Let's have a go!

Welcome friends!

I've been having so much fun on myspace that I decided to give blogger a whirl. What pushed me over the edge was how complicated myspace was until I figured it out. If it can be done once, it can be done, again. So, here we go.

I want to make this a space where we can all contribute ideas. Where each of us can share their daily experiences and where we can freely spice things up. I'm not sure how it's going to work, but we'll figure it out. One step at a time.

So, let's start off with what's going on at casa Almeida. One of the storms that hit us, not sure if it was this year or last year, did a number on our roof. Well, we shopped around to find a roof and we did exactly what you're not supposed to do. We gave the job to the lowest bidder. Some guy that Julie met at Home Depot and that put a ceiling fan in. This just reminded me of the saying "God takes care of drunks and little children." Well, I'm not a child, but he must have taken care of me, just that I didn't know it at the time. Well, anyway, this guy, Mohamed, strike that, Abdul, seemed really nice, so we gave him the job. Actually, Julie gave him the job and I did my usual, apathetic, "I don't give a shit number, just don't bother me right now, I'm spicing Schaff up on MySpace. " Sweet.

So, Abdul and his crew (comprised of his father who is 65, some dude that I think they pulled of the street and a two guys that stand out in front of Home Depot looking for work. I started getting a little worried, but Abdul assured me he could do the job. "Hadn't I seen the work he did on the ceiling fan?" Anyway, they get up on the roof and start doing their thing. At the end of the day I take a look at it and it looks fine to me, I mean, wtf do I know about roofs, right? Well, he said he'd do the job in two days. It took more like ten. Somewhere in between there it rained. The nobel laureate forgot to cover the roof that night and it actually rained inside the house. Not ideal. Well, the good thing was that the ceiling merely buckled and did not completely collapse. This caused me to jerk my knee in my usual fashion, oh well, "c'est la vie".

Abdul and his crew eventually left, promising to fix our ceiling. But, one thing I do have to my advantage is my cynicism and my realistic point of view. I knew I had more chance of Abdul fixing my roof as Thos had of sleeping with one of the pledges. So, I moved on and acted like I thought he would some day come and fix it.

Several months later, we're having breakfast when we notice that there is water coming up through the floor tiles under the breakfast table. It was easy to notice. One minute my feet were nice and toasty, the next they were wet. Very weird considering I was still in my tighty whities and nowhere near the pool. Turns out that our pipes had corroded, actually disolved, underneath our feet and that we now had a major flood coming up from underneath the house in to the kitchen.

So, we called Orlando, the plumber. Now, this guy is the fucking man. No doubt about it. Orlando came in, tore up our floor like TC tore up Casey, got down in there and took care of business. $3000 later. I was good to go. Except I didn't have $3000 bucks.

So, Orlando said, call my friend, he's Public Adjuster. Now, you'd thing a public adjuster works for the public. He doesn't, he works for an individual. Anyway, in comes Martin. He comes in with this other guy, can't remember their name and the come up with what seems like an absurd amount as a claim. But, it's not, you see, because we have "continuous tile". This means that we have to tear out the whole floor and replace it. While the guy who's name I can't remember is here, he sees the wet spots on my ceiling (remember Abdul?). He says, "do you want to put a claim in for that? I said "No, that's my fault, I was a total ass hole idiot and hired some bum off the street to fix my roof." The guy who's name I can't remember said, "This is America, you're insured!" So, we filed a claim for that, too.

Well, we've been going through the arduous tortous hell of processing these claims. It seems like we're finally getting a check for the ceiling. Which brings us to the present moment. My boy Danny G. is ready to start tearing the ass hole out of my ceilings. You see, he has this buddy Fito (Adolfo) that has a dry wall company. These motherfuckers are going to come in here and (according to him) spray the shit out of my ceilings. He told Julie, "it's going to be wet in here". So, rather than allow everything we owned to become plastered (there's enough of that going around) we need to move all of our stuff in to the t.v. room so that Fito can come in here and spray the shit out of our ceilings.

Now, that's all fine and dandy, except that "we" means Julie and Julie is eight months pregnant. So, while Julie has been moving shit in to the living room (all day) I've been working. tomorrow morning Danny's boys, lead by Marcel (this guy you've got to see) are coming over and taking all moving all the heavy stuff. Then they're going to remove all the light fixtures and do who knows what else to prepare for Fito's spraying job. Fito said, "I need everything gone, everything. This house needs to look like it just got built." Right now, I'm not even close, so I hope Marcel and his crew are ready to go, because they're literally going to be doing the heavy lifting tomorrow.

Anyway, that's where I'm at. That and creating our new blog.

Comments?