Tag Archives: 114 Warren

9/23/2019 – UTMH and flower bed

Spent most of the morning and early afternoon doing UTMH chores. Shipped new conference backdrop and flyers to Chicago.

Then screwed together boards for first flower bed. Finished digging out the flat spot, leveling the frame, and then back filling with the excavated soil. Off to Lowes for 5 big bags of top soil – 2 cu. ft. Very heavy. Used some of the soil to fill in around the new stairs to the patio. More follow.

Steak for dinner. A rarity. Very good flavors. Cooked on thrill outside. Second time since last Spring. Sat out on action for smoke afterwards.

7/23/2019 – house, work, tennis

Tuesday

Mike Herman sent in a proposal for a new patio to replace the rotted wood deck. We met and confirmed the design. They got right to work. The existing wooden structure had been built ten years earlier directly on soil without any ventilation. It was completely rotted out. Pancho and Jerry suggested a masonry patio to replace it. Obviously this would never rot. $4000.

Demolition

UTMH team meeting. Conversation with Ball Assoc. about PR. More with David Ackerman.

Doubles. Weather pleasant. Played extremely well. Lots of good exchanges at the net. Felt very active and engaged. Partnered with Joe Delamorte, Ted, and Paul Ambrose.

7/18/2019 – house and NY Rural Water Association

Thursday

As usual for them KASHINC arrived at 8am sharp to begin work on the fence on the front of the house.

Mike Herman’s crew included Pancho who we know from his work on the underpinnings of the front of the house and the sun room project of two years ago and new people Jerry and Mike’s daughter Michaela. Jerry is Mexican but clearly born or lived in the US since early childhood, his English is native.

Pancho repaired the bricks in Bruce’s house next door. They made short work of tearing down the old stuff and erecting three posts in concrete for the new structure.

Missed tennis lesson. Met with Seth and Michael Lutman to discuss NY Rural Water Association project. Went there and ran through the work flow again.

7/8/2019 – web project, house, UTMH

Monday

Up at 6 in a rush. Karen discovered that the upstairs toilet had overflowed all night long flooding the bathroom and now leaking down, fortunately, onto the side yard sidewalk. What a mess. I had clogged up the toilet the evening before. The toilet has been running for years. Now stuffed up, it overflowed and continued so for hours. Took five minutes or more with a mop to get all the water up. Amazingly none of it had escaped into the rest of the house.

Karen went to her exercise class. Put laundry in machine. Looked at the leak in the roof that had caused the plaster in the cabinet over the washing machine to fall down. Got step ladder and opened hatch to attic. It was immediately obvious that the leak came from failed flashing around the cast iron vent pipe. Have to find name of roofing company.

After breakfast I put off doing much of anything for UTMH and HAL that I was supposed to be working on. Brief conversation with Seth and a few notes was the entirety of that work. Sent note via Slack that I would not attend tomorrow’s team meeting. Only dealt with nonfiction book group matters. Recent newsletter outreach by Tina Lesem and Brenda had produced three new people wanting to participate in the discussion of White Trash.

Just before noon Mike Herman called and appeared almost immediately to look at the front fence. He will start work in a few weeks. His daughter, who looks like a teenager but is in her early 20’s, was with him. Karen came too. We settled on things including repairs to the brick in Bruce and Sam’s house. She came out and agreed to an off-the-cuff $300-$400 bill for the masonry repairs. Mike will delete the priming and painting cost from his estimate.

Went to bank to deposit my UTMH pay check.Had lunch at Chinese restaurant by the park. Spent time in the factory working on the consolidation project for this website. Karen and I talked about her birthday tomorrow. Settled on going to The School in Kinderhook followed by lunch at Cascades.

For some reason I decided to tear up the rear deck to repair the rotten flooring. What a mess I discovered.

The supporting joists, particularly the one close to the sun room are severely rotted. Karen came a looked, too. I sent a note to Mike Herman asking for him to return to examine the mess and make a proposal. As I noted to him, “This is beyond the scope and scale of this weekend warrior.” I covered the chasm up with a sheet of plywood.

Made coleslaw and heated leftover curried lamb with vegetables for dinner. We ate in the sun room. Need to do this regularly instead of in front of boob tube.

Read more of Grossman’s Stalingrad – up to page 106.

7/1/2019 – yard work, Russian translation for UTMH, shades, lamb dinner

Monday

Spent a good part of the morning weed wacking the back yard. Also trimmed rose bush. Also work on Russian translations for UTMH RPM app. Had to check lots of entries for current language common on the Russian web. How do you say PulseOx in Russian?

Went to Marigold Home in Rhinebeck to look into shades for the Sun Room which is now overwhelmingly sunny in the early morning. Hunter Douglas shades on display. Sales person worked up a quote for us. $450 of installation costs and more than $2400 for the shades themselves. This is obviously a no go. Next stop Lowes and Home Depot.

I found a container of roast lamb from David Drake in the freezer. Made up a version of roasted cauliflower and lamb curry. Karen declared it to be very good.

6/9/2019 – yard work

Sunday

On and off spent the day cleaning up the backyard.

With the long wet spring, 3 weeks in Europe, and my disinterest, the grasses and weeds flourished. Spent a lot of time cleaning deck and patio. Two big bags to compost with more to come. Need to fix rotten boards on deck and replace downspout drain.

A little gallery sitting, too.

3/27/2019 – assessment challenge, work, tennis

Wednesday

Finished up an Addendum to the Assessment challenge document. Asking for $325k assessment instead of the proposed $$400k. Argued that comparable are not comparable. They merely have the dame tax property classification which is not something that the market cares about. Download the assessment challenge here and the addendum hereaddendum here. Sent it off by email only to discover through my request that they confirm receipt of the documents that I had failed to attaché them in the first place.

Long, boring, at time contentious, telecon with Troy Web. They don’t seem to have a very robust project management system. Then walked up to Seth’s office. Somml announced that the official start date for the AMC project is 3/29/2019. Spoke with Ryder Cooley about writing the white paper.

Image used in real estate assessment challenge.

Tennis at night was very good. Played first set with Steve, Frank and Justin. Fell behind 1-4, ended at 4-6. Lots of good rallies and running about. Last set played with Joe Capobianco against Ted and Joe Dellamorte. Old vs young. Held them to 4-6. Tripped on my own feet and fell on right knee. No real damage. Not a single double fault. Very high percentage of first serves.

Stuck with no plastic wrapped foods.