Best Emails of the Week

June 25, 2006

> Pete,

Very interesting photos attached.  Are we insignificant in the
> grand scheme of things here or what?

Sue

From AOL this week, a column on what to do if in a car accident:

http://autos.aol.com/article/safety/v2/_a/accident-prep-101/20060616113709990002

summary from that web site:

Here's my week in pictures:

Mr. U., who is opening a new CD store in our town, speaks with the Local Area Business Association President.

I was elected the day before on Tuesday, and I am very pleased to be honored as so after only three years in the town.

I was thus in charge of the spring social meeting that raised scholarship money, through donations and

a raffle that I conducted for prizes donated by our local merchants. Fortunately, I had earlier given my

winning raffle ticket(s) to Micah, a high school Junior, who was there to collect donations for the volcano victims in Indonesia.

Mary speaks to Gillette, who I first met Tuesday when I was elected.

Photo by Max who will be working with me to set up a new web site for the business association.

From left to right, Gillette, Mary, a woman, Deb, who emailed me about the signs I made for this gathering,

John, who runs the local inn, and faxed me his property info of 10 acres he wants developed,

a woman who might be taking our minutes, our state representative in white shirt, with whom I chatted with earlier,

John, our outgoing president who was upset that he would not continue as president.

He was surprised that the nominating committee chose me instead of him, and on Tuesday,

he held the vote of about 20 people who unanimously motioned to make me President.

Next is Leo, our "mayor" (first selectman) who is unhappy with me.

At the sidewalk committee meeting on Thursday, he said that the paver block salesman I brought to the meeting

might jeopardize his firm's ability to bid.

I told Leo and the committee that I spoke with the state ethics guy who told me that as long as everything is out in the open,  it is not a problem.

Today I received this sidewalk committee email:

Peter,

Do you EVER SLEEP?  I just got to work at 6:50, trying to get problems resolved and get ready to do the minutes and pow!  You beat me to it.  By the way, you and I are alike except I think you have me beat…we both are pushes and try to get the ball on projects rolling and sometimes get people peeved at us or not knowingly step on toes.  I’ll try to get the minutes drafted for your review asap.  Thank you for your help.

Naomi

Here's my good old Expedition about 400' off road next to Allan's excavator on Wednesday.

I designed a pond and waterfall for our Audubon Society of Bird Watchers.

I went to the wetlands commission in March, and received approval.

My laser instrument measures the dam and pond bottom.

The pipe and catch basins arrive. This truck backed straight down against my warning, and got stuck

after a sudden downpour slicked the grass. Allan's John Deere excavator towed it up the hill.

Allan's wife Debby, earlier in the morning, walked down the field to us.

 Allan took out his wallet, and gave her cash.

.

One of their sons Danny watches as 72 year old John from Audubon uses my chain saw to cut the branch above him off cleanly.

John paid for lunch for me, Danny, and his older brother John.

We did mentos and soda here to about 4' .

Here's the pond. John called and felt it was finished.

I said it is only half done and must follow my design, or it will fill in in a few years.

Now I am not being paid by Audubon, but Mary and I do own the commercial site

that Lou's crew floor framed last month.

There was excess topsoil at the pond site, so I was able to receive some like Allan.

The plan was to get Allan to bring it on Thursday before Louie and Kevin asphalt paved on Friday.

So at 3pm, after the waterfall foundation catch basin unit was set level by us all,

 I drove Danny and John from the pond site to the commercial building

to have them show their dad Allan where to dump the 5 yards of Topsoil.

But the sidewalk meeting was to start at 4pm Thursday, and I didn't want to be late.

Also, the Dent Doctor had driven 30 miles to fix 4 cars at our house including my Exped.

So I burst into our garage area at 3:10 with Danny going into the fourth grade and John, about 13.

We jump out, and Mary sees us in pond mud and machine grease, and says No way we take the Audi 06.

But 19 year old Ashley, who lives two doors down is working with Mary on the closets,

so Mary asks Ashley to drive us to the commercial building site.

Ashley puts on her sunglasses, the boys hop in the back seat of her car, and I ride in front at 3:15.

By 3:25 she has us to the site. She played music from the punk rock station John likes.

 I take 5 wire flags and show John the five places I need Allan to place topsoil later that day.

And Allan did dump them there exactly, with an extra one to make it even easier for me.

Ashley drove us back to the Audubon 100 acres, and we dropped the boys off, while almost crashing into John who was leaving and didn't see us!

I screamed to Ashley to honk, but she couldn't. Fortunately John saw us and stopped in time!

But the dent doctor was still in town if needed!  In fact working on my Expedition.

Ashley got me home at 3:35 with time to shower, make agenda copies and attend the 4pm sidewalk meeting,

after first meeting salesman Al, and showing him where the meeting was.

Mary and I also went to the county chamber of commerce meeting last night.

They sat us at the table of the first recipient of their award they presented.

I told him I'm the new president of the business association, and he was pleased.

Two bankers at that meeting want to discuss opening the only bank in the village on the commercial piece Mary and I own.

On Friday I oversaw the blacktop paving, and when they were finished, I paid them $5700 at 1pm.

I gave them $4k last month as a deposit.

So Louie holds the rake and ran a good operation.

Louie's paving machine and a truck coincidentally from the company that Al represents.

The split rail fence I installed looks great. Here are Allan's topsoil piles. I spread 5+ yards today

by myself with a shovel and my red wheel barrel in the picture above.

Here's the commercial site paved for 16 spaces and my Expedition, on the neighbor's lot.  Blue tarp covers the deck brother Lou built.

Detailed photo. We seal the parking lot of the neighbor next week if we don't get a week of rain.

This owner is coincidentally the father and mother of a boy scout with whom I went to Philmont, New Mexico in 1995.

Miles graduated from Northwestern in Chicago along with Saleel. The third link there is Raf who received his eagle award

in a joint ceremony with Saleel. So the 4 of us (and 7 others) hiked Philmont for 10 days.

Miles parents from 25 miles away in our old town, coincidently own this property shown above between our building and the street.

In order to save $10,000 that it would cost me to bring electricity to the building, I asked Miles' parents to give me an easement.

They did, and I had offered to tar seal their bigger parking lot, which needs it if you look at the detail of the picture big above.

Anyway, a possible buyer for the building if we don't frame it is Miles parents.

Mary told me the price she wants us to ask this afternoon. A good profit.

But the bankers might be upset if we sell to Miles' dad and mom.

On Saturday (tomorrow morning) we are going to two high school graduation parties in our old town.

The first is for Saagar. His older brother is Saleel. Saagar is also going to Northwestern.

We hope Miles will be there, and his parents- our friends and potential business partners.

Mary is at an antiques show tonight, so I enjoyed Friday night writing, or rather blogging.

more later,

PS Did you know that Mailer Daemon comes from the word demon as a problem with email?

On Saturday, we did attend Saagar's and later Robert's HS graduation parties.

No camera at Saag's, but here's Robert between bros Steve in Raf's class, and Mark, who Raf always admired.

Good friends Susan and Greg will have all 3 eagle scout sons graduate from the same great college.

Since I played golf at 4 separate courses last weekend, I enjoyed this mixture with business:

This week's long Best emails starts and ends with emails from Sue:

Pete

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