9-11-10 and 9-12-10

It’s been a pretty busy Saturday and Sunday around our home.  I worked, as typical, on Saturday.  Jim handled some stuff around the house.  After work we had dinner (veggie burgers) and then decided to get grocery shopping out of the way.  BJ’s first, then over to Cold Stone for ice cream at the Concord Mills Mall, and then over to Walmart.  Hey, we had to break up the shopping experience.  By the time we finished grocery shopping it was 11pm!  Off to bed. 

Above: When I got into work this morning, here’s what I saw outside the door.

Sunday morning seemed to have come fast.  We were up and out of bed by 7:30.  7:30!  Ugh.

Above: The flowers Deanna got us a couple of weeks back are still looking beautiful!

In anticipation of our trailer park friends Carl and Tim arriving Wednesday evening, we worked at cleaning up the house.  I even washed curtains.  Vacuumed, mopped.  We drained the hot tub, scrubbed it and refilled.  I can’t wait to use it on cool nights!  Dasher got a bath, against his desires I assure you.  2.5 bathrooms cleaned and now sparkling.  What will they look like by Wednesday?  I don’t know but “the house was clean on Sunday, sorry you missed it” comes to mind.

We had a 2pm house showing.  We like the neighborhood.  The house is over our price point for all the work it needs.  It needs a lot of work:

Above: A strange access over the garage.

Above: Kitchen of the attached rental unit.

Above: Utility room for the rental unit.

Above: Patio door for rental unit.

Above: Rental unit’s bathroom.

Above: Another shot of the rental’s kitchen.

Above: Garage.

Above: Bathroom in the main house.  Steps to the toilet sure make it seem more like a throne.

Above: Entrance to the rental side.

Above: Just when you think you’ve seen everything.  A dually low rider.

The leaves are changing rapidly.  Carl and Tim will be here by Thursday and I hope they get to see it.  I’m looking forward to the change.  I’m even looking forward to the winter.  Snow tubing!

Last week Jim received an offer from groupon.com in our email.  The deal was $25 for a $50 certificate redeemable at Brazas Brazilian Bar and Food.  It’s a pricey place so the coupon would help out quite a bit.  As customary, I “research” what I insert into the blog to include links or other tidbits about the subject.  While getting the blog ready I found this citysearch site that had reviews about Brazas.  18 reviews with many negative reviews.  Most were older reviews so perhaps the problems have been corrected?

It was OK.  I’m not sure it’s worth the regular price of $28 per person but the whole thing was interesting.  There’s a simple salad bar, a few hot dishes as well.  Every 5 minutes, a skewer of some sort of meat comes out.  Pork tenderloin, bacon wrapped this and that, sirloin, chicken, ribs, sausage, flank steak, etc.  The sirloin was the best.  It was flavorful.  Some of the other stuff was fatty.  It just varied.  Many meats came out of the kitchen – it was a lot of food.  With some of the meats, we used our own tongs to hold it as he sliced a piece from the skewer.

9-9-10 Thursday (The Fallen)

If you'll remember, last week I had to fire my newly hired Service Consultant. The good thing about that was that I was able to get Angela in here to take his place. I connected with Angela and felt she was going to make a great addition to my team. She had a great personality and had experience. Great combination.

On Tuesday, she started. She came in with cleaners to wipe her new desk. Staplers, highlighters, colored Sharpies, an electric stapler, various pads of paper, a tape dispenser, etc. She moved right on in.

After only 2 hours on the job she walked through the shop, mis-stepped on some metal grates that cover the lube pit, and fell 10 feet or so into the pit. Apparently she stepped on the yellow grates which have wheels on them. They slid out from under her. I was right in front of her and turned around just in time to witness the horror. I ran down the steps to her and had her remain still as I called 911. She bumped her head pretty bad but thankfully didn't break the skin. She couldn't move her arm (we later found it broke in 2 places). Understandably, she was scared. I held her hand. She started thinking about needing surgeries. Her mind started thinking about the worst of the worst. Anxiety took over and she was sweating and given any more time, she probably would have hyper-ventilated.

In a long 10 minutes, the ambulance arrived. They strapped her to a back board. She moaned. She was in pain. In agony. The EMS workers along with our shop staff, lifted her up and out of the lube pit.

Hours later, I went to the hospital with a signed card for her. She had just been rolled out of xray as I arrived.  Her and her family awaited a doctor to "interpret" the xrays. She wasn't happy - naturally.  She apologized for the incident.  What's to apologize for?  Unfortunately, although I couldn't admit it, it's a lot of my fault.  She was following me through the shop.  I didn't warn her.  I nearly did the same thing as she on my first day.  I too slipped on the damn thing but fortunately it only moved an inch or 2.   No one had warned me either.  Unfortunately, that doesn't justify my error.  I feel terrible about it.

9-5-10 Sunday (Colorful Buildings and Clothing)

After a trip to Waffle house for breakfast, we decided to check out the Spa & Sauna Expo going on at the Metrolina.  We walked up to the gate and could tell it was a run down creepy kinda place.  The sign read tickets were 2 for $5.  We turned around and decided it wasn’t worth the money.  A door manager of sorts yelled over to us and gave us free tickets.  I think it was one of those situations where why’d take your money if you’d pay however they’d let you in for free.  Hmmmmm, we’ll need to remember that for the future.

We’d never been to the Metrolina and probably won’t be back very often.  It was more like a flea market with some buildings that could handle small conventions/expos.   The buildings housing the spas didn’t even deserve a photo.

We decided to check out several buildings and booths housing antiques.  Some was nice stuff and while others housed crap.

By the way, since I had to reinstall my blogging software after the laptop disaster of 2010, I wasn’t aware some setting were at their defaults.  I fixed it so that clicking on photos will open a new window (starting with this post) and won’t lose your current place.

Above: Jim spotted a throw rug out in the middle of nothingness and decided to wipe his feet.

Above/below: More fleamarket.

As we drive through the neighborhood departing the Metrolina:

Purple and black clothing accessorized with a black glove.  Perhaps he was attending a Labor Day Michael Jackson themed party?  A close up:

In keeping with our desire to modernize our RVing, Jim and I took off to Camping World in Statesville to look at some more travel trailers.  We looked at several and liked this one:

         

The salesman has our trade info and will call us Monday with an offer!  We’re almost ready to accept however tomorrow we’d like to check out an auction/repo place first.  Stay tuned!

Jim has been monitoring the real estate for sales that are within our budget.  With both of our jobs in South Charlotte, that might just be the place to move to (we’re in North Charlotte now).  Every once in a while we go explore a for sale property’s neighborhood and see what the potential is. 

An interesting search yesterday turned up a 4 bedroom, 2000 sf home with a studio apartment attached for under $150,000.  We wonder what’s wrong with it too.  If we were a little closer to making a move, we’d jump right on it and investigate further.

So there you have it.  So much going on.  Check in tomorrow!

9-4-10 Saturday (Vacation Homes)

Thanks for asking about the RV.  It’s still in the shop.  Jim was finally able to talk to a salesman (I was working).  They made us a consignment offer and we’re thinking about it.  Jim looked at 3 bumper-pull (aka travel trailer) trailers.  2 can be pulled with our current Jeep and the 3rd we’d need something larger to pull it with.  Naturally I wanted to see them so after work, Jim gave me the tour.  I didn’t take any pictures because we were there so close to closing time that they were starting to lock them up.  We think they’re used judging by the 2008 year however 1 looked like maybe it was new.  Not sure yet.  We liked the model that will need something large because it had a bunk room that would be great as a “guest room” or office/storage space.  Love it.   Here’s a link to it which has several photos.  Price is a concern as is having to get another vehicle.

Above: Bunk house room with sofa, and a bunk that can be stored upward.

 

Another one that we could tow had a bunk room but it couldn’t be used as anything else and it didn’t have ducted A/C. 

A smaller one that we could currently tow is below.  I can’t find photos right now.

We’re not sure what to do.  The RV roof needs replaced which is about $5000.  It’s a rubber roof that has gotten chalky and the RV shop says a patch may not adhere.  We might take a chance on a patch for now.  We may trade it in.  Who knows. 

My cold took a turn for the worst and I kinda crashed and burned at about 8pm.  I felt so tired, I went to “lay down” which pretty much equated to me falling asleep on and off until at about 10:30 I got up, took my meds and then officially went to sleep.

9-6-10 Monday (Famous People)

We went to the RV repo place and looked at all that they had.  Everything they had was in rough shape.  We’ll pass.  In the meantime, Camping World called to say they’d give us $13,000 for our RV.  That’s $7,000 less than Tom Johnson or NADA value.  Camping World can bite me.  I don’t know what we’ll do just yet.

In other bitchy news my “mild” cold is nasty at times and I’m sorry I called it “mild”.  There, I apologized.  Now go away.

We’ve been noticing some changing of the leaves in progress already.  It seems too soon – sheesh.

A spelling error at Walmart?

The shelf label reads “garlic spread”.

We went to Doug and Bills for a Labor Day BBQ.  We had a  fantastic time.  We met some of their neighbors who worked to convince us to buy a house a few doors down.  The house needs a lot of work but the potential is fantastic.  I took photos but will skip those since I don’t think we’ll actually want the house since we’d like to be further South.

Above: Bill (Host)

Above: Doug (Host) and friend Claire.

Above: Doug and Bill’s fat cat, Moe.

Above/below: Claire’s dog Mandi. 

Above: Bill

Above: Moe.

Above: Chloe.

Above: Doug.

Above: Doug & Jim.

Above: Bill.

Above: Doug.

Above: Bill serves up coffee.

Above: A piece of everything please.

One of the neighbors is a realtor.  She (Donna Guyton) showed all of us that house up the block.   Donna has an Italian Greyhound named Jester.  We met him later in the evening.

Above: Donna

It’s right next door to this cool author woman, Ella Bell.  We hung out, ate dinner with her at Doug and Bills and even got to tour her home.

Above: Ella Bell

I didn’t snap any pics of Donna or Ella.  Ella brought over her dog.  I liked both of these women.  Great women to socialize with and be neighbors with.