Arrived in the Mail

After seeing Martin Short on TV recently, I went to Amazon and bought a used copy of his memoirs called "I Must Say" -- after his Ed Grimley character. I read the first few pages where he talks about how Ed came to be. When he and his wife had a fight, she would ask to speak to Ed who was the kinder, wiser version of Martin. He would talk to her as Ed and they'd sort out their problem and the character built from there. It was a very sweet story.

The other surprising thing is when I opened the book, it's autographed by Martin. There is a bookplate in there with his signature on it... all that from a used Amazon copy! I bet no one noticed.

Trying (successfully) to make me jealous

Those two mean girls, Fran and Mary, felt obliged to make me jealous by bragging about their beauty routine followed by Red Lobster. God, do I want a lobster taco!

Fran says:

Not only are we beautiful with plucked eyebrows lips and chins, but we are at Red Lobster. I'm now trying to snatch a  warm cheddar biscuit from Mary, who obviously plans to eat all of them before her lobster taco lunch..

So far, so good

Guillermo the gardener was due here at 11-30. He called at 11:32 to say he was on his way and would be there in 10 minutes, which he was. He checked everything out, gave me a reasonable quote, asked me if there were any colors I didn't want (orange -- I tend to go for pinks and purples) and he's coming back on Saturday at noon to do the job.

No word from gardener #1.

Critical Updates

Despite Barbara's advice (see comment in previous post) which I actually hadn't seen, I posted to Thumbtack which is where Marilyn gets her clients. I decided I want a place where you can give feedback. So I posted the job last night, was told by email I'd get 3-5 quotes, got one, and I just called the guy-- Guillermo -- who is coming to take a look tomorrow at 11:30.

Book: I'm about 100 pages in, really enjoying it, but one problem is the book is so small and thick it's hard to hold in one hand... but the story is engrossing.

Madoff Obsession: I'm watching the second special on HBO starring Robert DeNiro as Madoff.

Is this now normal?

This happens to me way too often it seems so I'm wondering maybe this is the norm these days. I contacted a gardener to come do winter clean up and plant in my garden. Contacted him last weekend and he responded... told me he was too busy all week to come, but he could come on Saturday. Fine... we selected a time of between 1 and 2 pm today... and, of course, he was a no-show. No word from him.

I haven't yet decided if I contact him and give him another chance... such a tough call. I remember complaining once about a handyman and my friend said, "Well, at least you got someone to show up." I don't get why they advertise if they don't really want the business.

Right now, I'm leaning toward not contact him and moving on with someone else. I had the same woman two years in a row who I liked, but last year, she did 1/2 of the job and then disappeared... radio silence for 3-4 weeks... finally I emailed her and said I was going to contact my credit card company to dispute the charge and she contacted me with some sob story that I don't even remember... no, it wasn't like someone died... just hectic this and crazy that... so she came to finish the job and claimed she gave me "extra" because of her screw up but I didn't want to go through that again.

Sigh, sigh, sigh... ok, I know this is a First World Problem that my gardener didn't show up, but still...

What I'm Reading

Based on a Twitter recommendation by Stephen King, I bought the first book in a trilogy... this is called Natchez Burning and it's a suspense novel about a murder. When it arrived -- Barbara came for lunch and she brought in my mail which included this book -- and the package looked like two books but I knew I'd only bought one... and it's three inches thick in paperback.

It reminded me of my snobby childhood reaction to kids complaining how many pages exactly a book was that they had to read... and as an avid reader, I always thought the longer the better... so I had to check and this one is 865 pages. A cover blurb by Stephen King says once you start, you can't put it down -- I hope that's the case.

As for lunch, Barbara and I rarely depart from certain set menus -- scrambled eggs and bacon is one; lobster rolls is one; burgers is one. Today we went medium cheeseburgers with cheddar cheese and a shared order of fries. Yum. Hadn't had a burger in weeks.

Oh, I forgot -- we have a fourth menu choice: BLTs, hers on rye toast, mine on white toast.

My Little Anecdote of the Day

Today a client asked me how a certain process was going that we'd set up. I typed "easy flow from my end" and thought "this sounds as if I have diarrhea" so I deleted and wrote it another way.