New Camera...

That is it, I am a convert. Bye Bye Sony, Hello Canon!

LOVE the Rebel XSi

The News is IN!!!!!!!!!

Finally, it is official!!!

I have accepted the nomination to be the treasurer of my Rotary club. We succession plan several years out so what this means is that I am now President elect, elect, elect, elect. LOL! I know it seems a long way away but we have so many activities that it really isn't. I couldn't be more excited about this opportunity to serve. We have a dynamic group and I am honored that the past presidents have demonstrated such confidence in me.

BIG news...

Ah, this is my beloved Rotary Club. Naturally, as a member I am horribly biased but I think it is the best Rotary Club around! I am very proud to be a part of this organization. We are a large club (about 170 members) and are very active in our local and the international community. I have news about it however it won't be official for a few weeks so this is all I can say for now. I have had the chance to work on projects that benefit our high school students, our foreign students that are in Georgia on scholarships, our club itself with better ways to streamline and deliver information, and certainly I have had my share of hours of rolling up my sleeves and do the manual labor work. I have enjoyed every minute of it. We have secured a matching grant in the amount of $65,000 USD (About $100,000 FJD) to work on infant mortality issues in Fiji. I am a part of a team that will take a group from Georgia to Fiji to visit the project site and plan other projects. Rotary can open the world up to your imagination for great service and great fun. How big can you dream?

Small business...

It is a new day. No matter what the results of the election for president, we were going to see change in America. We were going to break a stereotype and I find that invigorating! The president elect however, inherits a complex financial situation and that will take tremendous skill and savvy to resolve.

I have some hopes. I hope that we will move to more solar power and that is an area of the market that I have waited to see. I have hopes that we will find a solution to immigration so all the hard working immigrants that come to America can do so legally, without fear of deportation, and participate in America including education, taxes, small business, etc.. Do things the RIGHT way, just as my family did years ago.

I have some fears as well. I fear big government. I fear the dependency that the welfare state creates. I fear the government's ability to mandate behavior based on tax codes. I do not believe in the redistribution of wealth and I loathe class warfare. I am middle class. As I see it, the definition of middle class has become so small in order to fit into EITHER party's "freebies" and it changes by the moment. Therefore, I fear for my wallet/retirement/savings/small business. There is nothing wrong with me wanting to keep the money that I worked for and I don't desire to take someone else's income to make my lifestyle better. I want many opportunities for everyone to work and be rewarded for it!

And one more hope ... I hope that the new administration (that means everyone from the local people to the federal people) finds a better and more efficient way to use the money they do take! I hope that I, the small business person, am considered in the new financial solution... after all small business generates jobs for 85% of all working Americans!

Election 2008

I am doing everything that I can to NOT blog about the upcoming election. I have people close to me on both sides and I appreciate them for having opinions that I believe are derived from a combination of research and what they value most.

I did however come across an interesting quote and wanted to post it:

"“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”

~ Thomas Jefferson

As far as I am concerned BOTH the Republicans AND the Democrats are guilty of this.

and let me give another quote by perhaps the MOST influential of our founding fathers:

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

~ James Madison

Geek at heart...

This cartoon was on my door while I was in college with Midvale scratched out and replaced by the name of my university.

I went to perhaps the biggest geek university ever. When I was a freshman, my parents called to let me know that USA Today ran a story that for X University to attract its students to attend a football game on campus, they were giving away some game on disk. To the rest of the world this was funny. I wanted to know what game.

Fast forward many years and to this day I realize that the only thing that has changed is that I am older. On my desk sit TWO iphones. Of course I don't subscribe to AT&T so one is a functional unlocked iphone, the other I have spent countless hours trying to unlock. Guess what I just started to do AGAIN? I am afraid that I accidentally fried it. Ug.

I get excited when Apple releases new Macs. I have had... Oh My God, that is a big number, let's just say more Macs then dogs and I have had a lot of dogs. I sell my old ones on Ebay. I have had .... Oh My God, another big number ipods. Meanwhile I drive a car that is nine years old. It is a very nice vehicle but most people don't drive a car that old. I replace my Mac more frequently then I replace brakes in my car.

Very funny that I am a roofer isn't it? I am always amused when someone makes what I consider an interesting observation about me. Once at Starbucks, a woman was chatting with me and asked what I do. After I told her she commented "I don't know a lot of roofers that carry Kate Spade bags". Good one. I was at a walk through and one of the roof consultants noticed my iphone. Not standard in construction you understand. Ultimately I suppose that you can take the girl out of geek school but I guess you can never take the geek out of the girl.

sad...

First off, shame on me, I started this blog on Saturday while getting my hair done in NYC and couldn't get my iphone to post anything except the title of "sad" and today I get a call from a friend worried about me. I am sorry!

Lets go back to Saturday.

My sister got me a color and cut appointment at "the" salon in NYC through her fashion photography network. What this means in reality is that I was going to pay through my nose for a haircut. OK, I am game.

I don't like normal chit chat gossip. I hardly ever follow celebrity stuff unless they are mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. I don't get excited about the demise of other people. I do talk with and about my friends and personal situations but not in a way that is harmful or destructive. When I am put into that position, it is clear that I am very uncomfortable.

While I am at the salon, I have my wedding and engagement rings on my right hand. I am wearing them as after the hair appointment, I am going to the diamond district to break them into pieces and turn them into other jewelry. This is a huge move for me and the last item left over from a terrible marriage.

It was as if sharks smelled blood in the water.

"Are you married?"
no
"Sorry, I just noticed your wedding rings"
I am divorced
"Oh, I see... well no worries you are young, you can find someone else"
(this is where I give them the eye in the mirror)
"they are beautiful rings"
***sigh*** (and I have no reading material so I can't ignore them forever)
... I give in... My former father in law started his career at Cartier and made them for me
"Really, so he was great but his son wasn't?"
Yes, he is a great man and these were the last items he made before he had eye surgery and can not work any more.
"Oh"
His son was a bad man.
"well at least you got the rings"
only because I pre nuped them and because they were in my safe in my office when he broke into the house to try to steal them.
"my God"

I can't go on. You get the point. There is more and for those of you who are familiar with my marrige, you can imagine. This goes on for what feels like forever. In reality it probably lasted around 15 minutes.

I don't like to talk about it. I talk to some people about it. I didn't even really talk to my sister about it. This puts a cloud over me.

Fast forward a few hours and we are in the diamond district. I take off the rings and my sister has to help me to give the jewelers direction as to what to do. I start to cry. Right there. I haven't cried about my marriage in 1.5+ years. Here goes the only nice thing that anyone relating to and including my husband ever did for me and I am tearing down all this work.

In the past few weeks, I have realized that I still carry baggage around with me. I said something mean to my sweetheart that wasn't about him at all. I apologized for it but what I did was wrong and was a result of my lashing out at the past. I saw my ex walking and felt like such a small idiot for marrying him. I got upset at a hairdresser for being nosey. I cried when I broke apart "the rocks". Jesus, how long does this last? I am in a whole new place in my life! I have a new (old) home, new friends, new dogs, an amazing new man, heck I even have a new "look"!

Saturday I was in a sad strange place.

I am glad that it is Monday.

Would you believe me if I told you they still had not paid???

This cartoon sums up the way I started my day yesterday.

I came in to my office yesterday in the am and received an email from the same General Contractor in the blog of three weeks ago saying they did not have current insurance certificates and won't pay until they get said certs. OK, they got the first set in FEBRUARY, the second set in June (policy renewed on 7/1) third set in AUGUST and Fourth set in SEPTEMBER. Now remember this is for a job that is $6,600 ~ TINY compared to our average job! That was all I needed to hear this time.

I did two things:

1. sent an email to my insurance company requesting the return receipts for each time they emailed a copy of the certs to said company

2. forwarded the email where they received the information multiple times.

THEN I brought out the big guns. I called the client. See I am a vendor for the same client so I know some of the fantastic staff that they have and they deserve to know how the GC they have hired hasn't been responsible to the vendors on the project. I told the client that although the GC was as nice as they could be they haven't paid the first dime on a four month old bill and have given me the same insurance certificate run around for months. Last iteration was three weeks ago and now the entire job is finished and I don't have the first dime.

I got an email this morning. The GC is cutting my check tomorrow. Of course, I won't believe it until I see it.

This is the part of the blog where I express how grateful I am. Grateful that we are 20 years old, well networked, and big enough to not have to WORK FOR GC'S THAT OFTEN! See the trick here is to realize they have already been paid by the client for my part of the work so they have been sitting on my pay for months without any kind of reasonable excuse. This is a small town and our paths will cross again, do you think that I will ever work with them again?

I guess that depends on how rough an economic ride we are on. I would rather fly off on my broom like Helga.

PS off to NYC for a few days so more blogs soon!

Afraid of the postman...

Hey another day of bragging before I begin:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081008113434.htm

Kudos to you Mark!!

Like many Americans, I fondly remember those post college days in my first "place". You know you lived in a space that you rented and it was either completely empty or full of furniture that was an eclectic mix of something that your parents had from 1970, something a friend didn't need any longer and/or something you build out of a combination of cinder blocks, duct tape, milk cartons and scrap wood. Lets face it, my place, like everyone else's, was haphazard but infinitely cool as it was my space.

Those were the days when your budget was crazy tight and you dreaded the day when the cable or phone bill arrived because if it was slightly higher then the last month, it would be ramen noodles the entire next week to keep you on budget.

Fast forward a few years, multiple hair colors, and new furniture and there is a new horror from the postman, the dreaded quarterly retirement account statement.

On my desk was the scary envelope. I found myself experiencing a mix of anxiety and excitement ~ was I the statistically anomaly who did not experience a 30%, 40% or 50% decline in portfolio value? Yea, right and I still dream about Santa Clause.

It is almost impressive how much I lost in the period ending 9/30/08 and we aren't even addressing the market tank of the past 10 days! My saving grace is that I have many many more years in the market and this will all work out by the time I retire. I am very sad for those who don't have that current luxury of time as I do. I am certainly going to have a more slim and trim retirement account in the short term, however I am not thankfully going to be consumed by Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater in spite of this Halloween like horror movie we call the stock market.

Knot or boulder?

Before I indulge, I first must brag... http://www.ajc.com/health/content/health/stories/2008/10/06/bikram_yoga_workout.html

Cool.

Kudos to Katherine and yes, kudos to Jenny as she is the one that makes Bikram Yoga Alpharetta possible.

Now, onto these dog gone roofer rantings du jour.

I have a knot in my stomach today. The stock market has been all over the map. When we had a "slight decline" (first day under 10,000) I actually got a little excited looking around for a good buy. Now I just feel sick.

Our market has just pulled out of a 1.5 yr decline. We are working on Q1 2009 backlog. We are just recovering. But for how long? Everyone else seems to be in a decline and we are recovering?

Today I am closing Q3 financials and wondering about the moving mark of the banking industry. What will it take and what are they looking for to renew my line of credit in six months? I know what my year end goals are but do they? I will call my banker and get a read of the expectations ... well hopefully I will get my banker and hopefully they are not busy with the FDIC. Six months ago I sold and purchased a home. With my 700+ credit score and 20%+ down I still had to haggle with the mortgage company. What will I have to do with our line of credit??

Meanwhile, in my last blog I mentioned that I had a rock thrown through my car window. OK it has been seven days and my car still sits at the dealership with no work done on it as I am fighting with my insurance company. Now my car is insured under the company policy although I personally own it. I also happen to be the insurance decision maker. I purchase the auto, work comp, general liability, umbrella, life, medical, etc insurance. This claim is under $4,000 and the insurance company wants to put parts in it so that the new window and the new interior door wont actually match the rest of the car so they only pay $1,100. OK, at what point does someone say, "hmmm... these pennies are going to cost us tens of thousands of dollars worth of business when the roofer moves her policies elsewhere?"

I am feeling a little... stressed today. The immediate future (market woes and insurance issues) are out of my hands. I am angry and I am worried. I can only react to the next set of actions from both the bank and from CNA. I feel like I have gotten customer "no service" from the government in this pork heavy bail out, definately no service from CNA, worried about Wall St., the credit crisis etc..

Today with this knot in my stomach, I feel the need for Bikram yoga, chocolate, and a good joke.

I think the link to the article above will at least inspire me to have a great Bikram class tonight.

You Can't Steal My Birthday...

I came back from lunch to find these on my desk! Believe me, the day didn't start this bright.

Today is my birthday. I was at M's house and when I left this am, I found that someone had thrown a rock through my car window and stole my gps. OK, so I took M's car home to get ready and take care of the dogs and then we waited about an hour back at his house for the police to show. By then it was light out and we got a good look at the damage. It was much worse then I originally thought. The rock was huge and was thrown so hard that it shattered the driver side window, hit the passenger door, bounced and landed back on the drivers seat. This guy was an olympic athete to hurl a rock that big, that hard!!! LOL! No one threatened me, it is just a gps that is lost and certainly there is damage but all that will be made right. That is why you carry insurance. So all inconvenient but no real harm done.

M was mad. He hated that this happened. He wanted to take me to lunch but I had an appointment to take my car in for service, etc. When I came back from lunch, these HUGE and Beautiful flowers were on my desk.

I got to stop and enjoy a second cup of coffee this am, a nice breeze on the way into work and can smell and see a georgeous floral arrangment. Weird but good day!

Statutory Limits on Ex...

It happened for the first time today. I suppose it was inevitable, you run into your ex somewhere. I know that in a perfect world, I would be able to tell you how emotionally healthy I am and I would be able to say that I felt nothing.



This is no perfect world.



I didn't actually have a run in with him, I just saw him and am under the impression that he did not see me. I was driving to a meeting and he was taking a walk. It was in a congested area where many cars pass at any given time.



I experienced a mix of humiliation and revulsion. He was wearing clothes and listening to an ipod that I recognized as I paid for them. In fact the sad and sick truth is that I was married as a financier and I married him so that I didn't have social pressure because I had never been married. There was nothing healthy to the relationship. Within 24 hours of the marriage, he was already taking my money to gamble.



Like a tapeworm, he was hard to get rid of as well. I asked him for months for marriage counseling and as he rejected any notions of my unhappiness, I asked for him to move out. He rejected this request as well. Finally, I changed the locks ~ a risky move but I had to get things going. Thanks to my extremely savvy lawyer, shortly thereafter I was divorced.



It would be very easy for me to say that I am angry because he used me so badly and was not even nice to me. In fact, his excuse for not getting me a card for our only wedding anniversary was that he was too busy playing blackjack the night before in Vegas and that didn't have time. But, it isn't about the money at all. In fact the money makes a very convenient social cover for the fact that I am humiliated by my choice. I could not have picked a worse choice. I was humiliated by his laziness, humiliated at the fact that I was a female married to a male who was the antithesis of my definition of a man. I was humiliated in the fact that he had no shame in me paying for the home we lived in, the car he drove, vacations, his condo, etc.. I was humiliated because I lied to friends and to family and told them that he wasn't the person that I knew he was because I was so embarrassed to be married to him. I was such a fool. To this day I am still so humiliated.



I will forever have court documents that show that I was married in November, 2005 and divorced in January, 2007. There is no statutory limit to that bond. I can not simply seal those records forever and learn and move on. I feel like I have a tattoo from another life.

Road Rage Recap...

I woke up today to local news reporting fights breaking out at gas stations because there is no gas to be found around Atlanta. I share in the same concern as every other Atlanta driver as I need gasoline as well. I had to wait in line and expect that I will do so again in the next few days. This concerns me as I am a recient road rage recipient.

Something interesting does happen when we get behind the wheel. I got so frustrated spending 1.5hr in my car commuting to work every morning that during this downturn in the housing market, I sold my house and moved to a house half the size for twice the price. I can't emphasize how much this has reduced my stress level. I am no longer angry when I am behind the wheel. It is just astonishing that while in a comfortalbe sitting position enjoying good music or listening to something interesting we can just fly wildly off the handle over an insignificant moment of what, someone going too fast, too slow, etc.?

Sadly, I might be the only person in the metro Atlanta area that is NOT angry behind the wheel (note: this is a recient event thanks to my move as I am very experineced with anger behind the wheel).

Case and point.

I was driving to my hair appointment two Saturdays ago on a lovely almost fall morning. Everything was going well until I had to make a left turn at a light, into a shopping center. I was behind a woman in a sedan who was obviously afraid to turn left. Each opportunity she had to turn, instead of actually turning, she would inch out further into the intersection until finally, she was at a 90 degree angle to me and blocking one of the incoming lanes of traffic. As I sat in my mid size suv and can see every opportunity she has to turn, I finally decided that if she doesn't get out of the lane of incoming traffic, someone will hit her and she will then spin into my car. So two more opportunities come and go and I decide to honk. Now I honked, I did NOT lay on the horn, wave my arms wildly or make obscene gestures.

Guess what, it worked! She turned and shortly thereafter I did as well and proceeded around to the building where I had my appointment. As I was gather my things and getting out of the car it happened ...

"Excuse me" ~ I turned to see an early 20 something woman in the drivers seat of the car next to me who had the left turn problem. "Yes". She proceeded to ask me what the *&%(@ my problem was. I told her that she put herself into a dangerous situation and if she were to be hit, I would be hit as well. She asked what my rush was and what in the heck was wrong with me. Again, I reiterated that my priority was to not be in a car accident. Then, she threw down the gauntlet and said "well you are just a bitch".

Now this could go a few ways but I have learned that sticking to the facts usually wins an argument. And after all she is 20 something, an age where logic is still a mystery. So I responded:

"I may be a bitch, but you are still unsafe. Learn to drive"

Then she killed a bird in my honor. Classy lady.

Pay your flippin' bill...

So, today is one of the days that I think construction is not so much fun.

Sometimes I have the duty to call upon clients for payment. I particularly hate this duty when I act as a subcontractor. Thankfully, it is VERY rare that I am a sub.

So my blood pressure is at a boil as I pull the file for a client that is 90 days late. This BP number climbs a little bit more when I review the fact that it is a PITHY amount that they owe and that the real client is a FORTUNE 500 company WITH PLENTY of cash. ***breathe*** So I compose yet another email of the facts and send it off to everyone and every one's mom. Sadly, the job isn't bonded so I can request bonding information.

I might as well have called up the pope and asked for a little pardon on my divorce. (oh yea, great stuff for another blog moment)

And in the middle of my fierce little fingers flying across the keyboard, said client calls in response to my "toned down from what I really think" email. I realize that taking that call is actually unwise as perhaps I might say something brilliant like "oh yea well you're a booger eater!!" (really washed out as in construction what I would truly say would look something more like this You *#&(@#&% fu*)$)$#) sh$#()&%)$ as()#&)&$@%) etc.. and thus where is the fun in typing all those characters instead of the real thing?)

Am I a chicken or have I actually achieved the rare ability to realize when you have to compose yourself?

I am leaning to chicken as I still want to call them a bunch of &#%@(#&@%(#%^)@#%^)...