nlbarber

It's the weekend for GaFilk, my local filk con, and the only con I regularly go to. I missed last year as I was helping cope with my father's health problems, so it's good to be back. The crowd seems a little smaller than usual--guess that's somewhat a reflection of hard economic times, and perhaps some of weather.

( Cut for those not interested in cons, filk, etc... )

After the concert, mbernardi pumpkined. I wandered into the con suite for a while, came back to the main filk room to see that the open filking, as usual, was slow to form--lots of general socializing happens first, especially on the first night. I decided to retire to my room and perhaps come down later...but ended up getting absorbed on the Internet (curse you, mbernardi , I grabbed 4 new apps for my iPod!) and stayed up too late without even the excuse of listening to filk.

Last week summary: meet with contractors, try to get back into work after close to 2 weeks off.

I met with 4 contractors, 3 recommended by my architect (though she hasn't actually worked with one of them), and the other a contact through my sister-in-law. I ended up asking all of them to bid the job--I was aiming for 3, thinking that one would drop out because of scheduling, or that I'd have a negative reaction to one of them. I liked 2 of them a good bit, in terms of the impression they made (for what good that does me for picking a competent contractor), one made a good impression but just seemed young and with less experience running his own firm. The fourth was the type that doesn't let you finish a sentence and spent some time telling me "I don't think you want to pay for that" (re: lots of job supervision)--which is not completely true. I'm willing to pay some extra for good supervision of the subs and other workers, but not some premium price for someone to sit there all day every day. She didn't seem to put the weight on "taking care of the customer's home and belongings" that I'd like. But she's experienced and "bottom line oriented", so the bid should be a good marker.

Most of them want to come back with some of their subs before preparing a bid--the one who didn't climbed into the attic and determined that the wall to be removed is load-bearing and the roof trusses change direction there. Let's add some $$$ to the basic idea of what this kitchen renovation will cost.

In between contractor interviews, I think I got in a couple of days of work. Sort of.

This week is database testing in Denver: the weekend was spent at GaFilk. (More on that later.) And now I seem to have a cold--probably picked it up at GaFilk or even earlier, as the incubation time is too short to have gotten it on the packed airplane out. I will try not to give this to any of my fellow testers...