut up our trees for lumber stopped by last night. It sounds like he is going to try and get that done today, too. He's the busiest retired guy I know. LOL.
I came across the cutest sign on Amazon. I'm so getting this for our laundry room! Only $10.
I called my mom later in the morning, as I know she doesn't get up that early. LOL. We didn't have a whole lot to chat about, as we had just talked a couple days prior. DH called his mom. She doesn't talk very long these days and half the time he tries to talk to her on the phone she accidentally hangs up, LOL.
We didn't do too much yesterday. Just relaxed mostly and in the afternoon DH mowed the lawn and sprayed for weeds. I just made an easy skillet dinner meal. We were going to sit on the porch and eat, but by then it was getting a little "buggy" outside.
DH was up and at 'em early this morning to get out to the property, where work is being finally started again after almost a week of nothing done. The craziest thing happened to him on Friday, while he was out there, working by himself. He turned around and there was some lady, with a shopping cart and two dogs standing in our street! What. In. The. World.??!! The nearest town grocery store is almost 10 miles away. The nearest town from the direction she appeared to have come was 20 miles away. DH couldn't really tell how old she was. She asked how far it was to our town and DH told her 9 1/2 miles. She said "oh wow. I've already been walking a long time". DH asked her where she came from. She said the city....umm...that is 45 miles away! Then she asked if she could use the sanican. Ok, sure. And then off she went. Later, when DH was coming home he saw her walking on the road toward town, about halfway there. So strange. That is definitely not something you see out here in our rural area. Not to mention it's still getting almost to freezing at night.
I'm hoping some good progress gets made on the property today. The older retired guy who is going to cut up our trees for lumber stopped by last night. It sounds like he is going to try and get that done today, too. He's the busiest retired guy I know. LOL.
I came across the cutest sign on Amazon. I'm so getting this for our laundry room! Only $10.
Saturday, May 12, 2018
Busy Saturday morning
Yesterday was my half day Friday. After I got done working we took a drive around to look at river levels at some of the lower areas. It's right up there and flowing like crazy. Spent the rest of the day listening to DH non-stop about how mad he is at the excavator and our builder. After a while all I just hear is "blah blah blah wah wah wah", especially after he's repeated himself half a dozen times. I don't know why he has such a hard time sending them a message to ask what's the status of getting back to work on it. Finally, I said give me his number and I'll text him then! About 5pm he texted the excavating guy. We hadn't heard from him since he worked on our property Tuesday, pulled off the job at the end of the day and said "he'd be right back to it". About an hour later he did reply back and said he would be back at it on Monday. DH then messaged the builder to update him. He said he is also sending a guy back on Monday.....because the sealing of our foundation of the house was kind of done half-way. The kid had said he really needed another 5 gallons of the stuff. So, in parts it was very thin and even missing in some spots. And he has a couple other small jobs he can do while he's got a worker out there.
DH is still working on the foundation forms around the two gate piers. He got one done yesterday and ran out of screws and ran out of lumber. We decided to go into the city this morning and go to Lowe's to get all that and we had a Dewalt battery to pick up that came free with a tool we bought a couple of weeks ago, but they had to order. When I was picking up the battery I noticed a sign that said yesterday and today only save an additional 10% (instead of the usual 5%) when using your Lowe's card. I always use my Lowes card (and then pay off) to get the 5% and was happy to see we would get another 5%, especially since we were spending a bunch today. We saved $37. Paid for the gas fill up in my car.
We drove separate vehicles, so he could load up his pickup with all the lumber and head back to get to work. I then went grocery shopping. Very much due for a big shopping trip. We were just about out of everything. I was getting him some Claritan at Target and they were having a buy 2 get $5 giftcard, so I went ahead and got two of them. Then the big case of toilet paper I was buying had a "save $1.50 now" coupon on it, so saved some more.
I then went on to Super Walmart. The reason I just didn't get it all at Walmart is I knew there was no way I could fit everything in one cart, so I got the big case of tp and laundry stuff at Target. The main reason I wanted to shop at Walmart was for their steaks prices. Well, wouldn't you know it, they did not have any "thin ribeye" steak in stock! Grrrr... I loaded up first with 2 big cases (40 bottles each) of water. Man those were heavy and then stocked DH up on 6 12 packs of Mtn Dew. The cart weighed a ton already and was exhausting to push around the store for the rest of my shopping. Next time I have to do that by myself I think I'll get the pop and water, pay for it and go unload in car, and then come back in and shop for the rest. They also apparently don't carry the chopped up green onions in the produce department anymore. Last two times I checked no luck. I love that little container of chopped green onions. They freeze great and I can just take out what I need for cooking.
DD's future SIL is holding steady and they are just waiting for a match for the transplant to get done. What an ordeal for them all. DD has been stressing trying to make sure her dog is taken care of, since they have had to be gone so much this past week and the hospital she is at is an hour from their home. She was trying to find someone to take him for the weekend or at least go to their house and potty break him. Like she said - where are all the "friends" when you really need them. It sounds like my mom might go up to her house tomorrow (it's almost a 2 hour drive for her) and watch the dog and spend the night.
I'm going to have some lunch (leftover spaghetti) and finish watching a show on Netflix. I've been watching that new "Lost in Space" show. It's pretty good. I like space type shows usually. As good as any of the other junk that's on tv, I guess. I finished a book last night that's the first in a 3 book series, but book 2 is still on hold with library, so it will be a while before I get to read that.
DH is still working on the foundation forms around the two gate piers. He got one done yesterday and ran out of screws and ran out of lumber. We decided to go into the city this morning and go to Lowe's to get all that and we had a Dewalt battery to pick up that came free with a tool we bought a couple of weeks ago, but they had to order. When I was picking up the battery I noticed a sign that said yesterday and today only save an additional 10% (instead of the usual 5%) when using your Lowe's card. I always use my Lowes card (and then pay off) to get the 5% and was happy to see we would get another 5%, especially since we were spending a bunch today. We saved $37. Paid for the gas fill up in my car.
We drove separate vehicles, so he could load up his pickup with all the lumber and head back to get to work. I then went grocery shopping. Very much due for a big shopping trip. We were just about out of everything. I was getting him some Claritan at Target and they were having a buy 2 get $5 giftcard, so I went ahead and got two of them. Then the big case of toilet paper I was buying had a "save $1.50 now" coupon on it, so saved some more.
I then went on to Super Walmart. The reason I just didn't get it all at Walmart is I knew there was no way I could fit everything in one cart, so I got the big case of tp and laundry stuff at Target. The main reason I wanted to shop at Walmart was for their steaks prices. Well, wouldn't you know it, they did not have any "thin ribeye" steak in stock! Grrrr... I loaded up first with 2 big cases (40 bottles each) of water. Man those were heavy and then stocked DH up on 6 12 packs of Mtn Dew. The cart weighed a ton already and was exhausting to push around the store for the rest of my shopping. Next time I have to do that by myself I think I'll get the pop and water, pay for it and go unload in car, and then come back in and shop for the rest. They also apparently don't carry the chopped up green onions in the produce department anymore. Last two times I checked no luck. I love that little container of chopped green onions. They freeze great and I can just take out what I need for cooking.
DD's future SIL is holding steady and they are just waiting for a match for the transplant to get done. What an ordeal for them all. DD has been stressing trying to make sure her dog is taken care of, since they have had to be gone so much this past week and the hospital she is at is an hour from their home. She was trying to find someone to take him for the weekend or at least go to their house and potty break him. Like she said - where are all the "friends" when you really need them. It sounds like my mom might go up to her house tomorrow (it's almost a 2 hour drive for her) and watch the dog and spend the night.
I'm going to have some lunch (leftover spaghetti) and finish watching a show on Netflix. I've been watching that new "Lost in Space" show. It's pretty good. I like space type shows usually. As good as any of the other junk that's on tv, I guess. I finished a book last night that's the first in a 3 book series, but book 2 is still on hold with library, so it will be a while before I get to read that.
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Working through the week
I'm still waiting for that co-pay issue to get resolved. I called my doctor's office back this morning to follow up on it. I got the office manager this time (who I had asked to talk to last week). She was aware of the other gal working on this and said she sent an email to their main office credentialing department to get this corrected with the insurance company. I asked her if she could also call her main billing department and let them know she is working on it, so that they try to stop collecting from me. She started to tell me I should call and let them know, but I said I already have, twice now, in the last 6 months, so maybe it would also be good if she did it, too. She did call me back a few hours later, just to let me know she contacted the main billing dept. and they are putting a hold on that billing, until it gets resolved. I thanked her and told her I didn't think I should be getting threatened to be sent to collections over $25, when it's their error in not getting their provider updated as to what office she works at.
I had a goal by 5/10 to earn another $25 from M-Turks. I'm almost there - at $24.14. I'm hoping to get the rest today. I had written the $25 in my budget for this pay period, so I think that also helped motivate me to get it. My total earnings since I started (I think I started around first of October last year?) is about $320.
Swagbucks earnings just keeps dwindling each month. Less % back seems to be offered on purchases with the online stores and takes more videos to watch to earn from dailywatch. I've tried the new SwagIQ trivia game a few times, when I can remember to do it. It's only around dinnertime and I forget. Not that I really earned much from it. I think the first time was the most at like 26 SB's. I rarely get past the second question, LOL. I haven't really figured out the details of that game yet. I do seem to earn some SB's playing along, but they appear to be going into a separate "bucket" that I can only cash in when there's enough to get a reward.
The excavator has not come back yet, so two more days lost. Frustrating to keep being put at the back of the line. DH is out there by himself today working some more on the gate piers. Getting plywood around the rebar, ready for concrete pouring. As long as there is some work going on DH is ok, but when there's not (and should be!) he gets very grumpy. He's totally over doing himself, which isn't helping. He went to the lumber store yesterday morning to get sheets of plywood. Got them out to the property and unloaded and had no more energy and came home and rested the rest of the day.
Here's one of the gate piers getting worked on
DD's future SIL is doing better. They are giving her some meds to try to reduce her toxin levels and it's come down some yesterday and even more this morning, so they just found out the doctors feel they might be able to take needing a transplant off the table for now. That is such wonderful news. I hope she continues to improve. DD said the hospital/doctor she was at a week or two ago was treating her like she was some alcoholic college student who was lying to her parents that she doesn't drink! She does not drink at all. The major hospital she is at now has been much more helpful and caring with it all and not acting like that. It's always amazed me how different doctors can be in how they relate to a patient. I saw a lot of it when we were going through all the specialists and tests trying to figure out what is wrong with DH. We loved his first doctor (neurologist) but right after he started seeing him he moved out of state to go work somewhere else. I always wonder if we would have finally found some answers if DH had been able to keep him as his doctor during it all.
I had a goal by 5/10 to earn another $25 from M-Turks. I'm almost there - at $24.14. I'm hoping to get the rest today. I had written the $25 in my budget for this pay period, so I think that also helped motivate me to get it. My total earnings since I started (I think I started around first of October last year?) is about $320.
Swagbucks earnings just keeps dwindling each month. Less % back seems to be offered on purchases with the online stores and takes more videos to watch to earn from dailywatch. I've tried the new SwagIQ trivia game a few times, when I can remember to do it. It's only around dinnertime and I forget. Not that I really earned much from it. I think the first time was the most at like 26 SB's. I rarely get past the second question, LOL. I haven't really figured out the details of that game yet. I do seem to earn some SB's playing along, but they appear to be going into a separate "bucket" that I can only cash in when there's enough to get a reward.
The excavator has not come back yet, so two more days lost. Frustrating to keep being put at the back of the line. DH is out there by himself today working some more on the gate piers. Getting plywood around the rebar, ready for concrete pouring. As long as there is some work going on DH is ok, but when there's not (and should be!) he gets very grumpy. He's totally over doing himself, which isn't helping. He went to the lumber store yesterday morning to get sheets of plywood. Got them out to the property and unloaded and had no more energy and came home and rested the rest of the day.
Here's one of the gate piers getting worked on
DD's future SIL is doing better. They are giving her some meds to try to reduce her toxin levels and it's come down some yesterday and even more this morning, so they just found out the doctors feel they might be able to take needing a transplant off the table for now. That is such wonderful news. I hope she continues to improve. DD said the hospital/doctor she was at a week or two ago was treating her like she was some alcoholic college student who was lying to her parents that she doesn't drink! She does not drink at all. The major hospital she is at now has been much more helpful and caring with it all and not acting like that. It's always amazed me how different doctors can be in how they relate to a patient. I saw a lot of it when we were going through all the specialists and tests trying to figure out what is wrong with DH. We loved his first doctor (neurologist) but right after he started seeing him he moved out of state to go work somewhere else. I always wonder if we would have finally found some answers if DH had been able to keep him as his doctor during it all.
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
You just never know....
My heart is aching. DD's fiance's sister is gravely ill. She's about same age as my DD, early 20's, just graduated college about a month ago, just started her new job. She's been pretty sick the past few weeks and now is in ICU, waiting on an organ transplant! I can't imagine what they are all going through. They have put her first on the list in the state for the transplant and estimate it will be about a week before she can get one. Just devastating. She's a sweet girl and I have met her a few times.
You just never ever know what life is going to throw at you. For anyone reading this who might be acting petty, mean, stubborn, distant, or whatever with someone they love - just stop it! Life is too short and precious to act like that.
Our excavator guy bailed on us already, after working one day yesterday. OMG. He's not done backfilling and whatever else he needs to do, but pulled off to go make a bunch of money working in the flooding area. Who knows when he'll be back. I imagine not until next week now. The flood danger is still through the end of this week.
You just never ever know what life is going to throw at you. For anyone reading this who might be acting petty, mean, stubborn, distant, or whatever with someone they love - just stop it! Life is too short and precious to act like that.
Our excavator guy bailed on us already, after working one day yesterday. OMG. He's not done backfilling and whatever else he needs to do, but pulled off to go make a bunch of money working in the flooding area. Who knows when he'll be back. I imagine not until next week now. The flood danger is still through the end of this week.
Tuesday, May 8, 2018
Tuesday this and that
DH went and got a burn permit yesterday. It doesn't cost anything to get one, but apparently just lets the Forest Service know where burns are being done. Last month we didn't need a permit, but it's getting warmer and drier out now. Just some scrap lumber and brush scraps out at the property. The river is so high right now. We are up very high, so nothing at all to ever worry about, but there is some flooding starting in other areas in the next county over. It went up two feet just overnight. Some major flood warnings in the city area for these next few days.
DH just texted me that the excavating guy was there and getting to work. Yay. It will be so nice to have those huge piles of dirt cleaned up. Once done, the builder will be able to start framing on the shop now. The builder is also the one who does the concrete patio and driveway pads (he doesn't sub out that work). We are going to do some concrete stamping/coloring type of design. He mentioned they just bought a new concrete stamp that has mountains and an elk in it. We are thinking that might be pretty neat for the pads in front of the garage.
DD brought me Mother's Day gifts when they came. A cute birdbath, another Netflix card (perfect timing) and some M&M's. I think it now must be chocolate that is causing my face to break out. It had cleared up the past 2-3 weeks and now today it's back.
If anyone has any good Netflix series or movie suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I just finished The Ranch and Grace and Frankie and also watched the movie "Our Souls at Night". I've read that book several years ago, too.
Next Tuesday I go in for my ultrasound on my left breast. It's at a radiology place next to the main hospital in the city. She said it would take about a half hour. I'll be glad to get that resolved, too.
DD had brought over a bunch of bananas with her, thinking they'd go bad by the time they got back home. She had put them in a plastic grocery bag on the trip over and they got pretty ripe just from that. I decided to use up what I could last night and made two loaves of banana bread out of them.
DH called his dad again last night to see if the kid got a hold of him about mowing the yard. He did (good kid!) and will come over Saturday. $12/hr, so it shouldn't cost them more than $25 a mow, I would think, if that. Plus, he'll be able to use FIL's mower.
I just did an M-Turk survey that is supposed to pay me $3.50. Yesterday I managed to do a little over $5 worth of surveys. Some days I can't get motivated at all to do them, other days I'm motivated but can't find much to do and/or I've already done them.
DH just texted me that the excavating guy was there and getting to work. Yay. It will be so nice to have those huge piles of dirt cleaned up. Once done, the builder will be able to start framing on the shop now. The builder is also the one who does the concrete patio and driveway pads (he doesn't sub out that work). We are going to do some concrete stamping/coloring type of design. He mentioned they just bought a new concrete stamp that has mountains and an elk in it. We are thinking that might be pretty neat for the pads in front of the garage.
DD brought me Mother's Day gifts when they came. A cute birdbath, another Netflix card (perfect timing) and some M&M's. I think it now must be chocolate that is causing my face to break out. It had cleared up the past 2-3 weeks and now today it's back.
If anyone has any good Netflix series or movie suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I just finished The Ranch and Grace and Frankie and also watched the movie "Our Souls at Night". I've read that book several years ago, too.
Next Tuesday I go in for my ultrasound on my left breast. It's at a radiology place next to the main hospital in the city. She said it would take about a half hour. I'll be glad to get that resolved, too.
DD had brought over a bunch of bananas with her, thinking they'd go bad by the time they got back home. She had put them in a plastic grocery bag on the trip over and they got pretty ripe just from that. I decided to use up what I could last night and made two loaves of banana bread out of them.
DH called his dad again last night to see if the kid got a hold of him about mowing the yard. He did (good kid!) and will come over Saturday. $12/hr, so it shouldn't cost them more than $25 a mow, I would think, if that. Plus, he'll be able to use FIL's mower.
I just did an M-Turk survey that is supposed to pay me $3.50. Yesterday I managed to do a little over $5 worth of surveys. Some days I can't get motivated at all to do them, other days I'm motivated but can't find much to do and/or I've already done them.
Monday, May 7, 2018
Monday already, really?
The weekend with DD and her fiance went by so fast. They got a few hours sleep Thursday night and left their house like at 3am and arrived here at 10:30 Friday morning. DH was out at the property taking care of some stuff, so we drove out there so they could see the progress in person. Later that afternoon we drove into the city for dinner, as DH has been craving Mexican Food. I tried two new things - Flautas (very good) and a Horchata drink. Very yummy. The kids ordered that to drink, so I decided to try it. They were both tired from not much sleep, so by 9pm we all went to bed. I think I was so tired because I got up around 6:30 am and was busy cleaning house, etc almost until they arrived that morning.
Saturday we tried to take a drive up to a lake that is so beautiful, but 2-3 miles before it, we got stopped by snow still on the logging roads. Darn! On the way back down we stopped and talked to an old guy who was cutting firewood. We also saw a moose in the creek. That was neat, as we had not come across a moose yet, in our wanderings. He didn't have his antlers grown back in yet from the winter. We also walked around what is left of an old ghost town from the mining days. It was then lunch time, so we drove over to a little burger place in neighboring town and had lunch. Back home, we were all still tired and we all ended up taking a nap for an hour. I was going to make spaghetti for dinner and realized I forgot to buy more noodles. GRRR. I was just going to make the quick 3 minute trip to the grocery store but then DH says "oh, lets go to the nice restaurant to eat". Alright. So, it was kind of a spendy weekend for food.
They left Sunday morning. Their little dog (now almost 10 months old) is the cutest thing, but man, he is so hyper and our dogs do not like him much. He pretty much left our older dog alone, but our other dog would like to play with him a little bit, but he never let up. From the time they left at 9:30 am yesterday until 4:30 in the afternoon, our dog slept in one spot and didn't move. I think we were all glad for the peace and quiet. LOL.
We sure had a big thunder, lightning, rain and wind storm last night. I'm surprised we didn't lose our power. We did lose satellite tv for a bit.
DH called his dad last night. He's doing ok, but still a bit tired and weak. He commented not feeling well enough to get his lawn mowed and it's overgrowing. It's not a huge yard, just kind of your standard housing development lot size. DH asked him if they've looked into having someone come out and mow and he said they did check with a lawn service that wanted $300 a month, which they don't want to do. When DH got off the phone he was a bit miffed at his sister and her DH - it wouldn't take more than a half hour to mow (our yard literally takes DH like 15-20 minutes). It's not like it's a nice fancy yard with lots of work required. It's just grass that needs to be mowed is all. DH then messaged a friend of ours who lives near his parents. She used to be our kids teacher (now a principal) to ask her if she knows of a high school kid who does yard mowing. Of course she did (she knows every body LOL). and DH called him up. He's a high school senior and said, sure, he'd be happy to do it. I'm not sure how much it will cost, but I'm sure way cheaper than a lawn service company. DH told him this first visit would probably take a bit longer as it sounds like it's getting overgrown, but after that just weekly or a few times a month mowing the lawn. Even if they had it done twice a month, would be great. The kid is supposed to call FIL today, after school.
Both my bosses (regular and side job) are on vacation until mid month, so that is kind of nice, haha. Less emails to deal with :) DH went to the city this morning to buy some water line stuff he needs. The excavating guy is supposed to come tomorrow to back fill the foundations. It will sure be nice to get all those huge piles of dirt back to where they belong. So tired of looking at the site like that. It's been weeks and shouldn't have been more than 10 days or so looking like that.
Saturday we tried to take a drive up to a lake that is so beautiful, but 2-3 miles before it, we got stopped by snow still on the logging roads. Darn! On the way back down we stopped and talked to an old guy who was cutting firewood. We also saw a moose in the creek. That was neat, as we had not come across a moose yet, in our wanderings. He didn't have his antlers grown back in yet from the winter. We also walked around what is left of an old ghost town from the mining days. It was then lunch time, so we drove over to a little burger place in neighboring town and had lunch. Back home, we were all still tired and we all ended up taking a nap for an hour. I was going to make spaghetti for dinner and realized I forgot to buy more noodles. GRRR. I was just going to make the quick 3 minute trip to the grocery store but then DH says "oh, lets go to the nice restaurant to eat". Alright. So, it was kind of a spendy weekend for food.
They left Sunday morning. Their little dog (now almost 10 months old) is the cutest thing, but man, he is so hyper and our dogs do not like him much. He pretty much left our older dog alone, but our other dog would like to play with him a little bit, but he never let up. From the time they left at 9:30 am yesterday until 4:30 in the afternoon, our dog slept in one spot and didn't move. I think we were all glad for the peace and quiet. LOL.
We sure had a big thunder, lightning, rain and wind storm last night. I'm surprised we didn't lose our power. We did lose satellite tv for a bit.
DH called his dad last night. He's doing ok, but still a bit tired and weak. He commented not feeling well enough to get his lawn mowed and it's overgrowing. It's not a huge yard, just kind of your standard housing development lot size. DH asked him if they've looked into having someone come out and mow and he said they did check with a lawn service that wanted $300 a month, which they don't want to do. When DH got off the phone he was a bit miffed at his sister and her DH - it wouldn't take more than a half hour to mow (our yard literally takes DH like 15-20 minutes). It's not like it's a nice fancy yard with lots of work required. It's just grass that needs to be mowed is all. DH then messaged a friend of ours who lives near his parents. She used to be our kids teacher (now a principal) to ask her if she knows of a high school kid who does yard mowing. Of course she did (she knows every body LOL). and DH called him up. He's a high school senior and said, sure, he'd be happy to do it. I'm not sure how much it will cost, but I'm sure way cheaper than a lawn service company. DH told him this first visit would probably take a bit longer as it sounds like it's getting overgrown, but after that just weekly or a few times a month mowing the lawn. Even if they had it done twice a month, would be great. The kid is supposed to call FIL today, after school.
Both my bosses (regular and side job) are on vacation until mid month, so that is kind of nice, haha. Less emails to deal with :) DH went to the city this morning to buy some water line stuff he needs. The excavating guy is supposed to come tomorrow to back fill the foundations. It will sure be nice to get all those huge piles of dirt back to where they belong. So tired of looking at the site like that. It's been weeks and shouldn't have been more than 10 days or so looking like that.
Thursday, May 3, 2018
A new worry
Oh boy. I get to trade one worry for a new one! My online medical chart just updated with my mammogram results and recommends I have my left breast re-tested with an ultrasound. I haven't heard from my doctor yet, but expecting a call from her on that now, too. Hopefully (again!) it's nothing and just due to a different place doing/reading the results.
and speaking of doctor visits. This stupid co-pay issue just will not go away. OMG! No one can do their job. When I talked to the United Healthcare customer service rep yesterday he put me on hold while he called my dr. office to get the information necessary to update the provider from a specialist to a primary care provider. He said he needed their tax ID # and that they asked him to call back in an hour and then he'd call me back. Of course he never did. I get another email letter from the main billing dept that this is my last notice of late bill. I just called back my insurance company to follow up on yesterday's call. Of course it's a call center in India or somewhere. I can barely hear the guy due to all his background noise. He wants me to explain the whole thing again. I said don't you have notes from my call yesterday? I ended up having to start over, explaining the whole thing. He says "your copay was processed correctly, if you have an issue with it you'll need to file an appeal" OMG. Yes, it was processed at $50 because you still have the provider listed as a specialist and she has not been a specialist since 2016. I again explained that the guy I talked to yesterday put me on hold, while he called my providers office to get the information he needed to change her to a primary care type of provider. I said don't you have notes in there from all this that just happened yesterday? Nope. I hung up on him.
I then called my doctor office and asked to speak to the office manager. The girl that answered asked what it was in reference to, so I explained again. She said she was the one who talked to the United Healthcare guy yesterday and she told him they don't give that out over the phone and he'd have to fax a request in (that's not what he told me) and she has never received a faxed request yet. I told her I am tired of trying to resolve this. I have been trying for 6 months now and no one will get it fixed with the insurance company. Only her office can fix it with the insurance company, not me. She said she will talk with the office manager and they will get this fixed. I said I had hoped to continue with this doctor as my provider, but if I'm going to be charged a $50 co pay every time I see her, I'll have to find a new doctor. I used to work in a doctor billing office. Whenever we had a new physician who's credentialing was still being updated with certain insurance companies, we just had to bill under one of the other physicians in the practice, until it was updated.
So frustrating!
and speaking of doctor visits. This stupid co-pay issue just will not go away. OMG! No one can do their job. When I talked to the United Healthcare customer service rep yesterday he put me on hold while he called my dr. office to get the information necessary to update the provider from a specialist to a primary care provider. He said he needed their tax ID # and that they asked him to call back in an hour and then he'd call me back. Of course he never did. I get another email letter from the main billing dept that this is my last notice of late bill. I just called back my insurance company to follow up on yesterday's call. Of course it's a call center in India or somewhere. I can barely hear the guy due to all his background noise. He wants me to explain the whole thing again. I said don't you have notes from my call yesterday? I ended up having to start over, explaining the whole thing. He says "your copay was processed correctly, if you have an issue with it you'll need to file an appeal" OMG. Yes, it was processed at $50 because you still have the provider listed as a specialist and she has not been a specialist since 2016. I again explained that the guy I talked to yesterday put me on hold, while he called my providers office to get the information he needed to change her to a primary care type of provider. I said don't you have notes in there from all this that just happened yesterday? Nope. I hung up on him.
I then called my doctor office and asked to speak to the office manager. The girl that answered asked what it was in reference to, so I explained again. She said she was the one who talked to the United Healthcare guy yesterday and she told him they don't give that out over the phone and he'd have to fax a request in (that's not what he told me) and she has never received a faxed request yet. I told her I am tired of trying to resolve this. I have been trying for 6 months now and no one will get it fixed with the insurance company. Only her office can fix it with the insurance company, not me. She said she will talk with the office manager and they will get this fixed. I said I had hoped to continue with this doctor as my provider, but if I'm going to be charged a $50 co pay every time I see her, I'll have to find a new doctor. I used to work in a doctor billing office. Whenever we had a new physician who's credentialing was still being updated with certain insurance companies, we just had to bill under one of the other physicians in the practice, until it was updated.
So frustrating!
Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Good news
My doctor called me at 5:30 this evening. The HepC RNA test came back completely negative. There is no HepC virus in my blood. Whew! What a relief not to have to deal with that going forward. She said either the reactive test is a false positive or at some point I was exposed to it in a small amount and fought off the infection myself, but with no risk factors on my part, she seems to be leaning toward the false positive.
I don't owe $25
Last October I had a doctor visit for a couple prescriptions I was on. My copay for on office visit is $25. The insurance company processed it as $50. Turns out the provider I saw used to work for a specialist office and the insurance company was never updated with her credentials. A phone call back to the dr. office to tell them what the issue was. The billing person tried to tell me to call my insurance company and take care of it. No, your office has to send them proof she no longer works at a specialist. They aren't going to take my word for it! So, she said she called them, got the info on where to fax the info in. In the meantime I'm still getting a statement for the $25. I also called their main billing department (in another state) to let them know what is going on and why I have not paid it.
I get a call from the billing dept. this morning wanting payment. Ok. Listen up. My insurance plan has a $25 copay for primary care providers. Your office I was at is a primary care provider. Your office has not updated the insurance (still, apparently) with the info they need to change the provider from a specialist to a primary care provider. If you want to get paid, then someone from your billing office or the doctor's office needs to take care of this with the insurance company. I looked up the provider on my insurance co website - they still show she works at a neurology office. The billing dept. person tells me I should call my insurance company again. Fine.
The insurance guy was very nice. He put me on hold (for quite a while) while he called the providers office himself to get the information he needed so they could change the provider to a primary care provider. But, I guess he needed their tax Id# and they didn't have it, and told him to call back in an hour......he's supposed to call me back later and let me know if/when this is resolved.
If this doesn't get resolved this time, I'm calling their billing department and saying LOOK! my contract with my insurance company is for a $25 copay with a primary care provider. I saw one of your primary care providers. If you want to get paid the additional $25 then YOU either get your provider updated with the insurance company or write it off, because I do not owe it and frankly I'm tired of trying to resolve it. If you aren't going to fix this, then I'll have to start seeing a new provider, because I'm not paying $50 copays.
I called my mom to wish her a Happy Birthday. She had just gotten of the phone with my uncle (he's a sweetheart and calls her quite often) and was waiting for her BF to come this afternoon to take her out to eat. I told her about the HepC deal and wanted to know if she knew if she had ever been tested for it. She was born in 1941, so a few years outside the "baby boomer" age, but, since apparently, one of the most common ways to get it is from a blood transfusion, especially back in the 60's or 70's. Well, she had a blood transfusion in 1976. I remember this vividly (I was only 12) because she almost died! complications after having a hysterectomy surgery. Anyhow, she didn't know what HepC is, so I explained it to her and said it probably wouldn't hurt to ask her doctor about it, if she should get tested. She asked me 3 times, "now what does it cause again?" I kept telling her it causes liver damage. "Oh right, I'll need to remember this". She said she's due for a check up soon and will try to remember to ask her doctor about it. She's been telling me for months and months, just about every time I talk to her, that she needs to get in soon for a doctor appointment/check up (because she says it's been "awhile"). Last month I asked her "have you gotten in for a doctor appointment yet?" No, not yet. I need to do that soon." I guess I'm going to have to start pressing this. Regardless of the HepC thing, she should be going in for regular check ups. I'm sure she must have to go in....she's on several different meds, so she must have to go in once a year to get those refilled, I'd think.
I get a call from the billing dept. this morning wanting payment. Ok. Listen up. My insurance plan has a $25 copay for primary care providers. Your office I was at is a primary care provider. Your office has not updated the insurance (still, apparently) with the info they need to change the provider from a specialist to a primary care provider. If you want to get paid, then someone from your billing office or the doctor's office needs to take care of this with the insurance company. I looked up the provider on my insurance co website - they still show she works at a neurology office. The billing dept. person tells me I should call my insurance company again. Fine.
The insurance guy was very nice. He put me on hold (for quite a while) while he called the providers office himself to get the information he needed so they could change the provider to a primary care provider. But, I guess he needed their tax Id# and they didn't have it, and told him to call back in an hour......he's supposed to call me back later and let me know if/when this is resolved.
If this doesn't get resolved this time, I'm calling their billing department and saying LOOK! my contract with my insurance company is for a $25 copay with a primary care provider. I saw one of your primary care providers. If you want to get paid the additional $25 then YOU either get your provider updated with the insurance company or write it off, because I do not owe it and frankly I'm tired of trying to resolve it. If you aren't going to fix this, then I'll have to start seeing a new provider, because I'm not paying $50 copays.
I called my mom to wish her a Happy Birthday. She had just gotten of the phone with my uncle (he's a sweetheart and calls her quite often) and was waiting for her BF to come this afternoon to take her out to eat. I told her about the HepC deal and wanted to know if she knew if she had ever been tested for it. She was born in 1941, so a few years outside the "baby boomer" age, but, since apparently, one of the most common ways to get it is from a blood transfusion, especially back in the 60's or 70's. Well, she had a blood transfusion in 1976. I remember this vividly (I was only 12) because she almost died! complications after having a hysterectomy surgery. Anyhow, she didn't know what HepC is, so I explained it to her and said it probably wouldn't hurt to ask her doctor about it, if she should get tested. She asked me 3 times, "now what does it cause again?" I kept telling her it causes liver damage. "Oh right, I'll need to remember this". She said she's due for a check up soon and will try to remember to ask her doctor about it. She's been telling me for months and months, just about every time I talk to her, that she needs to get in soon for a doctor appointment/check up (because she says it's been "awhile"). Last month I asked her "have you gotten in for a doctor appointment yet?" No, not yet. I need to do that soon." I guess I'm going to have to start pressing this. Regardless of the HepC thing, she should be going in for regular check ups. I'm sure she must have to go in....she's on several different meds, so she must have to go in once a year to get those refilled, I'd think.
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Waiting game
I'm still waiting on the blood test results. I guess I should have asked how long it will take to hear. I was logged in "mychart" and I see they had received some of my old doctor office test records. Looks like everything from my last physical there, almost 2 years ago. I saw the cholesterol test results. Also two test results I didn't know what they are: AST and ALT. I googled and these are liver tests. Standard to test for? I don't recall my previous doctor mentioning anything about it. But, they were totally normal, so I guess that is a good sign, they were normal a couple years ago. My new bloodwork tests I just had done only show tested for cholesterol and HepC, nothing with those AST or ALT test results. I'm the type that worries. So, I did more research on Hep C to try and be prepared for the worst. The main medicine for it costs.........$90,000!! I am not kidding. My insurance shows my share for the 3 month treatment would be $195. Crazy.
I'm still waiting on a co-worker to help me out with something. It's been 2 months! We sell a product that we will use in our house construction. I need her help figuring out how much we'd need. I asked her two months ago, figuring I'd give her plenty of time to get to it when she has time, no rush. After a month with no answer, I asked her about it again. She forgot about it. Now she's been telling me for another month she'll get to it in a few days and now another month has gone by. I'm tired of bugging her about it. Plus, once she gives me how many we'd need, then I still need someone else's help (probably a sales or quotes person) on which type to get, which manufacturer to order from.
So, today I sent my boss an email asking for the favor. I said I was hoping to order and get our company cost (people do it all the time for themselves, family/friends, and customer's personal orders. We're a mfg rep, so we get even below wholesale distributor cost. I told my boss I had asked co-worker a couple of months ago and I don't want to keep bugging her about it, so does she know of another way/person I can get help with this? Well, of course her reply is this is the co-worker who can get me the answers I need. GAH. I'm so tired of asking her. Boss said it shouldn't be a big job for her to do. And she should also be able to recommend product. Ok......I'll keep bugging her. Sure, I get this is for personal use and not top priority, but other's do this stuff all the time and after 13 years of working there, I think it's my turn to get the favor. And I think 2 months is plenty of time to get this done for me! Plus, I'm the type of person that is going to send her a little thank you gift for her help, ya know?! A Starbucks gift card or something. My boss emailed me some good info on what she used in their garage for LED lights, so that info does help me a bit.
I made some more rice in my rice cooker today, with more water added. Turned out much better, though I guess I really wasn't that hungry for rice. I didn't eat much.
Finally got a long unresolved question/issue with my side job answered today. Had to do with their 401k and the matching. It was a case of no one person knowing the whole proccess/prodecure, so we thought we were missing a part. I've been trying to get this answered for months now, so am very relieved to finally have it off my to do list.
I'm still waiting on a co-worker to help me out with something. It's been 2 months! We sell a product that we will use in our house construction. I need her help figuring out how much we'd need. I asked her two months ago, figuring I'd give her plenty of time to get to it when she has time, no rush. After a month with no answer, I asked her about it again. She forgot about it. Now she's been telling me for another month she'll get to it in a few days and now another month has gone by. I'm tired of bugging her about it. Plus, once she gives me how many we'd need, then I still need someone else's help (probably a sales or quotes person) on which type to get, which manufacturer to order from.
So, today I sent my boss an email asking for the favor. I said I was hoping to order and get our company cost (people do it all the time for themselves, family/friends, and customer's personal orders. We're a mfg rep, so we get even below wholesale distributor cost. I told my boss I had asked co-worker a couple of months ago and I don't want to keep bugging her about it, so does she know of another way/person I can get help with this? Well, of course her reply is this is the co-worker who can get me the answers I need. GAH. I'm so tired of asking her. Boss said it shouldn't be a big job for her to do. And she should also be able to recommend product. Ok......I'll keep bugging her. Sure, I get this is for personal use and not top priority, but other's do this stuff all the time and after 13 years of working there, I think it's my turn to get the favor. And I think 2 months is plenty of time to get this done for me! Plus, I'm the type of person that is going to send her a little thank you gift for her help, ya know?! A Starbucks gift card or something. My boss emailed me some good info on what she used in their garage for LED lights, so that info does help me a bit.
I made some more rice in my rice cooker today, with more water added. Turned out much better, though I guess I really wasn't that hungry for rice. I didn't eat much.
Finally got a long unresolved question/issue with my side job answered today. Had to do with their 401k and the matching. It was a case of no one person knowing the whole proccess/prodecure, so we thought we were missing a part. I've been trying to get this answered for months now, so am very relieved to finally have it off my to do list.
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