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You and me and rain on the roof (part 30?)
2005-10-26

It is now the wettest month ever in our little state. Not just the wettest October, the wettest month EVER.... And there is still a week to go wonderful.
I went home at noon to check if there was water entering my nice finished basement. The good news, nice dry floors. The bad news? The tree of death is hanging perilously over the neighbors garage and is making ominous cracking sounds. Wonderful... I never made it back to work.
You'd think getting somebody to cut down a tree without crashing it on a roof would be fairly easy. The yellow pages was full of tree people. Certainly somebody would be available to help me out without costing me my life savings and a kidney. Aparently I was wrong.
The first several I call either were too busy to come or in some cases never even answered the phone. The remainder said right up front that if this was an emergency call, they'd come right away, but that unlike Bob Barker's show, the price would not be right.
I had three people agree to give me estimates. The first was $1200, the second, $800, the third $600. I decided to put things in the hands of mother nature and my insurance company and started to walk back in the house. Then the $600 guy said he'd just drop it in the woods, onc piece for $300. I thought about the empty checkbook, looked at the guy next doors roof, gulped and said OK.
I wrote the check on the home equity account and he called in his crew. They came in a huge bucket truck which promptly sank into the way too soggy grass in my front yard. Wonderful...
They decided to do it the old fashioned way, with muscle power and a rope. It almost worked nicely. They did manage to get the tree down and they did manage to miss the roof. They also managed to miss the woods and did not manage to miss the pine tree between my yard and the neighbors. They began to walk away as I stood there looking at the tangled mess they had made.
I guess the foreman had a consious, or maybe I looked so sad looking at my shattered pine that he felt sorry for me. Either way, he stopped walking and told the crew to cut the tree into sections and drag the small stuff into the woods and they did. I now have 100 feet of 3 1/2 diameter log cut in 8' sections laying in the yard, but at least it looks neat. Sort of....
I changed my wet clothes and headed out to check on the boat. When I got to the YC, all hell was breaking loose. It was blowing 50 and to quote George Costanza, the sea was angry my friends. A couple of boats had broken dock lines and one was right across from me. Fortunately we didn't get any more damage. A boat out in the mooring feild was unwinding it's jib from the furler and it sounded like a helicopter as it slowly beat itself to death.
The docks were covered in foam and spray and it was kind of like being on an amusement ride as I tried to check to see if we were safe. I kept the cell in my hand, just in case... Yeah it was that bad. When I got to the end of E dock, the boat was bouncing around like a horse in a rodeo, but the docklines were fine and the fenders were, well... fending.
Inside things were warm and dry, if a bit bouncy. I double checked things again, then checked out Toothmans boat next door. Then I bounced back down the dock to the Bar where I thawed out, a couple of glasses of grapes and listened to the days events. Then I went home tired and broke.
So it goes...

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