The "What did you do today thread"?

[havasu]

Midnight Cowboy...a good movie.

 

[Nick]

Dustin Hoffman , One of the best !

 

[zannej]

I'm getting ready to help my unlucky friend move in to a "new" house. Once they figured out the confusion with his mother on getting utilities turned on there was another delay because he had a deal with his ex that she would pay off the balance she owed on the electric bill for the trailer he's letting her stay in and she would then get it turned on in her name. Well, stupid witch deliberately paid with a bad check and then switched it over (utility company let her switch without his permission). He had already put down a deposit of $350 to get the lights turned on at the other house and she owed over $300. When the check bounced they added a $25 and deducted the $341 from his deposit so he couldn't get his lights turned on. She was a real hag to him on the phone about it-- like "What do you expect me to do about it?" I swear, I am not a violent person but I want to beat the crap out of her. She was supposed to have a job working at the nursing home but she quit after a couple days of the training because she's a stupid bint.

The good news is, her current boyfriend-- or rather, fiance now-- is a stand-up guy. He's really nice and we can't for the life of us figure out why he's with a piece of refuse like her. Everyone has been warning him about her, but for some reason he's staying with her and supporting her. He felt so bad about what she did to my friend that he bought food for my friend and brought it over to him at his workplace and then informed him that he paid the money back for the deposit and the lights will be turned on this week. He wasn't going to let the ex screw him again.

Another bit of good news is that the two main auto supply stores in town have been fighting over my friend. He used to work at one but the management was so terrible and other employees were extremely lazy so he moved to the competitor. Well, first place wanted him back and offered him $13.50 an hour (I think he's making about $9 an hour where he works now) for 30 hour weeks. That is all he can physically manage to do with his injuries from the wreck. He thought place #2 would fire him when he told them about the offer, but instead, they are so desperate to keep him that they matched the offer, and they have better employee discounts/perks. He is now making more than pretty much everyone else there, but he's also their top salesperson and has brought them a lot of business. The other employees also pull their weight so he doesn't have to work as hard and they treat him like family.

I'm hoping nothing will go wrong for him, but he knows we will help him out if he needs it. He just feels guilty for borrowing so much money, but he helps us out anyway he can. He's done quite a bit of work on my brother's truck for him.

Meanwhile, the guy we sold the tractor to came by this afternoon and bush-hogged the yard. I went out to greet him and thank him. I can't stay in the sun for even 5 minutes anymore because of my medication, so I couldn't stay out and make sure everything was ok. He got part of it done today and said he'll be back for more tomorrow. I was happy to see the old tractor again. He's added a shade/cover thing to the top and attached some forklift type blades to the scoop so he can use it to lift logs better. Since we gave him the trailer to carry it and a bunch of accessories worth a few thousand $ he promised to come bush hog for us from time to time. He also helps with cleaning up the yard and is going to help fix the front gate post He already helped stabilize it a bit more. I just wish I could go out and help with more stuff.

Dustin Hoffman is amusing.

Unrelated to him, have you guys ever seen the movie "Murder By Death"? It has Peter Faulk, Peter Sellers, Truman Capote, Maggie Smith, and Sir Alec Guinness. It makes fun of the old murder mystery movies and all of the characters are basically parodies of the movie/tv detectives.

 

[zannej]

Well, so far my friend hasn't been able to move in yet. There is no kitchen. Water damage from a leaky roof destroyed the tiny kitchen that was there. I don't know why, but the kitchen was smaller than the bathroom.

The crackhead former tenant still hasn't removed all of her stuff, but she's letting him keep a couch, an air conditioner, and a headboard. Got the disgusting nasty carpet pulled out and cleaned all of the walls with bleach. Floor in one of the rooms is plywood so it's ok. Floor in smaller bedroom is OSB.

The carpet is still in one of the bedrooms because the crackhead hasn't removed the bed and stuff from there yet. She claims she'd had an air compressor and expensive tool set in the house but it was gone when my friend got in-- but the back door was also broken off. We suspect his father did it because he's back on drugs again.

Took my friend to look at carpet remnants. He found some 12x13 rolls for $66-- which is about $100 cheaper than the stuff we found elsewhere. Hopefully it will still be there in a week when he gets his paycheck.

Temp was 95 degrees with 52% humidity and heat index of 104 today. Bleh.

 

[zannej]

The carpet remnants were not there when we went back, but we found others. He found some really cheap indoor/outdoor stuff to put in.

Went to Sam's Club on Friday and saw a really cool car (think it's an Impala?) and asked the driver if I could take a picture.

 

[Rusty]

Nice car.

 

[Rusty]

When the rain stops, sometime, just for something to do I am going to pinstripe the Dodge Caravan.

 

[havasu]

I used Mother's Mag polish and a Mother's foam ball, and with about 30 seconds attached to my drill, my daughter's headlights are clear once again. First pic has only one headlight polished to see the dramatic difference.

View attachment a.jpg

View attachment b.jpg

 

[Nick]

Looks good Hav ..

 

[Rusty]

I used Mother's Mag polish and a Mother's foam ball, and with about 30 seconds attached to my drill, my daughter's headlights are clear once again. First pic has only one headlight polished to see the dramatic difference.

Wish I had known it was that easy. My wife spent $30 getting hers done at Walmart.

 

[zannej]

Rusty, I hope the pinstriping goes well!

Wow, havasu, that looks great!

Mother's Mag is the name of the product? Does the foam ball come with a way to attach to a drill or did you have to make modifications to attach it?

I wonder if something like that with car window safe windex would work for me to get the damn bug guts off my windshield. The "love bugs" have been out all over and are stuck all over the front of my truck and on the windshield. Carwash doesn't get them off and neither do the wipers and wiper fluid. The bug and tar remover is sold out at the local stores.

 

[oldognewtrick]

Zanne, try some WD-40.

 

[zannej]

Zanne, try some WD-40.

Thanks! I'll have to give that a try.

Meanwhile, I got some early birthday presents (my birthday is next month): replacement jigsaw attachment, a reciprocating saw attachment, and a 15pc tungsten carbide router bits set in their own wooden box. Box is raw wood so I'm going to sand it and either stain it and coat it with poly or paint it. I might replace the hardware for the latch since the latch kind of sucks. I'm thinking of using some of the foam/padding stuff that came with some of my mother's junk jewelry she orders from wish as some padding inside the box. If I paint it, I'm trying to decide what color to use. The bits are blue, but I want the box to be easy to find-- so either red or orange. Possibly blue. I might do a test area and see how it would look stained on the bottom and if I don't like it, I can paint over it. But it definitely needs to be sanded.

 

[Nick]

Depends on the wood , and if it is flat sawed the stain and finish will pop out the beauty of the wood ..

 

[havasu]

Zanne, I hear you on the love bugs. I made a mistake of trying to use my wipers to wipe them off last week in East Texas, and it smeared my windshield so bad I had to pull over and scrub the windshield with a dozen bottled waters and a roll of paper towels. That was all I had, but it worked pretty good.

 

[zannej]

Zanne, I hear you on the love bugs. I made a mistake of trying to use my wipers to wipe them off last week in East Texas, and it smeared my windshield so bad I had to pull over and scrub the windshield with a dozen bottled waters and a roll of paper towels. That was all I had, but it worked pretty good.

I can't reach much of the windshield so I have to use one of those windshield scrubber thingies. I scrubbed the daylights out of that windshield the other day and only got some of the bugs out. I need to figure out where the wd40 went.

Meanwhile, my mother is starting to regret that she agreed to pay someone a certain amount per day for cutting down the trees in the chickenyard. He'd been doing yardwork before and worked about 5 to 6 hours. So, she assumed that he'd be working that long, but he's been showing up for fewer hours than that-- like yesterday he was here for maybe 3 hours (I wasn't home so I don't know what time he left, but I saw him going out to my house on the way in). I haven't checked the progress though. I know that tree removal is more labor intensive than the general yardwork he was doing and there is only one of him and the weather and mosquitoes have been miserable (even with bug repellent the mosquitoes have been eating him). Problem is, there was never any stipulation of a minimum number of hours and I do know that some people would charge $100 per tree and he's cutting down multiple trees. And because she won't get up and go talk to people, I'm the one stuck being the messenger who now has to work out what to say to him because she told me she will not pay him the agreed price for yesterday's work because it wasn't "a full day's work". I haven't even seen the progress yet to see how much he'd cleared.

I admit that I thought he'd be working at least 4 hours a day, but since we didn't stipulate a specific number of hours, I don't think it's fair to reneg. She's paying him $100 a day and assumed he would only take a couple of days working 5 to 6 hours. But once he started doing the tree work, he cut back how long he was working. And seeing the progress, it's going to take a lot longer than expected. What do you guys think? Is my mother being totally unreasonable?

 

[havasu]

You need to pay him for the job, not the hourly wage.

 

[zannej]

You need to pay him for the job, not the hourly wage.

Yeah. That's what I told her, but since she has no concept of what it is like to do yard work-- particularly with trees, she has no idea how much work it is. She also very rarely sets foot outside for any length of time, so she doesn't realize how hot it is. I think she's sort of stuck on that his initial estimate was that it would take a couple days, but he didn't realize how large the area was until he started cutting the trees.

Edit: It turns out her being fickle was from not feeling well. She ate some candy and I calmly explained how much work he's doing and the size of some of those trees and reminded her how much the arborists charged to cut down a single smaller tree and now she's fine with it.

2nd Edit: He just asked if he could up the fee to $150 so he could have someone help him. Said it would go a lot faster that way and should only take a couple days. I hope he's right. But he got some more equipment to help him haul stuff and it will go better with someone there helping. He apparently left earlier than he intended the other day because he got overheated.

 

[oldognewtrick]

Ask him, "How much to cleanup up yard and haul away the debris?"

Then, when he's done, pay him...just my 2 cents...

 

[havasu]

Seems that guy is going to.sub out the job and pay some guy $10 an hour, and he will sit there sipping ice tea making $20 an hour. Get rid of him, get 3 estimates, choose the best deal, and like Tom says, pay when done. Easy Peasy.