When It Rains, It Pours

Shower update: We had the original guy (softball team guy) back to look at the shower Thursday. He scraped out some of the grout and regrouted with a different type of grout (which I wasn’t sure you could do that…kind of like putting latex paint over oil paint..but what do I know). I think he needs his eyeglass prescription checked because I gave it a close look yesterday morning and he didn’t do the prettiest job—got it all over my $420 caulking job. Maybe it will rinse off. We won’t know if it leaks until we shower, which will be happening in minutes. If it doesn’t leak he’ll come back and seal it next week. If it does leak, we’re one step closer to calling in a professional bathroom remodeler to just tear it out and start over, but first we’ll have to pay the plumber to come back and cut a door-size hole in my workroom wall to see if we can determine where the water is coming from, since he's the only contractor interested enough to try to find the source of the problem.

As for the shady tile repair company, I took photos of the holes in the grout that was supposedly repaired by their No. 1 tile guy (who doesn't wear glasses but probably should). I'll be submitting those photos with my credit card dispute and to the Consumer Reporting agencies.

 

I picked up my new notebook computer Thursday and the Windows 7 software that’s on it isn’t the right one that allows it to also run XP, so while I could load one embroidery software disk on it (which I needed to do for todays Bernina embroidery class), I couldn’t load the one I paid $500 for, so now I’ve got to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional $$$$$ .

 

Filled out the Flexible Spending paperwork to get the money back that the husband has put in and realized that $500 or so of it was from his surgery last December 30th and some doctor visits that didn’t bill until afterwards that happened last November. (They had to wait and see what the health insurance paid) Don’t know how that works, but if the rule is the expense had to take place in 2009, we now have to run out and have $500 in some kind of medical/dental work done in a hurry in order to get the money back that he put in. What is up with that…how can you give someone your money to play with all year, and then if you can’t come up with receipts to show that you had medical expenses in that full amount they get to keep what’s left over? Shouldn’t you just get it back and then have to pay the tax on it that you didn’t because it went to an FSA? We should know about that in a week or two--a inconvenience to be sure.

 

So, obviously it’s not been a good week, and one relaxing weekend day is shot. Have to drive up to Frederick for a morning sewing class, try to meet up with the SIL to get some stuff that the inlaws need when they arrive in a couple weeks during a 30 minute break, back to the shop for an afternoon sewing class, and stop at my sister’s house after that to pick up their turkey fryer thing, because my BIL wants to try to deep fry a turkey on Thanksgiving (don’t worry, we’ll be roasting a back-up turkey in the oven—his history with non-traditional turkey prep is 0 for 1 so far—no sense pushing our luck).

Thanksgiving is in less than a week and I haven’t given it a fleeting thought. Good thing I’m a ‘fly by the seat of my pants’ kind of hostess. In my many years of cooking Thanksgiving dinner, I’ve come to learn that:

1.  most of your family does not like change, so you can forget about those new labor-intensive recipes you’ve been seeing on the Food Network
2. the grocery store will not run out of turkeys, so it’s okay to pick one up Tuesday after work
3. forget the Black Friday sales and head to the grocery store, because they’ll practically be giving away their leftover turkeys and you can pick one up and pop it in the freezer for Christmas dinner

Okay, enough procrastinating. I'm off to shower and then I've got to fly out of here to get to class in time. I'll let you know if you still need to bring your umbrella if you come to Maison Entwistle.