Merging the lives of a performing arts accountant and a square dance caller

Abe Feldman death

billeyler — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 17:48:51 GMT

What a terrible way to reenter the world of Dreamwidth, but I thought I had to post this:

Reposting from Ett McAtee:

As you may know, Abe Feldman from the DC Lambda Squares was in a serious car accident Monday night when he was hit, as a pedestrian, by a car. It is with a heavy heart that I tell you that Abe has passed on overnight. The only saving grace is he probably never saw it coming and was never conscious afterwards. He lived a good life. He was a beacon of hope and decency for us all, and he will be sorely missed in our square dance family. Let us all dance and call our dances in his memory. We will remember him at the Memorial Quilt in Denver IAGSDC convention in July.

Details are forthcoming from the family. We will keep you updated as we learn more about the arrangements. See comments on address to send condolence cards.

Funny the things you remember

billeyler — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 17:02:58 GMT

Today would have been the 65th anniversary of my parents' marriage. Don't know why that's even on the radar anymore!

Finally, real vacations!

billeyler — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 18:31:02 GMT

It's really been since 2014 that we took any real time for vacations, and that was 3 weeks to Africa.

We now have two of them lined up!

June 12-14 Unofficially, my birthday trip. Las Vegas, Wynn Hotel 2 night, with La Reve as the featured show. I'm sure we'll try to pack as much as we can into this. I'll be driving there--it's only 4 hours from the house!

October 6-November 1 (open ended). Officially, our honeymoon! 22 day cruise from Seattle to Sidney Australia, with stops in Hawaii, Fiji, Vanuatu, Loyalty Island, New Caledonia. Lots of days on sea for relaxing. When we debark in Sydney, we'll spend several days there on our own and fly back to the states. The cruise is booked, but after events and return aren't yet.

Yay for retirement! But now, so much to plan for!

Danny's Mid-winter Summer Garden Party - he turned 65!

billeyler — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 00:59:27 GMT

Lots and lots of prep went into the party, but it paid off. There was WAY to much food, and WAY too many beverages bought, but that's the way it goes.

Danny counted 41 people that came to the party. On Facebook, he got 4 "Sorry, we can't make it now" notes just before the party (as expected).

We had been hoping a lot that the weather would cooperate, and it did. It was partly cloudy most of the day, and the temps crawled past 60 for a good while. It actually felt toasty at times!

Heating the pool and then the spa was also well-appreciated. There were 7 or 8 guys that took advantage of the good weather and the warmth to skinny dip--Danny was first in, of course!

After the party, Gary Dougan stopped back by the house for an hour or so to chat--he had left a bag here that he needed to pick up.

I think we'll be snacking on the leftovers for some days!

Retiring in Florida...I mean, California!

billeyler — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 15:18:04 GMT

The stage crew gave me a going-away gift last Wednesday--with a card saying "enjoy your retirement in Florida!"

Shows how well they were listening! :-)

Thought I'd model what the gave me. A complete outfit!

Secrets from Danny

billeyler — Sat, 16 May 2015 14:05:37 GMT

Danny just returned from a month away, after competing in two rodeos as his new hobby as a horseman.

Since I knew he was going to be gone so long, I set into motions plans before he left to do as much as I possibly could on our checklist of house projects, most of which fell into the expensive, long-deferred maintenance category.

As far as I know, Danny just thought I was sitting at home eating bon bons and watching TV.

Here's what I got done, some by me, some by contractors, and some with a little help from friends:

- Upstairs guest bathroom tub refinished. The old refinish had been damaged in the 08-09 remodel. We should have just replaced the tub then!

- Rebeam the sagging garage roof (both beams had cracked in the past few years). Went from two support trusses, to six. This was a biggie. It was originally a carport; it wasn't converted to a garage correctly by the contractor back in 2005.

- Had concrete pad poured for a storage shed, being built partly to block the view from the neighbor.

- Had the old, leaky gutters removed
- Had all the soffits and trim on the house scraped, sanded, primed and painted

- Purchased an 8' x 10' Shed kit from Lifetime Storage Sheds. Delivered by freightline after I got back from Denver. I built most of it, but friends David and Alan came over on the Sunday and helped me with the roof section. Took about 12 manhours in all, with lots of taking apart and putting back together, in spite of some pretty clear instructions.

- Re-landscaped a lot of the back yard, which entailed a lot of cleanup, shifting of railroad ties, cutting up trees, laying 35 backs of mulch, extending the drip system for a new garden area.

- Patched and painted two areas where the old gutters were

- Planted two 8 foot Purple Robe Locusts to replace the now-gone cottonwood. (the in-bloom pic is from online)

Here's what is still on the checklist:
- renovate the back deck for safety and cosmetics (this is in process - my handyman has another big project he's working on across town, but will be back to do this)
- replace the roof, skylights and vents on the house and garage (this is in process- we received a significant insurance claim settlement for hail damage this week)
- New gutters installed (in process- quote received, will be installed after the new roof is on)
- resurface the front stoop (I'm sure it'll be artistic)
- permanent fix for the water main cutout in the driveway. it's just filled with pea gravel now.
- complete the landscaping in the area where the old cottonwood was. Plant something in the area where the old pine tree was in the corner.

I was amazed how much I could get in my new C-Max in my many trips to gardening materials at several big box stores. Not as much as in my VUE, but it still has some significant haulage capacity. Lawrence helped me on Wednesday by hauling the two trees from Jericho Nursery home.

Okay, I'm officially tired!

Hit it!

billeyler — Fri, 15 May 2015 12:13:47 GMT

I've had the goal of 204 pounds several times.

This morning's weigh-in: Nailed it!

Next goal: ONE-derland!

A new puzzle

billeyler — Wed, 31 Dec 2014 15:29:22 GMT

Jim and I spent about $10,000 since August doing mandated repairs to the Cornell house getting it ready to sell to this particular new owner, a woman named Christine Beyerlein. I haven't met her yet, but because of the type of FHA loan she was getting, specific repairs were needed per official inspections or the deal would fall through. Most of it I don't begrudge. There was a LOT of 'deferred maintenance' to the roofs and electrical systems in particular that needed doing.

When I first went on the large flat roof of the 2 front units a few months ago, I was nearly in tears about how much debris was up there. I spent 4 hours raking, tossing tree branches, leaves and twigs, and blowing off debris on a Monday morning (a work day) so we could get thorough inspections for what repairs were needed. The back house has a pitched roof (except for the garage). Amazingly, we were able to get all but our $500 deductible covered to have the shingles replaces through insurance - prior hail damage. The wiley estimators for Roofing USA seem to do nearly all their work in getting insurance settlements for roof replacements. That process was a bit unsettling, since it felt a bit underhanded, but that is all done and an upgraded shingle roof was put on a month ago.

The front house flat roof repairs were made this past week, having been delayed by a couple of rainstorms, both of which required me to go on the roof and broom off massive amounts of standing water and ice. But that's done, too.

Soooo...the new puzzle.

A week ago, Danny and I started noticing a musty sewerish smell in our downstairs bathroom. We couldn't really trace the source of the smell, but thought maybe the wax ring on the downstairs toilet had failed and was letting sewer gasses up. The smell came and went a bit, but it was always there.

This morning, when I was getting coffee, he came upstairs to tell me he had started to trace the problem. He found a slight drip coming from an outlet in the downstairs bathroom wall--the outlet controls the overhead heat lamps. It's not a big leak, but enough that it IS a serious issue. Checking out the area that would be above it, the upstairs guest bathroom toilet is more or less overhead. He removed the switch plate, and indeed the cavity there is rank with sewer smell.

So now we're not going to use that toilet (which we use much more than the master bath or downstairs toilet) until we can get a plumber in.

We're expected $3000+ in repairs. It'll probably require tearing the downstairs ceiling out in several places, repairing or replacing plumbing/sewer lines, replacing the ceiling, texturizing it and painting it.

Danny wondered idly if we can file an insurance claim. Sigh.

In other news, we have a new Mr Coffee brewer, which works quite well.

2014 Chase the Chile

billeyler — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 12:22:18 GMT

All in all, it was really a lovely weekend with only a couple of minor glitches. The flyin itself went truly smoothly. Dropping the early Saturday morning mini-dance at the balloon fiesta was a stroke of genius on my part (although I think others will claim it was their idea). It was replaced by dance workshops at the center that morning, nicely attended. The balloons did go up Saturday morning, perfect weather, floating all over the northeast heights, including right over ASDC when we arrived!

We had five houseguests this weekend: Aldo Watkins from Austin, Evan Smith from Dallas (his first flyin ever!), Bennet Mark and Kim Harris from Mountain View, CA and Scott White from Alamosa CO. It was a very good mix of folks, all who got along very well.

I mentioned glitches--it only applied to houseguests. Evan arrived 4 hours later than planned (1am Friday morning), then he got really sick on Monday (bad cough) and to top it off, his flight back to Dallas was delayed about 2 1/2 hours. Kim arrived either sick, or had a bad bout with allergies, coughing his lungs out for a day, curtailing part of their activities.

The schedule for the dancing worked out nicely for Sandie Bryant, Kris, Scott A and me. The only LONG feeling dance was the Sunday 11am to 3pm last gasp dance. Only two callers signed up for open mic sessions (Alan Hirsch, 2 tips and Mike Turley, 1 tip), so Kris, Scott and I carried the rest of the dance. We still had a couple of squares going when we ended at 3 and I was totally tired (but happily).

Food? Oh, my! There was ALWAYS food. Our contribution to the massive Friday night potluck was to slather two of my thawed meatloafs in homemade tomato sauce, reheat it for an hour and take it to the center. It was all eaten, although it was the 2nd meatloaf in the offering and was near the end of the food line.

It was a nice respite to not have to be at the theatre for WICKED show settlements until Sunday evening. I did work from 5pm to 9:30pm at the theatre for the final (24th) show and big wrapup settlement, but was able to spend a lot of quality chat time with our houseguests otherwise. Danny had completely cleaned and prepped the house from Tuesday to Thursday. My back issue had mostly abated, although I did have quite an ache for a while. Danny's leg issue had been cleared up by antibiotics, although it turns out he had a serious tooth abscess on Friday evening that nearly spoilt his weekend. He's back on even stronger antibiotics to clear that up, after a trip to the dentist on Monday.

Although I posted an album, here are a few pics from the weekend.

It's listed!

billeyler — Fri, 12 Sep 2014 14:56:50 GMT

31 years and 3 months after we bought this investment property, it's now listed and for sale! Danny asked if I'm going to be sad for it to be gone--the short answer is NO.

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/403-Cornell-Dr-Se_Albuquerque_NM_87106_M14706-78000

I did just send a note to my bulldog realtor Carol that there were a couple of inaccuracies in this listing:
1) There is only 1 bathroom in each unit, so there are 3, not 4, bathrooms
2) The duplex in front was built in 1948, so listing it as built in 1935 isn't that accurate. I've only been guessing that the little cottage in back was built in the mid 1930s.

It's in prime rental territory, being only a few block from the university, a block from a supermarket, and very accessible.

Crossing fingers!

Africa Trip Photo Album July 18 - August 3

billeyler — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 12:31:07 GMT

[second attempt--the first post disappeared]

Not sure this Facebook album is viewable by everyone, but here goes.

We're both seriously jet-lagged, even 5 days after returning from the trip. Puts a serious crimp into productivity. We can't even stay awake past 7pm in the evenings right now!

Hope this passes soon!

Great memories though of this exotic trip!

https://www.facebook.com/billeyler/media_set?set=a.10203616280800834.1630463554&type=3

The Africa Trip

billeyler — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 12:12:44 GMT

Here's the link to the little Facebook album I put together of our trip. I don't know if it will work unless you have a Facebook account, but it works for me. For now.

Five days after we're back, we're both still seriously jet-lagged. Again last night, we both fell asleep within minutes of sitting in our recliners to watch an episode of "Under the Dome". This time I was able to crawl into bed about 10pm (after having slept 3 hours already), then woke up for realsies at 3:30am.

Makes it difficult to work with good concentration. Hope this passes soon!

https://www.facebook.com/billeyler/media_set?set=a.10203616280800834.1630463554&type=3

Anniversary again

billeyler — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 16:27:17 GMT

My first official post was June 16, 2005, thanks to bearfuz's encouragement.

I do have a 2004 picture posted from my 50th birthday that I did retroactively, so that doesn't count.

Just hard to believe that I'll be 60 in three days!

The memory

billeyler — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 13:48:55 GMT

I'm sure it must be the same for others, but when appointments are made or events happen (even birthdays) on September 11, I never fail to remember what happened that day in 2001. This is more a permanent reminder of that Day of Infamy more than anything else that's built as a permanent reminder--the memory.

mid-1950s modern phone technology advances

billeyler — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 03:56:14 GMT

Man, do I feel old now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoYq6uA_Lhw

Last night's storm

billeyler — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 15:15:21 GMT

For a couple of hours earlier in the evening, we could see strong, near constant flashes from a storm on the other side of the mountains, about 40 miles from here. It didn't look like we were going to get anything, but surprise, surprise! About 10:20pm, a fast-forming storm headed south from Bernalillo and lasted for several hours. Most of the time, it was just a big light show to the north of us.

Finally, about 1:45am, we got SOME rain pelting down, hard and fast, but it didn't last long.

The results at the house, .18". Up in the heights where the brunt of the storm was, nearly 3" of rain. Wow!

The streets are completely dry, though. Lots more 'tropical gulf moisture' floating over the state, so the next three days hold promise of more of these storms.

This storm eventually came south and hit us a glancing blow, but it was mostly east of us.

Here we go!

billeyler — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 22:25:43 GMT

I'm 98.6% packed for the 8 day trip to San Francisco! The energy there can be felt this far away!

The flight on Southwest is a one-stop 'direct' to SFO, so no worries about lost luggage. It leaves at a decent 9:20am tomorrow, so no crack-of-dawn rousing for this one. I even remembered to do the online checkin bit.

I spent last weekend and off and on during the week reviewing notes for the caller school and prepping my hand outs. I was so monstrously tired all week that I couldn't concentrate on much of anything, so my final push started at 7 this morning. By 10:30, I was finally done with all the handouts, then spent another 4 hours printing them out, hole-punching, and stapling, labeling folders for them and just generally getting organized. This is going to be a fun adventure, thanks to the ENORMOUSLY appreciated efforts of bjarvis as the hard-working and underappreciated caller school coordinator (I remember him saying, "shoot me now, please!) and also Barry Clasper taking the lead on putting the final schedule together.

Since my stress levels were high that I wasn't all together yet, I opted to miss two events today: The Pride Parade at 10am and the Popejoy Hall Volunteer Social at 2pm. But I'm on vacation now, dammit, so Scott Amspoker can take the lead on calling from the truck this year!

9am to 9pm is a LONG day for a school of any sort, but I've done it before. As long as I don't have to stand up for 12 hours at a time, I'm good. However, not everyone can say they've co-taught a caller school with the Chair of Callerlab, so I'll count that as a bonus in my resume.

This is my 29th IAGSDC convention--in a row. Other than the 7/7 Sunday afternoon "Intro to Calling" session, I have ZERO time commitments for the convention, so it will be social and dancing deluxe. I'm not calling any of the specialty tips, either, so I can 'watch' for a change! And maybe even leave the convention hotel, the Marriott Marquis downtown.

Theoretically, the rumored BART strike won't affect me on the way in. I'm meeting up with Barry and Pam at the airport, then we'll be taking the train to the hotel together, maybe getting in a quality yak on the way. We'll see.

So, I'm all set internet-wise. Danny had bought me a nifty Google Nexus 7 tablet for my birthday, feeling bad that my little tablet he got at Big Lots a couple years back didn't do much of anything. It is just...WOW! And with the wifi hotspot on my phone, I'll be groovin' and movin'.

Danny doesn't come in until next Thursday, on July 4 proper, but we'll be flying back home together on July 8. He's been busy as a beaver on the IAGSDC website for weeks. This will be a thing of beauty. I know over the years, he's probably put in $100,000 of time into it, using current market rates, but he's been a stoic volunteer all this time.

Oh, and 1098 days till retirement, per my handy online calendar.

Made in the shade

billeyler — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 22:20:11 GMT

Except it's freakin' hot in the shade, too. We've just tied a 23 year old record here, 104. That's as hot as it's been since I moved here in '81. Yikes!

At least the humidity is a comfortable 5% outside. The swamp cooler is working away non-stop, bringing the inside temp down to...81.

And that's what we're all talking about in Albuquerque today (and probably most of the desert Southwest). This heat.

Sunday fun night

billeyler — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:55:21 GMT

Laughter abounded last night with me, Danny, omero_hassan, and Lawrence Klebesadel dining, wining, and playing "Catch Phrase".

I'm sure a lot of people's ears were burning last night, too, as we sat on the deck sipping wine as the night came on.

Unfortunately, Steven had his shirt on the whole night.

Oh, and Lawrence and I were teammates for "Catch Phrase"--we lost EVERY game!

I can't be trusted

billeyler — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 03:19:54 GMT

Today was an overload day, for sure.

Danny called me this morning to talk about the Palm Springs trip while I was working on an email to our Popejoy Hall media buyer. Who did I send the email to? Danny. He just let me know after he got to Phoenix on his way home when he could check his emails. He doesn't know I was also working on three spreadsheets and dealing with two other do-in-now emails at the time, but that's that.

I did a couple of other things today where I got my wires crossed while I was doing 10 things at the same time. Multi-tasking only works if you can really do multi-tasking. Today, I couldn't. I had to pass off a serious project to one of my direct reports that I would normally do. But that being said, I had to run some stuff to the business center that I normally have student runners do, because they were all out sick (pink eye and the flu). Gawd. I did it on my way home, but of course that entails over a 1/2 mile walk to my car south, then driving west and north for a couple of miles to GET the business center, yakking with the controller while waiting for my 4 large packets of petty cash to be approved for disbursement, then dropping payables off to A/p, then hitting all three cashier at the bursars office AT THE SAME TIME to get the petty cash payments and deposits done. Then I went home and multi-tasked.

I had to breath deeply several times today when I was being pulled from several sides at once. I was a gentleman about everything. But inside, my head was exploding. And of course, my boss, who is also torn by several sides because of staffing quarrels between marketing and development have hit a head and I had to do some fast paced work to get an independent contractor into the system to do work that can't be done successfully by marketing (I could reference the unstable graphics designer still on staff, but that would be moot).

So glad it's Friday night. But still, when I was making meatloaf, I was multi-tasking in my head. The only thing that saved me was that I had latex gloves on for the making of the loaves, so I couldn't just drop what I was doing and do something else.

I'm going to go see if there is anyone to 2step with at the monthly booze-free dance at the Lloyd Shaw Dance Center. G'nite.

It's quite understandable, really

billeyler — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:15:54 GMT

Apparently, several Wilde Bunchers are going to the Tucson flyin this coming weekend. No one has talked about it at all, possibly because they know I'm calling for Austin's first flyin (along with Sandie Bryant) this same weekend.

Tucson is just a 7+ hour drive from us, making it a doable event both coming and going, for most people. Also, with carpooling and hosting, it's definitely cheap.

What dancers don't know is the behind the scenes on this. Austin made a concerted effort about 18 months ago to find a weekend when no one else was having a flyin. They knew that Austin is a bit out of the way for many people, and with airfare escalating, a bit of a stretch to the travel dollar. I think it's at least 12 hours from here, not a fun one-day drive. The organizers have done as much promotion for the event as they know how, and were dismayed when they found Tucson had booked the same weekend.

Out of the blue, Tucson decided to book the same weekend about six months ago. Members of the IAGSDC board even tried to get them to move their date, being as they had normally had the event sometime in February, and as with Phoenix, even January. They wouldn't budge.

I've never seen any promotion at all for the Tucson flyin. The time I called it a few years ago, they had booked FOUR callers and only had 40 dancers show up, if that. We were split into duets in two different halls in an elementary school, competing to get one square at a time. If we had two squares at once, whee!

I'm taking the high road on this. Dancers can do whatever they like, but from what I understand no one from Albuquerque is going to Austin to help support their first flyin.

That makes me sad.

Chain reaction

billeyler — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:03:19 GMT

We just got a dusting of snow Sunday evening, right as the Oscars were finishing up. I was thinking that it might make the roads treacherous in the morning, but it didn't. The roads were 100% clear in town on Monday morning. What little snow we got was gone by noon.

Not so west Texas. What we got was a bit of wrap around snow, while west Texas around Amarillo was pounded by a major blizzard. The interstate was shut down; as a precaution, I-40 was shut down at Louisiana Blvd here to try to divert truckers to the fairgrounds to park and wait it out. No one got the word, so eastbound I-40 has been an absolute zoo. Later, I understand the city moved the closure to the more logical Tramway Blvd, the easternmost exit on the freeway in ABQland before I-40 enters the canyon.

Two days later, the interstate is STILL closed, which must confuse a lot of people since it's blue skies and dry roads here. The Schooltime performances at the theatre today are cancelled, since the guy can't get his van west of Amarillo. He's absolutely stuck. I don't know the details, but it was a nailbiter until the last minute. MAYBE the 250 mile section of the freeway that's closed will reopen sometime this morning, but won't do us much good. Our marketing/education team is having to contact all the teachers, APS drivers and homeschoolers to somehow keep them from showing up at the theatre, all 4000 of them. Yikes!

All that said, the cold weather appears to be going away. Heading for the 60s all next week (while Danny is in Palm Springs!)

I just have to keep shaking my head in disbelief

billeyler — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 14:54:36 GMT

Although I'm sequeing out of the HR liaison role at work (glacially slowly), or at least becoming the oversight team leader for our newly formed group of three that will be handling HR administrivia, I get sucked into the issues that keep on happening in our little custodian group.

It's a doomed situation.

For years, the theatre tagged off the Physical Plant pool of custodians, in which we were charged a flat rate per year, which included all the supplies for the theatre. Back then it was only about $65,000 a year. The custodians (who I never ever met) worked nights, cleaning up after theatre events, occasionally giving the offices a trash emptying, that kind of thing. Decisions were made that since we weren't able to schedule these employees ourselves, we really needed to have our own custodial staff. I was skeptical, as the numbers guy.

That's where the trouble started. This must have been about 2007 when we made the switch.

Every staff custodian we've hired has been an utter failure, with lots of drama involved. We've been through five full time so far, each with a rasher of bizarreness (is that a word?) culminating in their eventually having to leave. None have been fired, but should have. Of course, the pay is abysmally low. $10 per hour plus (theoretical) university benefits. But why can't we hire someone stable?

We add student custodians in the mix, but in general, those have all been quiet hires and not much happens in that group of people.

This past year, we created a Lead Custodian position, paying a couple dollars more per hour, and having supervisor skill sets needed.

Yesterday, I got a call from our admin assistant after I left work, a voice mail actually. Rachel wanted to fill me in on a situation that occurred there yesterday afternoon. I didn't catch the call until about 5:30, but she told me what was up. It wasn't what I thought (there was a developing issue that morning between our operations manager and the assistant tech person I figured has blown up again).

About 4:30, 4 UNM police showed up and asked for Scott Palmer, our lead custodian. The escorted him (with or without handcuffs, I don't know), down to our development officer's work area and grilled him about an issue. From what I understand, he was taking some class or other and a handwriting analysis was involved. His writing sample has some incendiary language in it, referencing his military background from long ago. Whatever it was, freaked his professor out and she filed a complaint.

After that, he was escorted out of the building by two of the UNM police and the others held back to give a small briefing to Rachel. Scott's supervisor, Billy, was called.

So we don't know if we have a lead custodian right now. The 3/4 time custodian we had for two months quit on Feb 7. Two of the student custodians that were hired never even started working; they found other jobs somewhere else. It's a mess.

Scott's hire history with us has been a mess in itself, although he's been a reliable, hard-worker for over two years. Originally, he was hired in as a student. When he dropped a class, putting him below 6 credit hours, we had to scramble and found out he could be hired as a UNM Temp. He was paid that way for 6 months, but you can only temp 6 months before other arrangements have to happen. We rehired him as a student, since he had enough credit hours that semester (the guys is in his 50s, btw), but after two months, student employment suddenly terminated him--when I was on vacation, my sub entered 32.1 hours for one week in his pay time entry, putting him over the maximum a student can work. There was no recourse. We scrambled again and after a time got him back on as a Temp, although there were TWO months where we had to pay him through our Stage Labor contract as an independent contractor. THAT could have been weird.

After that last Temp position was ending, we decided to create the Lead Custodian position to fix the inequity situation that was created when two equal custodial staff hires were on, but one had scheduling duties with no pay difference. Then the shit hit the fan. We found out that Scott had a criminal record that went back years ago. There was a huge hoohaw over getting him hired into the LC position, with another background check. His supervisor Billy insisted that we hire him though. Again, over the nearly three month gap before he was hired as staff, he was paid through the Stage Services contract (which doesn't really have custodial authority).

I just can't wait to go into work to face what's going on in today's staff dramas. We have the Wilson Phillips concert tonight and Mark Twain Tonight! with Hal Holbrook tomorrow night and potentially a patched together custodial crew if Scott has been terminated or put on suspension outside of our control.

Oh, and now our custodial costs all told are over $120,000 a year.

Starting the process again

billeyler — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 13:47:04 GMT

I guess this is Phase 3 of our long-term remodel of the house.

Phase 1 started in 2004 when Danny and I redid the downstairs ourselves, plowing through our learning curve. Lots of electrical, drywalling, tiling, cabinet installing, but when that part was done over the course of a couple of years, we were generally pleased with our efforts. A few things, done by 'contractors' were awful, like the conversion of the carport to a garage and adding a deck. Both need to be redone.

Phase 2 was from October 2008 for about 4 months, starting with Danny completely gutting the kitchen--in effect, every square inch of the upstairs has something done to it. Most of the upstairs work was done by hired contractors, and except for a bunch of plumbing issues, the results were quite nice. But of course, we were both so over the process by the time we finally moved back into our bedroom and the rest of the upstairs in late Feb 2009, all the little unfinished things stayed unfinished.

Phase 3 isn't so much remodeling, but doing a lot of deferred maintenance things to ready this white elephant of a house to put on the market. New gutters, new shingles on the roof, replacing the badly made deck, fixing the roof in the garage, scraping and repainting all the trim (again). A whole bunch of small projects that will end up costing a bunch, but will be needed for a quicker sale.

Jim Bailey and I bought this house over 20 years ago, so a lot of memories have been accumulated here. The house is oversized for Danny and me, though. Although it's not a big hindrance, I am tired of climbing up and down the stairs, since we use large parts of the house for our daily activities. I don't use the downstairs for dancing anymore, although that was one of my Big Ideas when we first saw the house.

We have two dedicated guest rooms, rarely used. We have a 'crafts room' which is right now just storage for a lot of garage sale items. We have two large living areas (which I'll miss having), a large dining room, a large kitchen, and we have a walk-in closet that was formerly a bedroom. It's on 1/3 acre with a lot of yard maintenance that shouldn't need to happen (lots of tree trimming, leaf raking, weed killing), us being in a severe drought in a high desert environment.

Phase 3b will entail getting rid of a lot of the furniture that's filled this house up over all those years. I got rid of a lot when Danny moved in back in 2002, but we've accumulated a lot more. We've been purging small stuff for awhile; now on to the big stuff.

The plan is to have this house staged for a sale, move into an apartment somewhere, then look for a nice single-level house about 1700 square feet here. AND buy a vacation home in another city.

Yes, I could stay here forever, but I think an actual move might get me kickstarted in thinking of my own Phase 3 of my life and what to do as I enter my retirement years. Part of that goal is to live life for me and not put so much of my time into maintaining the house.

The passing of time

billeyler — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:01:34 GMT

I didn't realize until I looked at the calendar this morning that YESTERDAY was the 3 year anniversary of my mom's death. I don't think it even entered my mind last Tuesday that 9/4 was 3 years from the stroke that brought on her death 5 days later.

Time does heal.