Nuthin’ but an H thang, Baybay…

Adam just called to let me know that he picked up his Escape from the body shop. “Looks like new,” he said. It sounds like they did a great job removing all traces of hail damage, so I’m excited for my Sweet Thang.

Here’s how the insurance claim on the Escape shook out:

• Repairs paid for by the insurance company: $6,250
• Our out-of-pocket expenses: $450 for rental car and deductible

Not too bad in comparison, huh? It sucks to have to fix things and shell out $450 but it’d suck far worse without insurance.

As for the claim on our house/yard from this same storm, we spoke to our adjuster again on Monday and things are moving along pretty well. Less our deductible, they will be paying to correct the following items:

• roof – replacing shingles on entire roof
• gutters – replacing all the downspouts
• basement window – replacing entire broken window
• fence – repainting one side
• siding – repainting entire house
• deck – repairing a few boards, power-washing and repainting entire deck
• yard furniture/personal property – replacing with cash value
• air conditioning unit – repairing with a comb-out of the hail-dinged vent
• walkout door screen – replacing

I think that’s…all.

From what I understand of the claims process, the adjuster will depreciate the roof and give us a portion of the replace/repair cost upfront. Upon completion, they’ll kick us a check for the remainder. We hired a contractor for the roof and gutters but we need to find someone to take care of the painting and window replacement. I have a couple of leads for contractors on those fronts, so I can only hope everything will be tied up by the end of July (lest another storm comes through…*peeks at the sky*).

Here’s how our weekend sped right by us:

• Friday night, Cath and the kids came over and we pigged out at Buca. We came back to our place and played in the backyard until all of us were ready to pass out. The kids are getting so big!
• Saturday morning, we slept in and then I dragged Adam to Bally’s with me. We hit up Caribou after and then checked out a garage sale. Adam didn’t want to fight traffic at Back to the 50’s, so we lunched at home instead. We picked up some wine and headed to Inver Grove Heights for AJ’s grad party. After I ate way too much cake and slurped down a FABULOUS margarita, we drove back toward home for AdamV and Dena’s party. It was lovely! We hung out on the deck for a bit until a small rain shower chased us indoors. After a few moments, it cleared and we headed back out to sit around the fire. S’mores were had. Adam made me a very small Mojito, which was delicious. On sugar overload, I didn’t sleep well.
• Sunday morning, I actually went to Bally’s again…I needed to burn off all that I ate on Friday and Saturday. We took it pretty easy after that. Adam cleaned the catboxes and messed around with his Tron machine while I did laundry. We went shopping to pick up a gift for Audra and Donnie’s shower and Evan’s upcoming birthday. I put on a dress and we drove over to my mom’s. She’d brought home a whole bunch of gifts from Japan for Chrissy’s shower. We packed them up and drove over to Mancini’s for Audra’s shower. Dinner was more crazy-fun than I can even tell you.

That was our weekend in Fast Forward. Someone hit the Pause button, please.

This weekend might kill me, it’s so bizzie!

To kick it off, tonight we’ll be meeting up with Adam’s friend Cathy and her brood at Buca. It’s always fun to see how much the kids have grown in just a year. They take a crazy trip across the country every summer to visit family and friends and we’re privileged to be accounted for in their long list of stops.

As for Saturday, the MSRA Back to the 50’s extravaganza is taking place on the State Fair grounds and Adam wants to go. Hopefully we’ll make it – I haven’t been to that show since the late 90’s, myself. At 3pm, my Uncle Matt is holding a graduation party for my cousin AJ. I think he’s the final cousin on that side of my family to graduate high school. Later in the evening, AdamV and Dena are having a huge bash at their place. I’m totally going to rule Lawn Darts.

On Sunday morning, I fully expect to be recovering from Saturday. I might even get a workout in (ha, who am I kidding?). That evening, we’re meeting up with more of my family at Mancini’s in lovely St. Paul for my sister’s wedding shower.

Wow, the weekend hasn’t even begun and I feel like it’s over…at least the following weekend will be more mellow. Maybe.

Once again, I managed to poison myself with a home improvement project.

Adam and I worked our tails off on Saturday, ripping out the old master bathroom. We started on the shower doors, which readily came off, and then hammered the tile off the walls. The wood trim was pried off as were any outstanding fixtures. The sheetrock was next. The mold became evident at this point toward the bottom of the sheetrock…but it wasn’t until we got a good gander at the insulation that things really got interesting.

In an attempt to make the shower larger, we removed the sheetrock from the ceiling (only the portion directly above the shower area). In doing so, we realized that there was nothing behind the sheetrock – it went all the way up into the joists of the attic. And what do you find in the joists of the attic??? INSULATION! Dirty, moldy insulation fell down all around us from the attic. Wearing masks and goggles, we cleaned it up and hauled it outside to the rent-a-dumpster. Adam stapled polyurethane to the ceiling boards framing the top of the shower area to bar anymore insulation from falling down. I was already coughing.

We continued to remove sheetrock from the remainder of the room. More black, moldy insulation was to be found on the exterior wall of the bathroom. Again, we removed it and hauled it outside. More coughing accompanied by furious sneezing.

Finally, Adam ripped the shower pan out and I removed sheetrock nails from the furring. With a little more cleanup, we were pretty much done. It was the end of the day and I felt miserable. I couldn’t breathe well, my throat was really sore and my sinuses were killing me. We were both hungry, so we showered, changed and took the quick trip over to Doolittle’s for dinner on the patio (where we could breathe fresh air). The food was very welcome and it did make me feel a bit better. We went home and crashed, but not before I took another Allegra.

Sunday morning, I woke up feeling like I had the flu. My eyes were runny, my throat was on fire and my sinuses were painfully plugged. I slammed another Allegra, which didn’t help. After a couple hours, I took Sudafed. This dried me out quite a bit, but did nothing for my sinus pain. Soooo, I took some Ibuprofen too. All drugged up, I began to feel decent enough to go over to my Daddio’s for supper. We had a great time with him and even got to see my Uncle Todd for awhile.

Monday morning, I woke up with a much less sore throat. My sinuses weren’t happy yet, but at least the overall situation had improved some. I toughed it out at the office until 2:30, when Charley and I met for about 10 minutes and he kicked me out and told me to work from home. My runny eyes and nose must’ve grossed him out. I took a Benadryl and slept a lot that night.

Tuesday morning, I woke up with very runny, swollen eyes. My throat was feeling much better and my sinuses were hurting less, so that was good. However, I decided to work from home to spare the general public from the fright that was my face. I iced my eyes on and off for a few hours and by 1pm, things were looking up. Stupid allergies.

As for this morning, I still have some slight symptoms: minor sore throat, nose a bit plugged, one eye a tiny bit swollen and runny. You know, I’m sure we’ll really enjoy our new bathroom when it’s done…but as usual, I underestimated the human toll.

TGIF, people. This has been a tough week.

My energy has been tapped. My stomach has not been nice to me. Why do I insist on cheating on my diet? My neck has a kink in it. I sucked at working out last night with Corina. I feel fat. At work, I’m waiting on 2 contracts that STILL haven’t come in as promised. And to top it all off, I’m out of Diet Coke this morning! ARRRGH!

Okay, that’s quite enough of that. I’m happy the weekend is here. Adam and I will probably resume tearing out the rest of the master bathroom tonight and I’m anxious to get that rolling again. The AmFam “team of trained experts” will be here tomorrow morning to give us an estimate for the hail damage on the house – our chosen contractor will be here too, to keep them honest. And then I get to see my Daddio on Sunday.

On a funny note, Adam took his car in for repair from the hail damage and they gave him the only “loaner” they had left: a 2008 Ford Cargo Van, in ghastly white, sans windows. I LOL’ed once when he told me about it on the phone and again when I saw it looming in the driveway. I can always count on Adam to cheer me up whether he means to or not=)

Normally when I see a spam email, I’m pretty quick to delete it. This one caught my eye because of the way they misspelled Viagra…when I pronounced it in my mind, it sounded much like sangria:

Vagria and Calias pills may help you.
We also have many more things in our store!
Now. Visit us now.

I’d like to see what they’d do to “Propecia.”

Last week, I went to the dentist and received wonderful news: we’re ready to have my New Teef made!

I was able to preview the wax mock-up of what my New Teef will look like. I tried to picture my smile in the “after” state and had a difficult time. The current impression was available, so I held the two up next to each other – they were entirely disparate. How can I visualize such a change to my smile when I’ve lived with my current teef for so long?

In preparation, Dr. Smith contoured my teef and then took several (yucky, gooey) impressions. The impressions were sent to the lab for processing and when they arrive back at Dr. Smith’s office, they’ll be sending them to a Lumineers lab in Santa Maria, California. My Lumineers will be arriving sometime in late June. He was able to get me an appointment on July 2nd to have them installed!! I’m bursting at the seams with anticipation. And yes, I’ll post some before and after photos, as requested.

Linda recently emailed me a great quote from the book The Photographer’s Eye:

“It’s as though there’s a wonderful secret in a certain place and I can capture it. Only I, at this moment, can capture it, and only this moment and only me.” – Walker Evans

On the way to work, I realized that I forgot my iPod. I was completely bummed, as listening to it on my ride in to the office is a part of my morning ritual. I couldn’t find anything palatable on the radio, so I dug around in my glovebox to see if I had a straggler CD hiding in there. It just so happened that there was a CD in there…but it wasn’t my CD. In bright pink marker, someone wrote “Happy Birthday! Oct ‘03″ on the front. My guess is that it belonged to the former owner of my car. I popped it into the player and a whole lotta hiphop from 2003 came blaring out of my speakers. I rocked that CD all the way to work.

Karma is clearly on my side today.

Brian was a huge help to us this weekend.

We’ve had a condensation problem in our attic for a few months now. It’s caused a few stains on the ceiling in the living room and two bedrooms. BWEM (Brian, Wendy, Evan and Maya) came down on Thursday night so that Brian could fix some of the issues. He and Adam worked like crazy on Friday and Saturday and accomplished a ton.

As for Wendy, the kids and me, we went shopping on Saturday morning and ended up with new shoes! Our trip to DSW was successful: Wendy settled on a gorgeous pair of dressy black sandals and I bought a new pair of patent leather black and tan Impo heels. Unfortunately, DSW doesn’t carry kids’ shoes. We tried Kohl’s with no luck, and then Target, where Maya found some cute pink strappy sandals.

So, thanks again to Brian for all of your hard work crawling around our attic for 2 days. We appreciate it so much. To Wendy and the kids, thank you for giving up half of your weekend to help us out! Love you guys!