Wednesday, April 29, 2009

I Can't FREAKING Believe This! I need a drink.

I closed on my townhouse today. Yay. Yippee. Or it would be if it wasn't such a freaking unbelievable day and I wasn't losing so much money. One of the items that I agreed to fix was the HVAC since I had a warranty covering the house. The contractor came out last Friday to look at it since it was the first day over 70 degrees. As it turned out, a large and expensive part needed to be order but they needed the warranty company's approval first. Ok, no prob. So the contractor called and called and called, all they ever got was a lot of hold music that lead to voicemail. Meanwhile, I'm calling and calling and calling to deal with another issue with the warranty, and all I got was the same crappy music and voicemail. Today I close, and the contractor still couldn't get hold of the company. Ryan got mad at me cuz I'm not doing enough to figure out how much we would have to pay if the warranty didn't pay for all of it.... granted I've must have at least logged dozens and dozens of calls with this company at this point. I gave him all the numbers... since at this point I can rattle of the top of my head ... and I'm dyslexic with numbers. He calls back saying that he got the same thing as me... but he Googled the company and this is what he found:
Wall Street Journal Article
WTF! It was dated this Monday! Yesterday I was able to get through to someone at least once... and now their phone lines are disconnected. I spent a good amount of the gov't money today calling my realtor, the HVAC contractor, my credit card company, etc. Hopefully Discover will credit me back what I paid for the warranty contract... that's a lot of money!! This means that I'm out of a home warranty, and I have to pay for the HVAC repair out of pocket, AND I have to buy the new owner of the house another warranty. What a sucky sucky situation... only for Ryan and I really. The buyer is getting a sweet deal.

We closed anyhow. I had the contractor draw up a quote for parts and labor, and I just gave the buyer the money. I told them that's it, I'm done. I'm not dealing with this any longer. Sigh...

THEN, as I was driving to settlement, I heard about THIS on the radio. This was my high school. What is wrong with kids these days?!

Oh, and then I heard that there are possibly 6 cases of the Swine Flu in MD... all of which in the Anne Arundel and Baltimore County area. Wonderful.

I wish I drank.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Swine Flu

I'm sure everyone has heard about the outbreak of the Swine Flu. Apparently, the Jewish community in Israel wants the name to change because pork is not kosher. Pork isn't eaten in both Judism and the Islam religion since they consider it to be dirty. So what do they want to change the name to? Mexican Flu. I'm sure that's going to go over well and not cause even more racism and stereotyping.

It's called the Swine Flu because 50% of the make up of the strain is the same one that pigs get. I think it's appropriate that it should be called that. And since they consider pork to be filthy, shouldn't it be even more appropriate that a disease that's killing people be named that... instead after a race and culture?

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Georgia On My Mind

Over the weekend, Ryan, Daisy and I met up with his parents and their dogs at Virginia International Raceways for a track weekend. Ryan and his dad each had one beginner student and they drove their Corvette, Ryan's mom actually signed up to drive in the beginners group on Sunday. I just chilled with the puppies since the weather was so gorgeous.

From Georgia

Here's Cubby enjoying the car ride. That's bliss.


We've been in Georgia for the past few days and was supposed to be on our way home tomorrow... but I think we'll stay another day... maybe. I miss my kitties. Lily is here and I missed her, she is still the same. The most affectionate cat I have ever met. After all these times coming to Atlanta, we've never made it to the aquarium, so finally we went today. It's much better than the Baltimore one, but even on a Tuesday it was crowded!