Clareified

GENIUS!

Pitting the Apprentice against 24.

HHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

What next? Hope & Faith versus American Idol?

MR. FURLEY NOW, MR. FURLEY FOREVER

Don Knotts dead at 81.

Who or what is a Barney Fife?

DEEP THOUGHTS FROM EAST COCO BEACH

Who was I kidding?

I knew where I would end up living. You knew where I would end up living. The American people knew where I would end up living.

However, will be planning for my extended vacation in Jersey City…hope the dates don’t conflict with Other1’s.

KILL ME NOW

Even before I bought an apartment…or knew people who bought apartments, I’d been aware of the general maxim that contractors sucked.
Something about shiftiness, skimping on materials, and overcharging when all was said and done. Suze Orman always cautions that when getting a contractor’s estimate, double it in your head and that’s the minimum it’ll end up costing you.
Later, Karol would teach me another general maxim: never trust Russians.
So, needless to say, as I find myself on the eve of moving into my new apartment, with no stove, no refrigerator, no microwave and gutted cabinets — all courtesy of my Russian contractor, really, I have no one to blame but myself.
A month and a half ago, when I hired him to repaint my living room and renovate my kitchen (partly due to all the praise singing Ari was doing about renovating her kicthen…well, and the fact that my stove was built only shortly after the gas stove was invented), I did so with only two conditions.
1. He had to be able to give the Co-op management company a certificate of insurance and
2. He had to be done before I moved in at the end of February.

With respect to the first, he assured me it wouldn’t be a problem. It was, after all, a week before Martin Luther King Day…February was a world away. With the respect to the second, and now, this is probably my legal training kicking in, he said “Oh, I can get a certificate of insurance for them.” Whether he actually has a certificate of insurance, I don’t know — but the condition was that he get one for the managing company and he said he could do that.
That very weekend I picked out everything for the kitchen, put down a thousand dollars for my new countertop and was on my way. A week later he came by to drop off paint samples for the living room.
Two weeks later I gave him the measurements for all the new appliances I bought in Sears, that he assured me he would install, adding another ten grand to the new kitchen total, before any work has even started.
Then, nothing.
He didn’t answer my calls or return calls or make calls.
NOTHING.
Finally, last week, as panic started to set in, I put his number on redial at work. Presumably because he didn’t recognize the number, he picked up on the first ring.
“Dude. What’s the deal. I am moving a week and NOTHING has gotten done.”
“You didn’t pick out a paint yet.”
Mmmm…ok…that was true…but what that has to do with the kitchen…
“OK. I’ll pick out a color tomorrow. When will you start?”
“Hold on. Dawn, let me call you back.”
“Uh-ok, but…hello? hello?”
Two more days go by.
Now, it’s Friday. I move in exactly a week.
I call now from my mom’s cell — new number.
“Hello?”
“DUDE. DUDE. YOU.ARE.KILLING.ME.”
“Oh, sorry. Yes, I know I was supposed to call you back. I was finishing a job, but now it’s done. I will come by your place and start on Monday.”
“Ok.”
Monday I call him at 9 to confirm. No answer.
10. No answer.
11, I borrow the painter’s cell.
“Hello”
“Where are you?”
“Oh…I’ll be there in a few.”
12.
1.
2.
3.
Mmm..evidently, he meant a few freaking days.
4.
5.
I call him again.
“Oh…I’m coming across the bridge, I’ll be there at six.”
At 6:30 he finally shows up.
He assures me that despite his not starting on Monday, that everything will be done before Friday.
The phrase lickety split might even have been used.
I confirm once again that he has sent the insurance certificate to the managing company because the super seemed to indicate that he knew nothing about any kitchen remodeling.
“Yes. Long ago. Like two weeks ago. All set.”
“Ok, can you fax me a copy for my records, cause they’re saying they didn’t get anything from you.”
“Yes. No problem. Tomorrow.”
Ok. I was was calm. Will yell at the super tomorrow.
Well, lo and behold, a few hours after I yell at the super for losing the insurance certificate that was faxed loooong ago, the contractor calls to say “funny story…the telephone company disconnected his fax line and turns out he didn’t fax anything. BUT he was faxing it right away.”
Of course, that meant that he couldn’t work on Tuesday.
“But don’t worry, it goes very fast.”
I called him on Wednesday — from a closet phone in my building’s basement — as I have now exhausted every other phone between Brooklyn and the Upper East Side trying to trick him into answering.
“Have you started working, yet?”
“Well, no…but my guys will be there tomorrow.”
WHAT??????
“Don’t worry. We’ll be there first thing in the morning at nine.”
“Umm..you can’t work in the building until 10. Did you fax that certificate?”
“Yeah, yeah…no problem. I sent it.”
“Well, I never got a copy. Fax me the copy.”
“Oh, ok. What’s your number? I’ll send it.”
And then it was Thursday.
My mom took the day off, to accept some deliveries at the apartment — so imagine her surprise when she arrived at 12:45 p.m. to find everything just as it was on President’s Day — MONDAY — when we left and gave the contractor the key.
In fact, he didn’t show up until 1 p.m., when he came by with ONE guy, who, incidentally spoke no English, and then disappeared again.
The non-English speaking guy proceeded to take the cabinets apart, remove the microwave and refrigerator and disconnect the stove.
All the while smoking “like a chimney,” such that my whole apartment evidently reeks of Marlboro —which, of course, as the girl that’s allergic to air, I am totally psyched to hear.
And wouldn’t you know, after ripping my kitchen apartment apart, he left somehwhere around 3 p.m.
Terrific.
So, there you have it. I will be living, sans working appliances, in an apartment with smoking workers for the next — what? ten, twelve years of my life?
And I have no one to blame but myself.
or Ari.
Yes! Ari.
And, of course, Karol.
Hope you have the good guest sheets ready, cause I’ll be sleeping on your couch and using your kitchen until my apartment is finished.

24 Blogging

For reasons having everything to do with moving out of my apartment, trying to move in to another apartment, get it renovated AND a full-time job playing poker and practicing the law, I didn’t get to see 24 until last night…no, the night before…ah, time flies when you’re being crushed to death.

I loved how Curtis somehow thought taking Jack’s gun was going to make any bit of difference in the “taking him into custody.” Either Jack’s going with you, or he’s not.

In this case: not.

Heh.

It was also a prime example of Annika’s truism that a “hostile with key information is a hostile down.” I was surprised that they killed off that guy so quickly after introducing him…that has to be a record of some kind.

We have yet another CTU operative “taken to holding” — security is soo taxed this Season.

What’s the over/under on the Hobbitt’s sister being killed in the next hour?

RIGHT, CAUSE THE WORLD NEEDS MORE PEOPLE FROM SOUTH DAKOTA

Yikes.

I’M PUNNY

Why this story wasn’t titled “Leno slings Mud At Doctor’s Family,” I’ll never know.

The “Tonight Show” host said that for years, newsman Roger Mudd worked to clear his grandfather’s name. But it really was Thomas Mudd’s father, the late Dr. Richard D. Mudd of Saginaw, who spent years seeking exoneration. Roger Mudd is a distant relative.

Dr. Samuel Mudd of Maryland set assassin John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after the shooting. Mudd was convicted of complicity and was imprisoned for nearly four years before being pardoned by President Andrew Johnson. But the government never completely cleared the doctor.

BEST REAL LIFE EXAMPLE OF “NO, DUDE”

Married with a young son, Tran said he first learned they won Saturday around 10:30 p.m., and he immediately called up his colleagues but got through to no one.

“I want to stay here,” he said.

I won the lottery last week too, but it was only enough to buy my tickets for this week.

Sigh.

MAN SUES VEGAS CASINOS FOR MILLIONS

The retired doctor, Max Wells, kept coming back, the lawsuit says — and kept losing money. By the fall of 2005, Wells had lost $7 million, the lawsuit says. By January, another $7 million.

Wells, 55, wants his money back. (Emphasis mine)

I’m thinking of a Russian phrase…

My favorite part of the article though is:

His lawsuit, filed Friday, says the drug company didn’t warn patients that Requip could cause compulsive behavior. And it cites a 2005 Mayo Clinic study that documented 11 Parkinson’s patients who developed compulsive gambling habits while taking Requip or a similar drug called Mirapex.

Then a few paragraphs later: The lawsuit says the casinos should have been aware of the Mayo study, which Thomas said was heavily publicized in Las Vegas last summer.
Yah.

“I didn’t know, but the casinos did!”

Lawyers.

THE HEDONISM IS STRONG IN THAT ONE

via Gib, who incidentally is also a Justice lovin’ lawyer