Things Have a Way of Catching Up

It's been a whirlwind of a few weeks. Far too much going on. In case you haven't been keeping up I'll summarize. Eleven sets of keys, total, within about ten days. Add to that the two days per week at Tuck's, and a craft fair. Then Mom decided it was time to look for a new car. Before she went for her next cataract surgery, that is. Oh yeah, can't forget about mowing the lawn and hauling the trash to the dump. Still waiting are the six replacement windows that I agreed to install.

I'm not doing the next craft fair. I'm waiting until the one scheduled for August 30, Labor Day weekend. Quite frankly, I haven't had enough time to create more stuff to sell. I did start on more necklaces last night.

Just so you know...the last of the sets of keys were shipped today. To the lady from the previous post. Yes, she finally got the 'balance due' check to me.

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So, why is buying a new car soooooo difficult? My mom had decided that she wanted either a silver Subaru Forrester or her second choice, a silver Toyota Rav4. Silver because neither the dirt, dust, and pollen nor the winter road salt show up too badly. Last Tuesday afternoon we started at the closest Subaru dealer. The salesman was quite nice but they didn't have any 2008 Forresters left other than one in bright blue. 'Twas ugly. The design changes in the 2009's made them very uncomfortable for both Mom and me. Even with the driver's seat in it's highest position, we could barely see above the dashboard. The salesman called his manager over. He was an extremely demeaning individual. He had nothing nice to say to us. Didn't even make an attempt. Among his many comments, "No one else has complained about the seat height in the new Forrester," he said.

Humph. Won't buy a car there.

We continued to the Toyota dealer down the road a bit. Since the Subaru dealer had tied us up for over two hours, we tried to limit our time at Toyota. That was tough. All we wanted to do was sit in a Rav4 to see if the visibility/seat height was good. Two and a half hours later we made our escape! We got home just in time to pick up Amanda from work. This gave me just enough time to look in the workshop to see how much I still had left to do.

The next morning I got up at 6 am and started to work. My midday was taken up with tuning jobs. Back home for dinner and then back to work until 10 pm.

Thursday it was back to car shopping. This time we headed further from home to the Subaru dealer in Wakefield. In the record time of two and a half hours, he managed to find my mother a silver, 2008 Forrester at another dealership over two hours away. That dealership wouldn't trade the car for anything the Wakefield dealership had on his lot. On the plus side, they were the nicest bunch of salesmen and managers we have met in our quest. Since I wasn't about to drive down to the 'other' cape to car shop, we left there and made a one hour drive north to Skip's for a very late lunch (or early dinner). The next dealership was only 15 minutes from there, in Haverhill.

The Haverhill dealer sold Toyotas and we looked at a silver Rav4 that he had on the lot. My mom was very interested and we got in to the price negotiation portion of car buying. This dealer tried everything. Maybe I should say he tried to make it LOOK like he tried everything to meet my mother's requirements. I'm not an idiot. It's not a deal when you just increase the downpayment, lengthen the payment schedule, and then say you've lowered the price. NOPE. We started to leave and the sales manager actually stood in my way, thisclose. This does not make me happy. I finally maneuvered around him and got to the door with my mother following close behind.

Almost three hours there.

It had become obvious that we were not going to be able to find the Forrester, so we headed back to the first Toyota dealership to see what kind of 'deal' we could get there. It was 7 pm when we arrived. We checked out a silver Rav4 that had only been at the dealership for two days. 11 miles on the odometer. We went inside and negotiations began. Mom bought the car. Pretty much within her terms. A better deal than Haverhill, by far. It was after 10:30 pm when we left to head home armed with an appointment to pick up the new Rav4 on Saturday afternoon. The cleaning crew was at work as we left!

Friday I tuned and I worked on keys some more...frantically, and mowed the lawn. Saturday morning was the trip to the dump.

Since Mom didn't want to drive an unfamiliar car home on the highway, I had to make the trip with her on Saturday. I would be the first to drive it! It takes about a half hour - one way. We arrived to pick up her new car at precisely 1 pm, as instructed. We waited. Paperwork. A half hour later we were told that we couldn't pick up the car. They needed to contact the Registry of Motor Vehicles because my dad's name was on the old registration. WE HAD TOLD THEM THIS NUMEROUS TIMES THURSDAY NIGHT! They had said it was no problem. We made another appointment for Tuesday morning. Here's Mom's new car in her driveway. Twenty and a half hours to get it.

Work, work, work. Tuck's and keys, Tuck's and keys. Only one tuning job scheduled for this week and I had to change it because of picking up the car on Tuesday morning. Today was set aside because of Mom's cataract surgery. Since a van picks up at the eye doctor's office and takes the patients to and from the surgery center, Mom thought there would be no problem for me to fit in a tuning job. Last time she didn't get back to the office until after four in the afternoon. I scheduled the tuning for two o'clock and arrived at the customer's a minute or so early. At two-thirty my cell phone rang. The patient van was returning to Gloucester. It would arrive in 40 minutes. !#$%^! I just made it to the parking lot to pick her up with only 4 minutes to spare.

Now, in the meantime!

I had planned to submit my 'Diamonds in the Rough' blog post for publication in the Piano Technician's Journal. I was just having a difficult time actually getting the revisions finished and emailing the editor. Today, he contacted me asking if they could publish the story. He had already read it on the Pianotech List and they had made their own edits. I gave him the go ahead. I like my final version better than their edited version, but what the heck - THEY asked to publish MY work!

Today, I did get a short descriptive paragraph and three photos about the Thacher Island reed organ submitted to the Gloucester Times. Wonder if I'll get published there as well!