Frustrated weekend with the Harris's

Since I am not able to figure out how to post as "myself" (instead of just logging in under the username and password Jan provided at the beginning) I'll just say this is Mark.

First of all, to answer Jan’s question, I WAS going to Knoxville to attend some high powered training (about $30k for 2 weeks). But due to the fact that the class did not get enough enrollees, it was cancelled. So I'm not going to Knoxville after all. And therefore, I'm sure that unless Amber is just up to her eyeballs in homework, we'll be in BV for breakfast.

So, why am I frustrated? I'll tell you in list form so you can perhaps reply by number and offer some assistance, or maybe just some consolation.

1. I can't seem to figure out how to even post a comment on this blog. I don't have a google or yahoo mail account and really don't want one. I have enough in my engineer brain already and do not need to add another username and password to it. I just want to comment! Is there not a way to just comment? My E-mail address is markwharris@cox.net. When I enter it, the dad-blamed program just tells me that my address contains some illegal characters. Now let me tell you, I know an illegal character when I see one (having been robbed at gunpoint in 1981 while working at QuikTrip) and I saw nothing illegal about any of the characters in my E-mail address. I didn't even see anything even mildly suspicious about them—except for maybe the "." which is kind of sneaky since it is very small and hiding between the “x” and the “n” at the bottom of the line. I got into the help menu and read a little about Blogspot. It said that there were several kinds of blogs; one of which was one meant for Families or groups to stay in touch. If this is that type, it sure is hard to break the code. If it’s not, perhaps it can be converted. I'd love to be able to have my own sign-in. Please reply if you can help me do what I need to do to be able to post and/or make comments as "Mark".

2. I went to the Home Depot earlier this week and bought $1000 worth of insulation with the idea that I would do a little to stop wasting energy and cut my summer electric bills by hundreds of dollars while taking advantage of the energy tax credit that is currently available (free money from the stimulus bill!). The Home Depot man, whom I might add is a very persuasive and convincing salesman, said that two reasonably capable folks could install the 75 bags of insulation I’d purchased in just about 2-3 hours. With my keen engineering brain I quickly calculated that I could pay Taylor $15 an hour and Blaine $5 an hour and we could do the job for less than $75 of labor. Heck, the blower they lent us had a picture of a petite young woman donning a paper mask handling the job with ease. How hard could it be? I assumed (wrongfully so – this in literary terms is referred to as “foreshadowing”) that among the five of us Harris's there were at least a combined two reasonably capable persons. … I was wrong. So, to make a long story short, which is difficult to do at this point, Saturday afternoon we spent from 2 PM to 6 PM and managed to get roughly 4.2 of the 75 bags dispersed into our attic which now has two, what I would call, size 13 foot "vent holes" into our living space-- one in our laundry room ceiling and one in our master closet ceiling. I consider these vent holes to be an undesired consequence of the insulation process and therefore I will chose to repair them rather than leave them for the next buyer to admire. Luckily no one was seriously hurt, although Taylor was walking with a sight limp afterward. I again used my keen engineering brain to calculate the cost of repair for the “vent holes” at about $60 each (from a handyman I know) and by extrapolating the labor time and repair costs for the completion of the dispersal of the remaining 70.8 bags of insulation, and the ensuing cosmetic damage and potential medical bills, my total cost for the job would be roughly $12,682 (I used an excel spread sheet to calculate this) and require approximately 288 man-hours of labor (not including medical personnel), seven 4 x 8 sheets of drywall, 232 ft of drywall tape, and three trips to the emergency room. Don’t say anything about the possible expense for the divorce lawyer, alimony, child custody considerations, and child support. So, now I will hire my handyman to repair my vent holes and complete the insulation job probably at a cost far greater than any savings I would have realized within the time span that I plan to stay living here on Parkhurst Road (roughly seven and one-half years).

3. My Wife, whom I rightly referred to as smarter than me in my previous post told me, with a fair amount of prescience, to just give Taylor the money and pay someone more experienced and perhaps more nimble to do the job. And so you see, she was absolutely right on all counts and has reminded me that this whole stimulus funded green energy thing was all my idea and that if one of her precious golden nuggets gets hurt in the process she would never forgive me. There you have it, a microcosm of the whole national political landscape rolled up in one weekend at the Harris household; id est, stimulus, cap and trade, and healthcare all in one debacle. Yes honey, you were right.

4. My wife spent roughly 29 hours this weekend doing projects, assignments, homework, reading, writing, research, printing, editing, re-editing, and study groups, for the three classes she is taking right now. I might add that none of this information will she ever need to use after her December 19th graduation. She will be no smarter than she is now and no more qualified to do the job or jobs she has before her. But she will have a piece of paper that says she is. The whole academic experience has been eye opening for us. It has prepared us for the three other Harris’s that will follow. To top it all off, I went to a retirement seminar last Tuesday and found out that I can’t retire for seven and a half more years (see comment above about the house). When you add the economic situation to the picture, and the increasing cost of higher education, I’ll be lucky to get out of this job I have alive. I have two choices: 1) a mid life crisis; or 2) convince my children to petition the court for emancipation.

Well I’d like to close now with this thought. Although I am incredibly frustrated by these events and circumstances, I also know I am a thousand fold more blessed to be in the situation I am than I would be without these events, or circumstances.

Hope all are well and stay that way. Mark (also for ATH &B)
P.S. – Julia, as for spell check, I just do my writing in word and then cut and paste.