NYC will always overcome.  I am quite proud to be from there, though I really don’t fit the typical Manhatten resident.  This strike has really put a lot of people out and yet it seems everyone’s making a great attempt at getting in to work regardless.  I’m sure the casual shopping is down, but they brave the 2-3 hour walks or incredible traffic on the bridges and streets.  What troopers those New Yorkers are.

I really think the TWA is being greedy.  They are arguing because the city wants new employees to pay 6% of their salary towards their pension, which they can start claiming as early as 55.  Most workers across the US can’t really retire until 62 and probably don’t even get a pension.  You’ve got really good benefits already and you’re asking for respect and dignity?  What is that saying about all of the other workers in NY or the rest of the country.  Those people who working for minimum wage and no benefits are just suckers?  The strike really only hurts them.  The rest of the business world is moving on since their companies can afford to have them work from home or to arrange transportation.  The MTA should fee free to negotiate the best contract that they can, but they cannot claim the moral/judicial high ground when they are causing tens of thousands more to suffer.  That’s just rediculous.  At least go back to work while you are negotiating.  The people of NY are not on your side in this.

Oh boy was yesterday just a comedy.  To understand what’s going on I guess I need to go back a few weeks.

So back in December a company came and did a pitch on replacing our windows.  We were quite impressed, so we decided to get all 5 of our sliding windows replaced, and chose to put in new doors.  A new front door and two sets of French doors on the back.  It took us 4 months after that to get our Home Owner’s Association to approve the work, because it was changing an external architectural detail.

After some production delays our doors and windows were delivered, and it turns out they measured the basement door incorrectly and now we have to wait for a new one to be made for them to install it.  We haven’t been all that happy with the job they did on the other two doors.  The windows have ultimately turned out ok.  A few minor details, but they will come and fix them soon enough.

The trim work around the door still has the nail heads exposed, there are gaps around the various door frames, and there’s a 1″x10″x 4′ exposed piece of wood on the outside of the house.  They made no indication of what they were going to do about this.  That’s sort of the most disturbing part.  Basically the crew just left without pointing out the problems.  Basically a lot of fit and finish detail has not been done at all.  Plus they left long pieces of trim in our hallway, nails and caulk strewn over our deck and yard.  Simply put, we’re not happy customers at the moment.

Well of course Saturday and Sunday night we get the mother of all rainstorms.  Torrents of rain coming down.  We’re sitting in the basement and hear a dripping sound.  We check the rear sliding door and notice water dripping down from the frame.  I panic and run upstairs and notice that the subfloor is moist and that there is a 1/8″ gap between the sill and the base of the door.  Water is seeping in and dripping down stairs!  I put in a call to our sales agent, since I have his cell phone number, and he calls the manager and basically they say someone will be out on Monday to take care of it.

I’m all worked up so I can’t sleep Sunday night.  I’m pretty mad about the whole situation, and end up staying up most of the night watching TV and doing pushups.  Sarah has an exam in the morning, so is off to class early, and I take a nap on the couch, waiting for the contractor to show up.  Sometime around noon I decide to make ramen for lunch, and set a small pot of water on the stove to boil.  While I’m waiting for that I figure I might as well go out on the deck and sweep off all the detritus from the storm.  I go outside with the broom and my sandals, start sweeping, and I PULLED THE BRAND NEW FRENCH DOOR SHUT so as not to get dirt and leaves in the house.

Now why is that in caps?  What lesson did I not learn a year ago when I locked myself out of the house, and that the contractor had explicitly reminded me last week?  Our new French doors will automatically open from the inside, but REMAIN LOCKED, unless you EXPLICITLY unlock it.  I have now just locked myself out of the house for a second time in a year, with no keys, no phone, and a pot of water boiling on the stove.  Great.  Well I can’t do anything from here on the deck, so my only choice was to jump off my second story deck onto the ground below.  I felt a little like a secret agent, plus I was fueled by all the TV of Navy SEALs training from the night before.

I run to a few houses and finally find someone home who will lend me a phone.  I call Sarah, hoping that she can come down to open the door.  No luck.  The pot at this point had boiled off all the water, so I decided that I have to break in some how.  I find a rock and go around back.  Fortunately, at this point, we don’t have our new French doors in place.  Although I guess I wouldn’t have been home to lock myself out if they had done it right the first time around.  I figure though, that I would have been stupid enough to lock myself out at some point, and at least now I’m not breaking a new window.

I stood out there composing myself.  I was worried that the glass was really strong so I didn’t want to risk hitting the window and having the tool or rock bounce back and hit me.  I got all psyched up and went into a full wind-up.  The rock flew right through the sliding glass door, punching a perfect hole in it, ripped out a section of the vertical blind, and smacked into the trash can on the far wall.  I made my way inside, saved the pot, and now I’ve got a few hours of cleaning to do.

So all in all yesterday was not a great day.  I was cranky, tired, stupid, and now even more tired.  Sarah was really nice and made me feel better when she came home.  I still feel a bit stupid for screwing up so badly, but well I’m never going to do that again.  Plus I’m going to get one of those combination lock boxes so I can hide a key outside.  Oh what a day.

We had a plumber come by yesterday.  I had put in a request to ServiceMagic about needing the fixtures in our guest bath changed out.  The knobs were leaky and the shower diverter was jammed.  We went to Home Depot the day before and bought the only two handle kit they had.  Looked ok, but the display in Home Depot is deceptive.  I can get to that later.  

One of my co-workers had mentioned Service Magic to me.  They’re basically like a Lending Tree but for professional services.  So I put in the request and a couple of people had contacted me to setup appointments.  One group gave me a quote of $205 for the job.  The guy who showed up yesterday came in looked at the job and said that it would cost $493, but gave me a 10% discount.

At this moment, I actually said to him “Wow that’s a lot more than what we had expected.  Another guy quoted us $205, but I thought that was a little low.”  I actually told the guy standing in front of me that I thought $205 was low!  I didn’t think about this earlier but Sarah mentioned to me.  Why in the world did I do that?  Sarah says I’m just too nice and tend to try and make everyone feel better.  Good thing I don’t do contract negotiations on a big scale.

We decided to have the guy do the job, which ended up taking 3 hours.  It took awhile just to make an access panel to change out the equipment.  The handles we got are not the knob style.  So when they had them at Home Depot the handles were each point out, parallel to the floor pointing away from the faucet.  Turns out, you can position them that way, but the handles have to both turn counter clockwise, so they look really funny when you use them.  Grrr……So for now they’re both pointing down and turn to the right so at least it’s symmetrical.

On a side note, Homefix skipped out on their appointment yesterday to put in the last door and finish the rest of the work.  This is really getting to be more of a headache than we had planned.