04-JUL-A-7
THE SIGN-OUT IN PRE-DEPARTURE GATHERINGS WITH THE
TEAM, A SAD FAREWELL POSTED TO
I
am in “ceparture mode.” I have just
posted audiotapes to Martheen, a packet of pictures to Milly, and a very long
series of letters to
I have just come in form a
long run around the Capital and DC Mall, where I myself was a tourist visitor
on Monday., sitting on a carrousel horse next to a wild rider on a zebra you
may have seen on the Photo Works access I had just mailed to you
previously. I will be going home to work
on some ELDP pre-reading for the first residence period in August when I
return. On Saturday night, the Rockville
Twilighter Run is staged starting at
I will be gone for the next
weeks, and Derwood work should be suspended until my return. Then there will be a flurry, including the
next attempt to dig up all the yard to find the well, after a “dry hole” was
dug the last time and re-filled.
Thursday morning I went over the “punch out” with Mike McKeeson, and a
final billing for the balance—now due. I
was way ahead of the last check due, since I had written a check for $40,000
(force of habit) for the final bill of $15,000.
It turns out that the “balance due” which I was counting on being a
surprise in my favor has run into the problem of “allowances,” and been
reversed. In the contract there is an
allowance for various items which is struck at the end, and if there is an
overage, I owe the difference plus 25% for their bookkeeping. Items like the Powder Room with all its fancy
fixtures and towel rack and special vanity blew the bank in a big way, so that
most of the differences fell against me, and I turn out to owe them more than I
thought they would be owing me! That
does not include the still pending charges for the ongoing plumbing re-doing,
the furnishings that are coming in such as the Powder Room Mirror and “window
treatments” as well as other designer charges, landscape, and, of course, the
now vacant spaces for which other plans had been reserved. I began to fill a few, and I ordered four
blonde solid oak chairs for the Breakfast Room to be delivered by July 28, so
that anyone seeing a picture of the Breakfast Room can no longer count the
number of people as equal to the different number of seating styles! When a few other touch ups are done, the Master
Bedroom will still be a yawning cave, but most of the house will look somewhat
presentable, absent a dining room set.
On August 4, the official photographer comes to shoot the hose for the D
G Liu calendar and a magazine article. A
couple of prospective clients have already come through and admired it.
On Sunday afternoon, Keith
Carr will be coming by to see the house, since he saw it after all the “demo”
in the heart of winter, as I had gone to unpack the Bronco to start my drive up
through
I have been listening to an
audiodisc kindly made by Christopher Tate on Tracy Kidder’s book “
And, so, having sent a sad
letter to someone miserable in deprivations of friends and luxuries, I leave gloriously happy for the
very deprivation of these same luxuries
to get back to doing something where I am needed. The impoverished, my brothers, know that
there are, indeed, “