links for 2006-10-18

Continue Readinglinks for 2006-10-18

Worst. Roofers. Ever.

Our roofer from Woodbury was supposed to work on three projects:

1) Reshingling the roof.

2) Rebuilding the historic, built-in gutters and replacing rotted wood trim requires meticulous attention to detail, and utilizing a gutter cleaning vacuum can significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the restoration process.

3) Redecking the balcony and repairing the roof under it to stop the water leaking into the kitchen. People can check out houston contracting company, for the best roofing services, in town.

Project 1: We went to the official source and contracted with them for project one in mid-June, and their all-Mexican subcontracting crew finished pretty quickly. However, we’ve had to call them back to repair places where the water still leaked in 3 times, the most recent being last night, when we found the front porch had a leak.

Project 2: We contracted with them June 29th, they’re STILL not finished. They’ve fashioned some of the new gutters, but they haven’t installed them completely, or replaced the rotted wood. Weeks will go by, and when we call, someone will come out and work for a day, and then disappear again. Meanwhile, they left all the rotted wood in a pile behind our house for weeks, and the neighbors have politely nudged us to do something about it. After four phone calls, the roofer finally removed the pile yesterday. To avoid such situations, you can look at www.ramroofing.net/commercial-roofing-lincoln to get reliable roofing services, installing gutter, solar panels, and more.

Project 3: Not even begun; the roofer came and put a blue tarp over the balcony floor to ward off rain (so professional!) and now even that’s not working.

During the long process of Project 2, the owner has repeatedly refused to meet with us and dodged our phone calls. At one point, he traded cell phones with his wife so she could field our questions, but she would tell us “I’ll find out and call you back.” Of course, no call came. Soon she stopped answering the phone and let it go to voice mail, with both their office and cell phones forwarding to the same VM. When we threatened to write a report on Angies List, they shuffled our calls to a subcontractor, who is curt to the point of rudeness and seems to be trying to intimidate us.

At this point, we’re still hoping to get them to finish project 2 (we paid half up front, and would lose money if we tried to get someone else) so I’m not comfortable blasting their name and contact information into cyberspace. But I am going to write a report on Angie’s List since we want to start replacing roofs when tenants are around.

span class=”hilightyellow”>2019 update: As it turns out 13 years later, we have to have the roof redone with the help of top painters because they did such a poor job. We should have tried to get a better roofer, but we went with the lowest quote because it was tied to the house. We’ve managed to get the gutters in good working order over the years, but the roof needs a complete overhaul. I still have the guy’s contact information in my phone, mainly to keep track of him so we don’t inadvertently hire him for some other job.

Continue ReadingWorst. Roofers. Ever.

Books I’ve read Recently

Garden Accents: Simple-To-Build Projects to Enhance Your Yard or Garden (How-to Gardening)
Quite a few interesting building projects for hardscaping your garden. I read this over while drawing up plans for our flowerbeds.
Pit of Vipers (Nancy Drew (All New) Girl Detective) #18
by Carolyn Keene
There are 21 books out now in this all new series of Nancy Drew stories. These are brand-new tales, not revisions or updates of the originals, and they set Nancy squarely in the present, complete with cell phones, hybrid cars (Nancy’s, of course) and high-tech surveillance equipment. And another change that’s somewhat jarring — they’re told from Nancy’s first-person point of view.
Indianapolis Hoosiers’ circle city
by Geib, George W.
Indianapolis Through Our Eyes: The Indianapolis Star 1903-2003
by Indianapolis Star
Indianapolis: a circle city history
by Tenuth, Jeffrey
Greater Indianapolis: the history, the industries, the institutions, and the people of a city of homes
by Dunn, Jacob Piatt, 1855-1924

Continue ReadingBooks I’ve read Recently

links for 2006-10-17

Continue Readinglinks for 2006-10-17

Mark Foley, and “real” gay relationships

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  • Post category:GLBT Issues

In an opinion piece for the LA Times, Michelangelo Signorile says that the media should have “outed” Mark Foley as gay soon after his hypocritical votes in favor of anti-gay legislation. I agree with Signorile about “outing” hypocritical public figures, and consistently always have. But there’s something else in the article that I wanted to highlight…

Foley lived in a glass closet in Washington, where many people, we’re now being told, assumed he was gay, even as he orchestrated a lie for the voters of his district with help from the media both in Washington and at home in Florida.
Foley’s closet wasn’t just about protecting his political career. He seemed to be filled with shame. According to one gay man quoted in the Washington Post last week who challenged Foley on his voting for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, Foley justified marginalizing gay marriage by saying, “I could never compare any relationship I have ever had to the nature of my mother and father’s relationship.”
For Foley, homosexuality meant second-class status.
That kind of self-loathing is bound to play out in harmful ways. Would Foley have made online sexual advances on teenagers if he were openly gay or if he’d been reported on, truthfully, by the media as a gay man long ago, and faced the consequences? It’s quite possible the answer is no.

I find the phrase I highlighted above just heartbreaking, for Mark Foley’s sake as well as for my own.
I love my parents, and the people who are especially my role models for a good marriage — my paternal grandparents, who are just wonderful people. But do they somehow have a more “valid” relationship than mine? Of course not. When I see my girlfriend, I see someone as important to me as the members of my own family; someone that love, adore, want to become a better person for, to live with and build a life with.
If I can live up to my grandparent’s example even half way (I’ve referred to them in the past as living examples of “happily ever after”) then I will be more successful as a spouse than 95% of heterosexual married couples are. And I love Stephanie so much that I want that for her and for me. I want a relationship like my grandparents have, with love and stability and surrounded by family and friends.
As loathsome as I think Mark Foley’s behavior was, I hope that someday he finds a relationship that moves him in that way, too — an equitable relationship based on respect and honesty and concern for the well being of his partner.

Continue ReadingMark Foley, and “real” gay relationships

People You Meet While Gardening

I met two interesting people this weekend while planting bulbs in my front yard. One of the is our neighbor, Craig, who owns the house to the north of us, and is moving back in. He’s not new to our neighborhood — his family has owned the house for decades — but he’s just now returning because he’s been in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past four years in the military. I didn’t ask him what branch or anything about what it was like, (I figured that was way too much to get into) but of course a million questions raced through my brain. He did mention, while talking about is plans for working on the house, about possibly being called back to service, but he seemed pretty pragmatic about it. I hope that doesn’t happen; I’d prefer having someone live there. The house has seemed pretty lonely all this time.

The other guy I met was John Elrod, the Republican candidate for State Representative for District 97 running against Ed Mahern. He was walking around knocking on doors and leaving flyers. I talked with him for a bit, and was somewhat surprised that he said he went against his fellow Republicans on the marriage issue. He said that he felt the “government should get out of the marriage business altogether and marriages should be considered as ‘civil unions.'” I was tired and dropped the ball on that question — I should have followed up specifically on the marriage amendment and how he would vote on it, because his other statement was way too broad.
One thing that really bugged me — when I later opened his flyer, the interior contained photos of the logos and signs of all the downtown neighborhoods, making it seem like they were endorsing his campaign. I certainly know that’s not true, but anyone else reading it would get that impression. Not cool.

Continue ReadingPeople You Meet While Gardening

Marriage, children and equal rights

Good As You presents an especially apt point about the fallaciousness of the “reserving marriage for the nuturing of children” argument:

Hmm..you know why the judges “ignored is that marriage is not primarily about adults; marriage is about the nurturing and development of children?” Because marriage certificates don’t legalize unions with the caveat that those unions produce children! Marriage is one thing; reproduction is another!

Saying that this legal, civil arrangement is all about a non-required by-product of the coupling is kind of like saying that one’s obtaining of a driver’s license is all about the the car, not the legal right. In reality, the person may just want to be recognized as a legal driver, and they might want the license solely for ID purposes. In fact, this New Yorker has a legal license AND a car, but he hasn’t driven in four years. Doesn’t make my license any less legal! And while it may sound insensitive or callous to compare a car to a human child, the comparison in this instance is quite apt. You can’t deny one the ability to obtain any sort of civil permit or license simply because they don’t utilize the legality in the way that you see proper!

Continue ReadingMarriage, children and equal rights

links for 2006-10-16

Continue Readinglinks for 2006-10-16

Projects Around the House (Revised)

Revised list of stuff I’d like to accomplish this weekend, if I have time…

  1. Help the neighbors clean up brush
  2. Sweep out the back of my truck
  3. Put my truck bed cover on the truck
  4. Rearrange the living room furniture
    We got part of this done. We still need to move my desk
  5. Rearrange the library and move my desk in there
  6. Clean the kitchen and downstairs bathroom
    We got a lot of work done in the kitchen
  7. Vacuum whole first floor
  8. Take more stuff to the basement (chairs, tools)
  9. Vacuum in the basement
  10. Bring extra waste basket from garage into house for recycling
  11. Clean the aquarium
  12. Plant the rest of the bulbs in the flowerbeds
    I planted 25 Muscari bulbs, 30 daffodils, 2 bleeding hearts cuttings, 2 bearded Iris cuttings, 1 peony cutting, 6 hyacinths, and about 50 tulip bulbs. I have about 75 more tulip bulbs to plant.

    I finished planting all the bulbs.
  13. plant edging pavers into side flower bed
  14. Add step to bottom of basement stairs
  15. Install coat rack bar in Dining Room Closet
  16. Install additional shelf in Laundry room
  17. attach lattice to the back porch
  18. install towel hooks and toilet paper holder in upstairs bathroom
  19. examine top two basement stairs and measure for replacement
  20. hang some of the framed artwork
Continue ReadingProjects Around the House (Revised)