Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Amtrak was almost on time today, being less than 30 minutes late passing Fernley this morning.

( Not bad by current standards )

Most of the times we've been traveling west on the California Zephyr, the train is almost always on time. That's sort of ironic because due to the timing into Reno, we'd usually prefer it to be a little late, so we aren't rushed eating breakfast and packing up preparing for arrival. There is not usually a hurry to disembark at Reno because it is a crew-change and fresh-air stop, but we prefer to be ready to go before arrival, and sometimes the car attendant is in a hurry to get it us out early because there's sometimes passengers booked for the compartment we are vacating.

I have hired a roofer who says he can replace the roughly 10' x 30' section of missing shingles from the upper roof, fix/replace the failing flashing along the eves on that same roof line, and replace the failed rain gutter on the opposite side of the room. Initially he projected this as a one day job, but things did not go quickly.



On Thursday morning, we got some unexpected rain and these snow flurries, although no snow stuck. I figured the roofer would scrub for today, but the rain stopped mid-morning around the time he arrived. He assessed the situation and made a shopping list of supplies that he was going to need. Unlike some larger firms, he doesn't buy the supplies and then mark them up, so in this case what he did was go to Lowe's and have them call me. Using my Lowe's credit card, I could get six months interest-free financing for the nearly $500 in supplies, which seemed good to me.

( Guttered )

After working on this for much of the afternoon, the roofer concluded that his ladder was not long enough and that he would come back the next day with a long enough roof for him to finish the gutter and to start on the shingles and flashing on the opposite side of the house.