Frankly, I'd rather have the stained glass.

Friday at last, TGIF. Man, what a long week.

I’ve had rehearsal for the show every night except Wednesday. Bill and I had plans to go out to eat that night, but of course my boss needed me to stay late. Yep, my one night off and I have to put in overtime. I was not happy. First off, it creates a mess in regards to getting home… the trains don’t run often to my stop and taking one other than my regular train means a lot of waiting at the station. Second, since Bill and I drive together to the station parking lot and he didn’t have a key to the car, he had to walk two miles home. Third, I wanted my night off, dammit.

I finally got home at 7:45pm. Bill has psgettis waiting. Yum. (Even if the house really reeked of garlic.)

Afterwards, I really needed to go out and buy some make-up. No, I’m not a drag queen. In the show I’m doing, my character is supposed to be something of a spoof on Boy George, so hence, I need some make-up. I actually have some collected from all the shows I’ve done in the past, but the stuff is so old that I’m a little afraid to slap it on my face. So Bill and I ventured out to Wal-Mart, perused the make-up aisles and got some very odd looks from the other shoppers.

Afterwards, we stopped at the place we were supposed to eat dinner at for some dessert instead.

Oh. My. GOD. Soooo delicious. I love crepes, and if you do too, you must go to this place. It’s new and kind of a strange combo (an Italian-named restaurant with a Greek owner serving French food), but they do a great job. I’m hoping they make a go of it and stick around.

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As far as the weekend goes, the show opens Saturday at 2pm, and then we’re off to bbq with some friends from bowling (Miguel & Rob). Sunday is sort of repeat… show at 2pm, then off to my brother’s place (yes, I actually have a brother) for a celebration of my dad’s 74th birthday (last Wednesday), Father’s Day (Sunday) and my birthday (Monday). I haven’t seen my brother’s place yet, so it should be interesting. A few years back, he bought a very small, formerly summer-only cottage on Coventry Lake outside of Hartford and has been working on the place since.

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Speaking of working on the house, would you believe we’re still trying to get our bathroom addition project off the ground? We’ve had horrible luck just getting pricing, never mind getting work underway.

We started with our regular carpenter…a great guy, but you just can’t light a fire under this guy’s a$$. We’ve been trying to get a quote from him since January. When we didn’t have anything on May 1 (other than about 16,000 excuses), we started looking elsewhere.

Quote number one was quickest… he got back to us in just over a week. Of course, he wanted $687 per square foot for the job, which is so ridiculous it nearly made me laugh out loud. It was clear he was high-balling the job because he didn’t really want the work… I’d rather he just said so instead of insulting us with an estimate that’s a joke.

Sidebar: This led me to create a list of a few things that cost $600/square foot:

* the world’s finest slate roofing, installed;
* religious/church-quality custom-made stained glass;
* a direct waterfront villa on Lake Como in Italy;
* a high-end quality new home in Palo Alto, CA, one of the most expensive suburbs in the US;
* rent of first-floor, direct-street-access retail space on 5th Avenue in New York City.

Amazingly, a small bathroom addition in Norwalk, CT wasn’t on the list. Hmmm. Anyway…

Quote number two took six weeks. We had high hopes with this one because the guy was a nice guy and very thorough – perhaps too much so – and seemed really psyched to do the job. He finally came back at $470 per square foot, which is only borderline ridiculous. True, it sounds like he does really nice work… but we just can’t spend that kind of money on our house. The neighborhood doesn’t support $470/square foot of anything.

Quote number three never arrived… I thought the contractor was just blowing us off. Amazingly, he called yesterday and asked if I had a chance to review his quote and if I had any questions. Yeh, I have questions… like, “what quote?” for example. So I spoke to him today, told him I never got the mysterious quote and asked him to re-send. Keeping my fingers crossed on this one… he said he’d really like to do the work. Then again, he hasn’t even been inside the house… he’s just based everything off our plans.

* * * * *

That’s it for today, kids. You have yourselves an awesome weekend.

Tschuss.