Sunday

We had a gorgeous day today ! Temps hit 70 degrees, sunny, very little wind. Was a really enjoyable fall day. We went grocery shopping and got supplies for the week. Takes alot of food when we prepare three meals a day here....We'll start out with the pantry full today but come next weekend, it will look like old Mother Hubbard's cupboard. Also got our propane tank filled while we were over that way at the grocery store. It's $33 for a 30# tank....ordinarily I'd hate paying that much for propane but since we get reimbursed by the company..it doesn't sting so bad. Washed up the Xterra before the sun went down so it's been a good day. The NASCAR race is winding down on TV....

We can tell that it's getting close to the holidays cause when we went to Sam's Club, they are now carrying the white stilton cheese with cranberries that we love so much. We first tried this when we went to our friend's Carolyn and Elliot's for dinner and they had this as an appetizer with crackers...it's delicious but you can only find it at holiday time. We've been watching for it and today was the special day when it showed up in the display case.

Well, the drilling of the locks took a total of three days. The assistant and I worked on them two different days and after having two of them be real son-of-a guns and not being able to get them out, I decided to call in the "big guns" to finish up...got our friend Roger to come over from the Hanover site to tackle the last six (and 2 partial ones). He made it look easy but at last we are done. Also had an interview Saturday morning that went well...I think we will have a couple picked very soon. Have another interview on Wednesday and I think at the completion of that, we will be ready to make our final pick. I have a couple in mind...need to see how they make out in their second interview with Peggy. I'm ready to move on...

Half Way....

After umpteen drill bits and lots of tenacity, we are about half way done with the lock drilling. I went to Home Depot and bought more drill bits so we can finish up today. It is hard work, taking sheer strength to push the drill bit through the cylinder locks...unlike using a cutting wheel to cut padlocks which only takes contact with the area you're cutting and minimal pressure. I was really hoping that I had some type of horizontal drill press that could be wheeled up to each door..line the drill up with the center of the lock and then bore into it....I guess enough money and technology could make anything happen but not to be this go round. More later when our mission has been completed...

Prep Time

Well tomorrow we start prepping for next week's auction. We have 25 locks to drill out tomorrow. One of us drills while the other video tapes the drilling, then we photograph the contents with a Polaroid camera (yes, they still have those things around), then tag and lock the unit.That way it's all ready for auction day. We started out with 56 units on the list so not bad to wind up with only 25 that might go. Folks have right up till the time of the auction to pay their balance and get it off the auction list. That is a very real possibility for several more units. If someone pays the balance on any of the units we've already drilled out, then they will need to purchase a new lock to put on their unit. I will work with the assistant manager tomorrow doing the locks so we can share the workload. That way it won't kill my wrists so bad as it would if I had to do it all by myself. Whew !!

Watching the World Series game and holding my breath that the Phillies might pull off tonight's game (not looking good at this point). Another hour will tell but I won't be up to see.

Turning colder here....supposed to be in the high 40's on Friday but then rebounding for the weekend. Rain overnight and tomorrow.

Keep telling myself that I need to get moving and start Christmas shopping but can't get motivated to get started with it. Guess it might help to start making lists of who I might need to buy for and what I might want to buy. Ugggg...

Day Off ?

Well one of our assistants quit on Sunday so now I have three people to hire for this location and Linda and I will have to work and cover the days we would usually be off. We worked some on Sunday but it helps that it is a short day (only open 9-3). Linda went over to do the lock report, which is taking the printout that prints out the previous evening and going to the units listed to either unlock the overlock or lock the overlock. A unit gets overlocked once it goes beyond the 5th day of the grace period. Since we use cylinder locks, this is a lock that fits into an outer ring on the lock and turns the pins inside the cylinder lock so that a tenant's key won't fit into the lock. Cylinder locks are very strong and are a pain to drill out if a tenant forgets their key or if we have to take the lock off for an auction. We have about 28 to drill out the end of this week to get ready for next Thursday's auction. Not looking forward to doing that....Had to drill out two today. The first one came when I thought I'd sneak in an afternoon nap (since I was off today). Linda has this psychic ability that lets her know anytime I'm laying down to take a nap....I think it's called Nap-dar...Something starts beeping in her brain and she knows she needs to call me on the phone cause my eyes are closing and I'm lounging somewhere. She called me on my cell phone, not once but twice to tell me a guy needed to have his lock drilled out cause he couldn't get into his unit. Gave up on the nap and decided that someone other than me needs to learn how to drill them out since it's on all of our job descriptions....(Last I checked mu job description didn't state "You are deemed the sole lock driller for this location".)Our assistant was willing to learn so she got a good workout doing two of them today. She did a great job !

Finished the training in time to come back to the rig to watch Oprah's show on handbags, shoes and bras. Boy, that sure made my afternoon. Good thing her fashion police hadn't run into me on the streets...I would have hit the trifecta on all three counts ! LOL...