Back in the Delta

Vacation is over. I am back in the Delta.
Vacation was good but a bit short. I got a lot of work done on the house and even put in about 7 hours of work.....ARGH!

This should be an interesting week and a half with my boss gone.

If anyone is going to be in Indianapolis in September, check out ORANJE, La will be presenting some art at the show.

I finally got my truck in the shop at Chief. Progressive has been a pain in the rear to do business with, but only because the claim rep I was assigned does not believe in returning phone calls and instead likes to call late in the day on weekends or holidays. I got her boss on the phone and was able to get a rental car lined up. This is a bit unusual for me, but I was rented a car that I had never seen or heard of: Ford's Edge. It is a crossover-SUV similar to Nissan's Murano. It is okay, but I prefer my truck. It was good to see some progress happening at Chief, even though it meant leaving my keys with either the idiot or the ex-con at the shop as Barry had taken his wife to dinner on Saturday. They are still the best place to get body work done in New Orleans even without electricity, but it is coming.

I made a run to one of my absolute favorite lumberyards in New Orleans before dropping my truck off. It is hard to transport 14' pieces of Cypress siding without a truck. Bourg is a very small lumber yard, but they carry a ton of inventory. They specialize in a lot of the materials needed to build a proper New Orleans house. They have the best quality and price on cypress siding and also carry the tongue-and-groove porch boards used on the porches across the city. In addition to 25 pieces of 14' cypress (I had 16 16' boards left from my garage front) I picked up a half-dozen 5/4 x 6 x 12' pressure treated boards to be the corner boards on the addition when I install the siding. The neat part was that this was the absolute best looking PT wood I have ever seen. I have never seen #1 grade PT wood, this means almost no knots and the few knots are incredibly small. It was not cheap, but well worth it at $1.85 per linear foot. Thankfully I don't need to too much of the stuff. I enjoy going to Bourg, but it always costs me quite a bit of $$$$. It is one of the few places where I usually don't ask price, just get what I need. If I am there, they have what I need and it will be the best price for what I am getting. I also love their location, they are in the Marigny/Bywater area on S. Peters and it is a very NO experience to go there and then have to drive through the Quarter to get my haul home.