How To Take a Perfectly Good Week...

and mess it all up! It's not all bad. Just crazy.

For starters B-Days are coming up. All of us the same day. That would be me, Dickiebo, Paul McCartney, Harriet (from high school), and many more that I don't know. More on that on THE day.

So why mention it now? Well, for one thing it becomes the rant of the females in this household, as the younger and the older try to bridge a very large generation gap and actually communicate effectively with each other in an attempt to plan my birthday. Usually, by the time they are well into it, I'd just as soon have not been born. Oh well. We survive. So that's what Saturday and Sunday were like. Monday morning I seized the opportunity to escape to a friend's house for a Cosmic City meeting. Monday afternoon I finished a set of keys for a local customer and 'A' went with me to a nearby school to do a piano evaluation. Monday night a key customer called and wanted to schedule the return of the finished job for Tuesday. Okay. Then I got two more key top job calls. And a call to schedule a 'meet up' at Friendly's to pick up another key job.

Tuesday started fine. Coffee and toast and then the drive to Friendly's. On the drive it dawned on me that I had scheduled my afternoon job in conflict (or at least a close call) to when I needed to drive 'A' to work. I got back home after the 'meet' thinking I would get some work done and then call to try to arrange an earlier arrival at the customer's home. Except the phone rang. It was the music director at the school. His call coincided with me trying to work up an estimate and I hadn't quite finished. "Just give me the most expensive it could be," he said. I did some quick addition, gave him a brief explanation, and he said, "Let's do it. Can you email the bill to me immediately? I need to pay this out before the end of the school year, but you'll have all summer to do the work." Okie dokie! I quickly wrote up an 'official' invoice, scanned it, and emailed it to him. Now maybe I could get some work done.

Nope. 'A' needed a ride to the store and bank. Took us about 15 minutes. Arrived home hoping to get just a teeny bit of work done before wolfing down a sandwich and calling that customer. The phone rang again. This time it was a keyboard-ish company owner that I do key work for wanting a special deal. I wasn't so inclined. Really, I'm one of the most reasonably priced around and his jobs usually require some additional work that I routinely and without complaint work in to the same pricing. I started making that sandwich, to heck with trying to get any work done. The phone rang again. The music director, again. The payment folks wouldn't accept the emailed billing, could I take a ride over with the original?

Oh sure, why not?

That done and I got home with just enough time to eat that sandwich and call the customer. No answer. So, I waited until a departure time that would get me arriving 15 minutes earlier than the appointed time. That worked. He was home and everything went very smoothly with the key re-install, leveling (only one), and spacing (less than a half dozen required minor attention). I was out of there and home with plenty of time to spare!

After I got home from running 'A' to work, I did get some of the key work in the workshop underway. I'm glad today is nearly over!

Tomorrow, Wednesday, it's back to the historic society in the morning and piles of key work for the afternoon. Thursday, I've a new customer tuning in the morning, a Steinway M. I've got to place a parts order sometime. Then the afternoon should be a surprise, then key work, key work, key work, until...

B-Day Friday and more key work. It'll be a relief to take part of Saturday off and go out to Thacher Island. It's supposed to be near 90°. A great day to be out on the water!

Oh, and I've started a re-read of a book from 15 - 20 years ago. "Going to Extremes" by Joe McGinness. A book about Alaska, sort of a weird tour guide kind of thing, only in novel form.