The ides of March...
...on or around the twenty-second, or how everything I do tends to be late...
Four-thirty am, and I just remembered that I had yet to write a blog post!
Fabulous weekend, as usual, entailed party Saturday night, quite crowded/happening at the club. Had some more of the wrong kind of attention, it seems I'm no better at saying "no" than I was a couple few weeks ago; still ends up sounding like a lame excuse...gotta watch more closely as the girls defer unwanted advances with grace and learn from their example.
Sunday recovery at the resort was spectacular, with the first day of spring giving a tantalizing taste of the impending summer season...good times lie ahead! Got a surprise (and very welcome) call from D extolling the beauty of the weather Sunday afternoon, had a fabulous dinner of Old Bay steamed shrimp, deliciously prepared and masterfully grilled skirt steaks (never had that cut before, it was quite good), tasty spinach salad, basmati rice, Edy's Espresso Chip ice cream, and turtle pie. Yum.
Whittled the night away chatting with a couple new friends, and the usual gang of older dear friends, some back from being absent for far too long (two weeks?) Enjoyed the hot tub, a roaring bonfire, gorgeous evening, hilarious anecdotes, and even more bonding with people who are becoming more and more dear every passing day. Life is indeed good.
Monday: chatted with Mike a bit on the feasibility of building a house, having him design, and potentially trying to do as much work on it myself as possible. Need to look into finding some architectural magazines/books to get some ideas. Not having owned enough (any) houses from which to base what I like and don't like being the main problem with this plan. Initally, however, things don't look too promising; based on my first(and very rough) here-are-just-some-random-numbers-to-get-us-started estimates of 2500-3000 heated square feet, probably two-story dwelling with 1.5-2 car attached garage, and perhaps another 2-2.5 car detached garage with basic 2-bedroom apartment, the number off the top of his head, "doing it on the chap" was $200K, probably closer to $250 to do it more properly. Then figure in that architects/planners always underestimate, so it's probably safe to add another 20-30% for estimation's sake, and that's in addition to land costs. Yikes. On the plus side, similarly sized homes (without the two-car detached gar/apt thing) are on the market for $300-400K. Sure, living on the lake would be beyond idyllic, but is it worth spending big-city resifential bucks in Charlotte? More research is required, as is more conversation with Mike. Come to find out architectural firms get around $2/htd. sq ft. just to design the place, it's no wonder they end up costing so much. Then we kicked around the idea of putting off the detached garage til later, then realized that getting the detached garage up first would be the most cost effective way to get the place liveable, while construction of the main building could then theoretically be done semi leisurely, thus taking the pressure of needing to finish it quickly in order to live in it completely and indefinitely off. Much, much more research and planning is called for here. More on this later...
Got a call from FedEx at 8pm, Laura's PowerBook had arraived at the Depot, and I had 30 minutes to get dressed and head down there. Turns out our boy Dan the seller find yet another way to screw this up, by shipping via the wrong service class. Lovely, cost me an additional $40 or so over and above the original shipping allotment to pick the thing up. Debating how much of an ass to be to the seller over this oversoght. I reviewed my last email to him and I specifically listed all the shipping specifications. Grr! Spent the rest of the night trying to figure out how to install Mac OS X updates, and possibly burning out/frying one of the spare batteries. Grr, this shouldn't be so difficult! Maybe it'll go easier once I get some sleep and attack it with a clear head/fresh perspective. The silver lining is that the unit is in excellent shape, and seems to run pretty well, so Laura should be very happy with it, if I can ever get it over to her...Now when the hell's mine going to get here? It's been a week for Chrissakes! I haven't even heard fromt he guy...might be time to pen the threatening letter. People don't like to have to pay charegebacks. Bastard!
Need to give blood this week, and start doing taxes...I think that if I don't get them in on time, I lose another year's refund. Damnation! Get motivated!
Off to bed, better post tomorrow hopefully.
Four-thirty am, and I just remembered that I had yet to write a blog post!
Fabulous weekend, as usual, entailed party Saturday night, quite crowded/happening at the club. Had some more of the wrong kind of attention, it seems I'm no better at saying "no" than I was a couple few weeks ago; still ends up sounding like a lame excuse...gotta watch more closely as the girls defer unwanted advances with grace and learn from their example.
Sunday recovery at the resort was spectacular, with the first day of spring giving a tantalizing taste of the impending summer season...good times lie ahead! Got a surprise (and very welcome) call from D extolling the beauty of the weather Sunday afternoon, had a fabulous dinner of Old Bay steamed shrimp, deliciously prepared and masterfully grilled skirt steaks (never had that cut before, it was quite good), tasty spinach salad, basmati rice, Edy's Espresso Chip ice cream, and turtle pie. Yum.
Whittled the night away chatting with a couple new friends, and the usual gang of older dear friends, some back from being absent for far too long (two weeks?) Enjoyed the hot tub, a roaring bonfire, gorgeous evening, hilarious anecdotes, and even more bonding with people who are becoming more and more dear every passing day. Life is indeed good.
Monday: chatted with Mike a bit on the feasibility of building a house, having him design, and potentially trying to do as much work on it myself as possible. Need to look into finding some architectural magazines/books to get some ideas. Not having owned enough (any) houses from which to base what I like and don't like being the main problem with this plan. Initally, however, things don't look too promising; based on my first(and very rough) here-are-just-some-random-numbers-to-get-us-started estimates of 2500-3000 heated square feet, probably two-story dwelling with 1.5-2 car attached garage, and perhaps another 2-2.5 car detached garage with basic 2-bedroom apartment, the number off the top of his head, "doing it on the chap" was $200K, probably closer to $250 to do it more properly. Then figure in that architects/planners always underestimate, so it's probably safe to add another 20-30% for estimation's sake, and that's in addition to land costs. Yikes. On the plus side, similarly sized homes (without the two-car detached gar/apt thing) are on the market for $300-400K. Sure, living on the lake would be beyond idyllic, but is it worth spending big-city resifential bucks in Charlotte? More research is required, as is more conversation with Mike. Come to find out architectural firms get around $2/htd. sq ft. just to design the place, it's no wonder they end up costing so much. Then we kicked around the idea of putting off the detached garage til later, then realized that getting the detached garage up first would be the most cost effective way to get the place liveable, while construction of the main building could then theoretically be done semi leisurely, thus taking the pressure of needing to finish it quickly in order to live in it completely and indefinitely off. Much, much more research and planning is called for here. More on this later...
Got a call from FedEx at 8pm, Laura's PowerBook had arraived at the Depot, and I had 30 minutes to get dressed and head down there. Turns out our boy Dan the seller find yet another way to screw this up, by shipping via the wrong service class. Lovely, cost me an additional $40 or so over and above the original shipping allotment to pick the thing up. Debating how much of an ass to be to the seller over this oversoght. I reviewed my last email to him and I specifically listed all the shipping specifications. Grr! Spent the rest of the night trying to figure out how to install Mac OS X updates, and possibly burning out/frying one of the spare batteries. Grr, this shouldn't be so difficult! Maybe it'll go easier once I get some sleep and attack it with a clear head/fresh perspective. The silver lining is that the unit is in excellent shape, and seems to run pretty well, so Laura should be very happy with it, if I can ever get it over to her...Now when the hell's mine going to get here? It's been a week for Chrissakes! I haven't even heard fromt he guy...might be time to pen the threatening letter. People don't like to have to pay charegebacks. Bastard!
Need to give blood this week, and start doing taxes...I think that if I don't get them in on time, I lose another year's refund. Damnation! Get motivated!
Off to bed, better post tomorrow hopefully.
posted by Gene at 5:20 AM
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