stx today,comments

Jeez Charlotte, I didn't think about that. 2nd opinion? Hubby already did that.

well just got home from a very quiet airport and realized that since we bought the house in 2000 this will be the first time i've ever been here by myself,odd

Trw, don't feel like you are "by yourself"...you have many friends on this board and you will be amazed at how free you will feel not having anyone to answer to, not having to worry about meals being cooked at certain times, not having to make the bed if you don't want to, watching what YOU want on tv and renting the movies that the "other" would not watch in a million years....totally enjoy your new found freedom this next week and treat yourself to a massage on the beach and anything else you might enjoy! Have fun and relax on your days off...

Charlotte

The sun is finally up and it appears to be a heavy cloud day on STX. I find myself wondering why the weather has been so different this year? I have heard about this thread for some time, but do not think I ever followed it. With lots of time, I read the 26 pages. Delightful!

Today will be an office day. I rather like those as they are grounding. After being in an office for even five hours, the island looks so much greener, the water more blue and coming home, I usually notice every new blossom at my house. I am very conscious today of how gray my life was following an accident, and just by living, I have ended up in such a wonderful place to be. In the first few years, I wasn't sure that surviving the accident was such a good thing, I should have had more faith.

Life is good today, I feel good today except for some pain that is creeping back. I think I'll just ignore it.

Time to go and play office when I think I would rather play with orchids. Oh, well. It is what it is, and how I do trust the process.

"Put one foot in front of the other and you will get where you are going" -Robert McCammon, 'The Bag Lady" in Swan Song. Wonderful read.

Best to all,

Dan

Hi Dan,

I miss you.

well the day job called at 520pm and asked if i could be there in a half hour to work,i said sure,so i go in thinking they will have me be a food runner or wait assistant because i know nothing about how the night shift operates,lol i get there and they give me a tux shirt and micros card and put me in my own section, so i fake it,lol oh yes that item is wonderful and you can follow it up with a nice armanac and something chocolate,hahahaha i must have faked it pretty good because they want me back tomorrow night

hey, trw... if the tips are good enough, maybe you can quit your day job! lol

My day started off well, waking up on the Parrothead out at Buck Island. A nice brunch with friends on the boat before coming back into Green Cay. Then headed home to meet with a contractor who came by my house to check into some settling cracks for me to see how serious they were. End result is that the concrete poured for the post and beam structural portions of the house had too much water added and it is crumbling and it all has to be replaced. That may mean just jackhammering out one corner, column or beam at a time and reforming and pouring them... or it may mean taking off the roof, knocking down all the walls, and rebuilding from the floor up. It will take more studying to figure out if anything can be salvaged or if that would be counter-productive. The slab and cistern are solid. Woo hoo. So now I get to go after the guy who built the house and the concrete supplier to cover at least some of the very large price tag involved in reconstruction. I should gain all kinds of information along the way that will be helpful to others down the road. Sucks for me, though.

ok Alexandra but here are some questions about your house thing, how long ago did you buy it? was it inspected at the time?is there a time limit involved? i ask because when we sold the house in minnesota the woman who bought the place had exactly one year from the time of closing to come after us if anything inspected at the time of sale messed up,i'm curious as to the process down here. and yes i got to work today and they want me for the next 6 nights,jeez when it rains money it pours and you can't say no during high season because then they won't ask again, LOL i saw amy up close today and my dear she is freckled,hahahah

trw - I bought the house nearly 3 years ago from the guy who finished building it (the slab and cistern were in and parts of the walls were up when he bought it). He is recently deceased. He carried the contract when I bought it, and now his widow is his heir. From what the contractor found under the plaster skim coat, it is clear that the guy knew he was plastering over failing concrete supports and he definitely never disclosed that to me as the buyer. The purchase contract called for him to disclose anything he knew about the property condition that I couldn't readily see on my own. His widow and estate, plus the concrete supplier if she can come up with the receipts, would be the ones who have liability for the problems. The contractor who evaluated the problem for me is 99% sure he knows which concrete supplier the product came from due to the kind of rocks, etc. in the mix. Apparently this supplier has a bunch of outstanding lawsuits for similarly poor concrete quality.

For years I've been telling people who are building houses here to beware of the concrete that gets poured into their walls and beams and roofs as I've been told by multiple general contractors that some of the concrete companies here often water it down to thin it to pour easier once it gets to the site and that weakens the concrete. Since this house was already built before I bought it, I couldn't really chisel into the walls and find this out 3 years ago. Also, its location is close enough to the concrete plants that this shouldn't have ever happened. The trucks should have arrived at the site with plenty of working time remaining to pour the concrete without thinning it down with water or even a need for the acceptable additives that lengthen working time for concrete. When they water down concrete for the structural elements of a house, it should be criminal IMHO, as it's only a matter of time before the concrete will fail. If you're just pouring a patio slab, it's not as crucial as it probably isn't going to result in your roof falling in on you sometime or your walls collapsing during a windstorm.

Home Inspectors are somewhat liable for defects in the house that they should have been able to detect during the inspection. Bad concrete hidden behind a plaster skim coat isn't readily apparent until it fails enough for the plaster to start cracking.

The real kicker is that this house was originally designed to be a 2-story house but it was completed as a 1-story instead. Had they put a second story on top of these weakened support columns, it would have been a catastrophe before now.

We just put in a new drainfield last week and I've done a bunch of other renovations to the property in the last 6 months or so with others scheduled in the near future. Those are on hold now, of course. What a pain in the backside.

Yet another "buyer beware" story, especially when buying a house from an owner/builder rather than one built through an outside general contractor.

Doug and JJ went home to St. Croix today and I am still here in Virginia. There are still a few things I need to do here for mom. I was a huge baby about it and cried so hard that Doug was going to cancel his flight. I have never been away from JJ. He is very happy to be back on his island so I think it was a good decision for them to go back. I talked to him tonight and he told me that all the animals missed me and I had to come home very soon. He made me pinky swear and that is serious stuff. He also told me how to get home. He said I had to go to the airport in Norfolk and take 2 planes to get to the island. Tomorrow he is going crab hunting. LOL.

what exactly is the "ferdi's forest" thing?

did anyone go to the creque farm produce sale today,i saw they are starting to sell to the public on sundays now

trw,
I went to Creque Farm. The tomatoes are great, but they are $3.00 a pound. (I pay much less at UVI Farm Store.) I also got some chutney and pico de gallo and a few other things. I was expecting a "festival" for some reason. Glad we went but probably won't bother going back. It's a long way and a bad road trip for $20 worth of produce.

Yes juanita,organic produce seems to be so much more expensive then regular and i suppose it's because so muchmore attention needs to be paid to the produce, well i hope the stuff you bought is tasty at least. Thanks for the info, i think when the other half gets home we'll go up one sunday to have a look see.

so i was waiting in traffic and i was watching my homeless guy, he was hunched over writing in his notebook, he'd stop for a bit and chew his thumb,thinking, and then he'd start to write again, i want to know what he writes and the color of the sky in his world,then while i was driving the "car alarm"song by whitney houston came on and i found my self turning it louder and louder,lol and really getting into it, god i remember when the song and movie came out and they played it way too much and you just wanted to smash the radio,and now that i have'nt heard it in a long time it's kind of a good song and i must be the only gay guy on the planet that thought brokeback mountain was a godawfulboring movie,it took me 3 tries to get through the damn thing before i finally did it.

Trade where are you?

Has anyone ever heard of the North Shore Bubbas? A group of people that go out to dinner every Friday nite. Who are they?

not a clue, i know that when kelly was alive she'd get all the women together on b'days and they all go for dinner somewhere,Diana said they've not done that since she died,but there were about 10-12 of them that participated.

Yeah, everytime I think about Kelly it makes me sad....what ever happened to her children?

they're still here but not with sandy as far as i know,i know kelly's mother did not want them because they are mixed race,i honestly can't remember who has them and i have'nt seen sandy forever.

trw,
Ferdi is a guy who used to have a retail plant/garden center, out near Country Day. Also did landscape maintenance, plantings etc. Then he had to move his shop, and went to just contracting of landscape stuff etc, and stopped the retail, as far as I know. He does do landscaping at private homes etc--did one new home that's for sale in Cotton V that I know of.
We also went to the farm at Creque Dam. A long ride on a well maintained dirt road after you turn off, and sort of a 60's hippie sort of thing/place/folks, but obviously well financed as opposed to the original 60's commune type idea. Very nice construction on their buildings etc. Tomatoes are tasty, some of the other prepared stuff we bought was expensive and nothing special. We got there at about 2, and much of the produce was sold already. We have houseguests and were doing a west-end afternoon with them. WAPA had a big operation going on right at the Domino Club--about 6 big trucks, cherry-pickers etc, and lots of employees, on a Sunday yet. First time we've been out west in years (it's so far you know). Finally saw the F'sted waterfront renovation--kinda pretty, but alot of the construction is rather shoddy--we don't think some of it will hold up long.

thanks beachy,well i see the senate wants to try and regain posession of the land around buck island because of a few fisherman,so does this mean i can try and sue the people who turned the hotel i worked at in mpls to condo's thus depriving me of income?

went to get gas before i go get the other half at the airport and stopped at daniels bakery in glynn, they had the best sugar gooey coconut cookies and guava tarts so now i'm back home killing time before i leave,the job has me up to 11 shifts a week now until we slow down, you can kinda tell we're almost through season because things are starting to fall apart and break down, tempers are flaring,everyone is tired,i see it almost everywhere i go. i did 5 loads of laundry today and swept the house and that alone sent me back to bed for a nap lol,i need to make a serious trip to the dumpsters,i don't know how 2 people manage to generate so much garbage,i have about 50 boxes that i packed in 98 that i still have not unpacked,it's all in rubbermade so i guess a few more years won't hurt it hahaha,had to call flo at schooner bay market to cancel my copy of the sunday times because i can no longer afford that indulgence,i think tammy is coming home on saturday for awhile so that will be good.

the other halfs bag never made the plane in miami,they said it would be here at 9 tonight for him to pick up or they can drop it where he works,really slow at work tonight so i came home early.going to bed,lol oh yeah my cab driver almost ran over my homeless guy downtown, now i mean really how would that look if i was a passenger in the vehicle that ran him over

I remember when the public library in C'sted got the NY Times. They used to put it on one of those bamboo poles, and you could go in and read it at your leisure, just like I used to do back in college when I was also not in NY. I refuse to pay the price they charge here for the paper, so I read it on line, it arrives in my mailbox every morning. i miss the ads, though. On a real rainy slow Sunday i would buy it here though, and spend my day with the paper.