It’s pretty bad when you finally quit shoveling sidewalks and parking lots and start shoveling roofs. Yes, I ended up shoveling the Veranda roof last night. It wasn’t the weight I was worried about, the white snow was reflecting the heat and the ice back up underneath was causing leaks underneath the box gutters. Speaking of snow and ice, there was this massive (and dangerous) ice cycle/block of ice around on of one of the front downspouts. When I came down this morning, it was still dark at 6 a.m. and I could see some ice that didn’t seem to belong laying on the sidewalk in front of the parking lot. Sure enough, the big ice chunk had finally come down. I found a slate shingle from the front porch roof and this piece of metal with a big screw going through it. I tried to see where it had come from up over the roof and couldn’t see anything. When I came back out in the daylight, the ice had hit the new street light poll out front and knocked the electrical cover off. I thought the metal look too new to have come off my house.
Western PA B & B Association is publishing their cook book, they called me today asking for my menus (I had sent them in months ago), apparently the cut off date is next week, so the book should be published fairly soon.. Luckily, I just finished putting all my recipes in my computer, so resubmitting them was a piece of cake-pun intended.
I’m doing a re-fi with Slovak Savings Bank, big drop in interest. Jennifer stopped by to get some forms signed yesterday and we spoke this morning. She was going to order the survey and they showed up already this afternoon. Pretty prompt. Jennifer was asking for a number of things and so I ended up spending most of the afternoon going through old files. What a blast from the past looking through all Lake Worth, FL purchase and sale documents. And then of course I end up looking through other old files, like the scam they tried to pull on me in 2004. Back then, I received an E-mail from a Moses John from London. He wanted to book a room for his “client” and wanted to pay in advance with a check drawn from Lloyds of London bank. When the check arrived, it was made out for about $2,000 more than the cost of lodging. There was a note in the envelope asking me to cash the check and send the balance back to him for airfare. When I brought the check to Dave, my branch manager at Fidelity Federal (now a PNC bank in Lake Worth). He looked into it and where as checks drawn on American banks can be declined after a specified amount of time, international checks can be declined anytime, even years later. And I would have to pony up to cover for the check. So I deposited the check (so it wasn’t just sitting around) and repeatedly tried to contact Moses John. I sent several E-mails explaining that I could only accept payment for lodging and offered to return the check. I never heard from him again. Not surprisingly, the check eventually was not honored and returned to me. I now probably receive several of these scams a month, and just delete them. At least I had a nice balance in my bank account for two months, but I had to be careful not to touch the amount that would cover that check. (Actually, I used Quicken back then and and just never listed it as a deposit in my check book so I was never tempted.)
