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a good deal to flush that turd
Tuesday, April 11 2017
It was another abnormally hot day in early-ish April, and the morning's plan was to visit the Brewster Street house to meet up with the general contractor Rich and have him show us what progress he has made. When we arrived, Rich was standing there in street next to his enormous pickup truck. He's a tall man with a big gut who looks a little like an Elvis impersonator from the late state of the King's career. Rich even wears a gold chain around his neck. He's super nice and agreeable, though work on the house hasn't been going as quickly as Gretchen had hoped. Still, the house has a new roof, nearly all the plumbing is done, the outside has been painted, and most of the walls inside have been covered with quarter-inch drywall and mudded. The floors still need work, the interiors have to be painted, and the bathroom and kitchen are still waiting for all the things that make them the special rooms they are (though the old bathroom tub stays). The furnace still needs to be installed, and when that happens, the gas vent out the side of the basement will be pointed at the horrible neighbors to the north, the ones who left irate messages on Rich's phone and threatened on several occasions to launch lawsuits. Rich figures their propensity to sue comes from the onerous restitution payments they have to make to the victims of a ponsi scheme run by the man of the household (which purportedly destroyed a half million dollars' worth of investor money).
Our next destination was the office of our new eviction lawyer on Green St. in Uptown. It was nearly impossible to find parking on the narrow one-way street in front, and I drove around the big block (which includes Lucas Avenue and Washington and Pearl Streets) after failing in my first attempt. After parking the car, I walked into the wrong office and confused by receptionist by describing Gretchen and saying I was looking for her. Then I saw Gretchen outside. She'd already finished her meeting with the lawyer, giving him $600 for a "soups-to-nuts" eviction of the tenant in unit two of our brick mansion multi-unit. Though her latest excuse is that she has stage IV cancer, she owes us over $3000 in back rent, and (according to the attorney) we should've initiated eviction a long time ago. $600 seemed like a good deal to flush that turd.
Then it was off to our accountant to pick up and pay for our taxes. We brought our dogs into the offices because by then the day was a bit of a scorcher (Though Neville didn't like climbing all the steps to the third floor of the M&T Bank Building.) For whatever reason, we ended up owing Uncle Sam $1000 at a time when we'd really prefer not to be bleeding any additional money.
Later this afternoon, I made the mistake of eating essentially a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's non-dairy Coconut Seven Layer Bar icecream. I became so sleepy that I was forced to lie down somewhere. So I stretched out with my Chromebook in the bed of the upstairs bedroom and stroked Charles, who lay next to me purring. Eventually I took a short nap, one that only lasted 20 minutes or so, and it nearly restored me normal functioning.
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