Monday, snowy Monday

Today began a brand new job, which is just as it should be for a Monday. Even better, the new job is a kitchen, not a bathroom! Not that there's anything wrong with bathrooms, but I sure have done a bunch of them in the last several weeks. Kitchens are neat, and clean, and straight-forward. And even though they are usually bigger than bathrooms, kitchens are less demanding in terms of plumbing changes and fixtures. It wasn't all roses today, though.

I like to know where I'm going, so I almost always MapQuest® the address before I go. (These jobs are measured and quoted by the Sales Dept., not by me.) The problem is that sometimes the map service isn't sure where a place actually is, so it just guesses and shoots an internet arrow onto the map. I've had this happen at least five times in recent memory. Today's kitchen was listed as being on "Gregory Park," but the paper map shows only Gregory Street and Gregory Hill Drive (I think). MapQuest® showed its happy little star right there in the middle of Gregory Street, so I was suspicious. So I reconnoitered (can you spell that?) early this morning. The house numbers were all wrong, off by two hundred; so I chalked it up to mapping imagination. Had to call my customer for directions. And there she was, right under the mapping software's star.

What threw me off was that my customer had mentioned she was in a condominium, and I didn't see anything appropriate during my drive-by. Damned forest, keeps hiding the trees! Her building is a huge, gorgeous orange-brick post-War school, converted to condo's about twenty years ago. The fact that there wasn't any sign with the name "Gregory Park" on it is only a poor excuse for my missing it. The next problem was parking, since each owner has one spacallotteded and the signs all read "no contractor parking." My customer deeded her spot to me for the duration; I didn't get towed. Yet.

Things went very well after that, and I've written enough for tonite. No glitches so far, and no wood to knock on nearby, so I'll write more tomorrow. By then, this kitchen should be mostly complete and I can leave the knock-on-wood for the next job. See you then.