I spoke with Heather and her husband a bit today (who, by the way, picked up their children themselves and somehow got Ashley to drop them off )

Her husband commented on how much damage we had from the hail (HELLO?!?! Have you heard a word we said in the past 3 months?!!?!?!?) and commented on how hubby's brother-in-law (a contractor) is going to be busy fixing our place. I laughed. Apparently, WE can do things for them, but they can't do for US. So I told him that the response from B-I-L was "Have fun with that" - while he's missing out on a $30,000 insurance check to fix the damage. Their eyes bulged, and he figured that maybe B-I-L was afraid we'd try to get him to do the work for a reduced fee, which is a weird assumption since any work he's done for us has always been either fairly paid for or bartered (once I did 3 portraits including frames in return for installing a hot water heater, which he hooked up incorrectly and was sending Carbon Monoxide (or was it dioxide?) fumes into our house.) and any work he's done has been shoddy because you could tell he resented doing it out of obligation.

I guess things are little bit better. I was disappointed Heather and her husband didn't stay longer then ten minutes, but at least they talked to me instead of just swinging by, getting their kids, and running off.

Oh, and because of the storm, we got a new door, so we'll get new locks. Boy, won't that frost Tony's buns when his key no longer works?


And since its slightly related, I have to tell you a quick little story of how much a goober I am. My work got hit with hail too. They had contractors there all last week re-stucco-ing the exterior. There were (4) 5-gallon buckets of stucco stuff left over and they were going to throw it out. I asked if I could take it home and they said, "you do know its stucco, right?" Yup. "You know you need screens on the walls, then spread the stucco over it?" yup, we have that already. "You do know its 4 different colors?" so? that's what paint is for, which we already have too. So I excitedly called hubby to bring the truck over and pick up the 5 gallon buckets. Two are 90% full, the other two are 3/4 full. We saved nearly $400 because of work's leftovers!!! I was so happy, you'd have thought they gave me something amazing. I have off this week so I have a date with the trowel and multi-colored stucco. Gosh I hope it rains........