Repairs complete and San Diego Pride

Repairs finally completed!

I sincerely hope that I will never have to deal with water coming into my condo again. The weekend following the failed water test (July 4 weekend) the drywall on the walls and ceilings were put back up. You can see the result on the right. I just need to paint it to match the rest of the living room. The week after the failed test, the door subcontractor's workers came back and sealed up underneath the door threshold and also made adjustments to the bottom of the door. We still need to do another water test and are going to get that done soon. I have written a fair and somewhat negative review of the contractor on Angie's List. We will never hire him again. Sorry but we need someone who is going to do the job right and hire the RIGHT people and monitor the fucking project. So fed up right now. Thankfully, the guy we hired to reflash the kitchen garden windows is great and does the work himself. So if we have any other issues we will hire him.

In terms of running my lower back has been tight and my hamstrings haven't felt that great. More and more I think my marathon days are over. I can't get above 9-10 miles without discomfort. I now cannot run two days in a row without having some kind of leg and back pain. If I run every other day it seems to be more palatable. I think I may do a 5K soon just to see how I can do with the short distances. I have been running 3-4 times a week and pushing the paces a bit. Although I have not tried to run track workouts and actually done interval paces (like paces that I would race at 6:00 min/mile pace or faster). I may try that but I am afraid of injuring myself.

Coming out of the closet!

San Diego Pride was last weekend. It was so much fun. Margaret Cho performed at the festival on Saturday night. I really enjoyed her. There were lots of parties and running around all weekend so I was wiped out and so was J****. There was this cool "closet" door at the festival. I had a lot of fun taking various shots of the people, etc. I didn't get to see Frenchie Davis on Sunday. We were already at the festival and then J**** had to drive back home so the timing didn't work out.

The Patio is complete and Boogie boarding at WindnSea

The work began on May 4 and FINALLY we are at the finish line. Several delays caused by my upstairs neighbor's indecisiveness and the contractor not managing the project appropriately have caused an estimated 2-3 week job turn into an almost 7 week job. There is one last step. He needs to paint the stucco they had to redo. Also, we need to do a true water test to make sure nothing leaks in. Then I can finally have the ceilings and walls that have been opened since Dec 23 put back in! Yes, you read correctly. I had a feeling I wouldn't have this resolved until the spring. And now, the summer is days away!

The french doors do look nice and I hope my neighbor thinks they are worth it. He paid for them after all. I did learn a lot from this process. I learned that you need to have patience. You also need to research the contractors that you hire more intensely. Our contractor did a good job, but it was very slow and he was never on site to manage when things went wrong. There were many hiccups on this job and if he was there co communicate with his workers many of the problems we had wouldn't have even happened.

I did pay for a subscription to Angie's List. J**** told me about this contractor rating/review web site and publication since he used it to hire contractors when he lived in Houston. I went to the web site to check it out. I saw that a 1 year membership cost $29. Then a few weeks later I get an email to get 40% off any membership. So I ended up getting a 2 year membership for $23 since I got another 20% off for using PayPal to as the payment method. Not bad!

In non-condo complaining news, Nirit and Elia are here again visiting from Phoenix. It has been 6 months since they were here last at Christmas. That was when my ceiling/wall leak issue started ironically. We went to WindnSea beach yesterday since they are staying at the Holiday Inn up in La Jolla. They could walk to this beach from the hotel!

I brought by boogie boards since that is one of Nirit and I's favorite things to do. Here is a video
you can see of us catching some waves. It was great and kind of scary at the same time. Nirit got pummeled on her second wave. So I taught her to keep the board close to her chest in order to not fall off when catching a wave. She got the hang of it.