I have a Word document full of random notes and stories about Forest. I find it easier to write when my only goal is to put words on paper, so this method helps me temporary ignore the impending question of “Is this going to end up on the blog?” I was going thru some old entries and found the notes that I made while the fence was being built. I published a post raving about the new fence after it was up, but apparently I wasn’t so excited during the actually build process…
I know the fence will be awesome, but if I line up all the facts, it would appear that building a fence should, in fact, just piss me off:
1) Fences are extremely expensive. I have no clue why they’re so expensive, it's just a bunch of wood and nails, but I guess you throw in all that measuring, hammering and post digging (which may or may not involve cement, I have no clue) and it comes out to a couple thousand dollars. Dollars which would have been much happier spent at a bar, or for a tropical vacation…or most likely at a bar during a tropical vacation.
2) The fence company took our deposit money, but then said they had so much business that it might be a few weeks before they could actually build our fence. Just my luck, I found a company not taking a hit in this economy.
3) Unless the home builder was nice enough to bury something like steel bars in your yard to mark the property line, you need to have a surveyor come out and measure your measly plot of land, which involves more time and money, hence making building a fence cost even more money.
4) I had to fax the home owner's association some form asking permission to build a fence. It's not like I'm asking them to pay for it, or asking to build something on public property. No, I had to beg for their permission to build a fence on my property with my money.
5) The surveyor folks informed us that we have half a dozen power lines snaked under our yard, but they can't really figure out exactly where the power lines are or why they're there. So they called the city's electrical company to come out and put +25 flags in our yard to mark exactly where the lines are buried. A guys from the surveyor company said "I'd hate for us to miss one (power line) and then someone gets electrocuted just putting up a damn fence." Well I can’t remember if he actually say damn, but it was definitely implied, because getting killed while building a fence is just a dumb way to go.
6) Apparently the hand-drawn sketch from the fence people was not official enough for the home owner's association, so later I had to fax the surveyor's Certificate of Survey, which oddly enough looked liked the fence company's sketch copied over with magic marker.
7) They finally started building our fence today..at 8:30 am..while I was trying to sleep in...because I took the day off…because it's my birthday. Insistent hammering and the sound that machine they have makes when it punches thru our lawn to build a post hole = unpleasant birthday morning.
8) I've been sick all week with some sort of weird allergy-induced cold and sore throat, so I've been dealing with all of this shit thru a Sudafed/allergy med induced daze.
Lost Notes
