3 cheers for the Better Business Bureau (and Angie's List)

I recently hired a contractor to do $5,000 worth of window work on my house. As is my practice, I got three bids. The first two were from local contractors who'd done some nice work on neighbors' homes. The third bid was from a window company that does its own installation.

The two contractors both planned to use Marvin double-hung windows, which they would order through a local window dealer with whom I'd had a horrific experience two years ago: repeated delays, mistakes in the order, and surly customer service, to boot.

After talking with the two contractors, I joined Angie's List and looked up their top-rated window contractor for North Seattle. I called this contractor, who came over and proposed using two Milgard casement windows along with three non-opening windows from a local company that does commercial buildings. As window specialists, they knew a huge amount about types of windows, insulation, wear, and weather.

With a small Angie's List discount, their bid came to about 15% under the contractors.

But, before hiring them, I went to the Better Business Bureau website to check on them. Their rating was: A+. Reassuring, but I've always figured that the BBB adhered to an "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" policy. On previous instances when I've checked a company through the BBB, the website has said things like "This business is not a BBB Accredited Business" and "This business is not currently rated. BBB does not have sufficient information to issue a rating for this business."

Just for the heck of it, I looked up the window dealer with whom I'd had such a miserable experience in the past. To my surprise, they have a BBB rating, and (not so much to my surprise) that rating is "F."

Very interesting. I wonder if the two contractors know about this! It certainly cost them my business.

By the way, the folks I hired, based on Angie's List and BBB ratings, are Reglaze Unlimited.

Where's the cat?

Last week I avoided writing about Garibaldi the feral cat. He disappeared for seven days, and I was worried. But he showed up Sunday, yawning, at the back door. And looking perfectly well fed. He ate with us Sunday and Monday, and now is apparently on the road again.

So, the missing cat I'm writing about is not one of ours. He belongs to our friends Gayle and Jerry. The cat is a black Maine Coon, and he's been extremely sick with a puzzling intestinal illness for some months now. Occasionally, when he's in exceptionally bad shape, we go over during the day to check on him and report to Jerry, who works on the Eastside.

The cat's been near death several times, and this weekend he took a turn for the worse. Yesterday we were part of a team of folks checking on him during the day. When we arrived, he was laying on the floor on a towel, eyes glazed, and barely moving. I was pretty sure it was the end.

I was surprised when Jerry called this morning and asked if we'd check on the cat at noon. I was even more surprised when we went over there at noon, and the cat was gone.

We looked under beds, behind bookcases, in closets, and under furniture. We called Jerry, and he told us about a couple of other hiding places. No cat. We went home, got a flash light, and did a second search. We even went outdoors and asked the workmen on the house next door. No cat.

Jerry came home a few hours later, and called to report that he'd found the cat, laying on a desk in the guest room amidst piles of books at papers. Jerry had walked right past the cat, twice, before he spotted him.

We were relieved. If the cat was able to hop up on a desk, perhaps he's once again on the road to recovery.

And I can hardly wait until GPS pet technology is affordable for cats.

Too much

I'm overcommitted, and I hate what it does to me. I'm making deadlines, but missing birthdays. People talk to me and I can't hear them because there are already a dozen other voices talking in my head, each one a monologue about a particular project.

To make it worse, the first four weeks of this month have been filled with deaths and illnesses in my social circle. Illness that involve things like chemotherapy, radiation, and amputations. Things that make you look at your plate and wonder about additives and cholesterol. Things that make me sure I get my butt over to BF Day for least two of Susan Powter's workouts every week. Last week I made it to three, which meant my days looked like: shower, work, workout, work, bath, sleep (repeat).

This past weekend some social events, arranged weeks ago, required making sandwiches. After slicing two of my fingers, I ended up making sandwiches while wearing bandages and gloves. The cuts are ugly, but not serious, since I can still put enough weight on my hands to do yoga and the bandages can be peeled back far enough so that I can use my fingertips to type. But I've managed to duck any further cooking or dishwashing activities.

This week looks to be even more pathetic, with multiple trips to Olympia for early morning meetings. Apologies to everyone, in advance.

I'm reminded of my mother, who ran a schedule like this for years on end. She not only managed to keep up with everything, she frequently got ahead of herself.

One day she drove her usual hour-and-a-half commute from Cape Cod to work at the Boston statehouse, worked all morning, and the walked to her elderly parents' apartment to clean and make lunch for them. She was in such a hurry to get back to work that when the elevator arrived on 7th floor of the apartment building, she dashed in and opened her umbrella — scaring several people.

Fortunately for everyone, I don't carry an umbrella.

Explaining Massachusetts to the West Coast

The liberal state of Massachusetts went and elected a Republican senator. How did this happen? Let me explain.

"Liberal" in Massachusetts is not like "liberal" in Seattle. It's working class liberal — people who believe in the right to organize, fair pay, job protection, free speech. But they don't really like seeing women get too much power — the gals should be home raising 10 kids.

And the working class liberals just can't resist handsome young male candidates — particularly ones who look like the local Irish attorney for the labor union. So they picked Scott Brown — someone who looks like a young Ted Kennedy even if he doesn't think like one.

Oh, where is George V. Higgins when we need him?

Now don't go and get all complicated about this one. That is so...West Coast.

Jump

This month, and next month, are extremely busy for my business, as a result of the commuting involved in my Olympia project. On Sunday night I feel like I'm about to jump out of an airplane and am wondering if I packed the parachute correctly.

I plan to dial things back in March and April.

This weekend had too much going on. I was very happy today to finally get an hour out in the garden. It's going to be a great gardening season. The early winter cold killed off last year's foliage, so it's easy to clear the way for all of the wonderful things that are already coming up (wood iris and crocuses) for spring. I am determined to get rid of plants that just aren't right for the space (a two-foot high pieris japonica that isn't happy in the front yard, and a rather lovely espaliered camellia (three feet high, deep pink) that just doesn't belong next to the house. If you are interested in either shrub, please let me know.

My other gardening ambitions are:
• Get the spring rituals figured out for the columnar apple tree (spraying with mysterious environmentally correct oils or some such)
• Do something about the lousy grass in the small but lumpy and difficult-to-mow back yard. I suspect I'm headed toward a grass-free back yard, with winding pathways of inexpensive embossed concrete (where the stepping stones now are) and ground covers and ornamental grasses (where the grass now is). The one thing I do not want anywhere is gravel, which seems to be an invitation for weeds to dive in and take over.
• Remove all of the invasive Cricklewood hardy geraniums from the garden. They look great and grow fast in the spring, with fabulous bright pink blossoms, but turn mildewed in midsummer. I could deal with this if they stayed one size and in one place, but they tend to push aside other plants, creating a big sea of mildewed leaves.
• Move Tom's giant planter out to the driveway, and use it to replace the mid-size planters that currently look like clutter. I saw a pretty wonderful planter of evergreen foliage in front of Habitude in Fremont this week (see photo) and I think I'm going to try to recreate that.
• Plant more blueberry bushes. Everywhere.

A look back at the year 2000

(With thanks to David Levine, who wrote on this topic in Facebook)

Excerpts from my holiday letter from 10 years ago:

...After two years as managing editor of Northwest Health magazine, I have begun a job-share arrangement with another senior editor so that I can spend two days a week writing book reviews for JanuaryMagazine.com and working on a mystery reader's travel guide to the Pacific Northwest. If all goes well, you’ll be able to buy the book on Amazon.com in 2001.

(Within three months, this arrangement led not to a book but to a new job with Apple, writing website reviews for iReview.)

1999 was a good year for visitors from out of state: My cousin Carol and her son Michael were here this summer (Michael was doing an internship at Microsoft on his way to U.C. Berkeley for grad school).

(Michael, after a stint in high tech, now has an MBA and is involved in politics and socially responsible businesses.)

...our friend Bob, a computer programmer and country dance caller from England, stayed with us for the Northwest Folklife Festival in May on his way to a new job in Australia. Two weeks later he was back from Australia, having left the new job to return to Seattle and pursue a romance with Laura, a wonderful woman he had met at Folklife!

(Bob and Laura are now married; I later moved to Ballard, and they are neighbors.)

My parents spent much of this year’s visit to Seattle looking at condominiums. They plan to shift their summer residence from Cape Cod to Edmonds, Washington—a beautiful town on Puget Sound, about 20 minutes north of Seattle. Winters will still find them in Naples, Florida.

(My father has since died, and now my mother has the Edmonds condo they purchased up for sale; she's planning on moving to a retirement community in Naples.)

The big-hearted lynxpoint Siamese, Solomon, died very suddenly of cancer in September. Solomon had made many friends up and down the block, and now it is not uncommon to find a neighbor standing on the sidewalk in front of the house, gazing at his resting place in the garden. They’ll explain “I’m talking to Solomon.” The four remaining cats (Bosco, Betaille, Sam, and Socks) are not among Sol’s mourners—nor are they out recruiting a replacement.

(Sadly, none of those remaining cats are left. Sam was hit by a car (which precipitated the move to a very quiet street in Ballard); Bosco died of cancer; Socks died after the move to Ballard in a rare complication after dental surgery; and Betaille went out, of old age and cancer, three years ago. Sheba, who joined the household nine years ago, is the only cat left from the Wallingford era.)

Today was just funny

I've been editing all evening — a rambling, poorly organized "how-to" article that goes on, and on, and on in excruciating detail. When I got to a bullet point (the eighth or ninth in a long, pontificating series) that said:

Be concise. People don't want to ready anything that's more than a page long.

I laughed so hard I fell out of my chair.

It's been that kind of day.

Still laughing

Thanks to a Facebook note from Doug Plummer, I'm still laughing. This time it's a Garrison Keillor column on the Republicans and healthcare.

Why I'm a cat owner

Maybe it was my recent dog-sitting experience, but I've been sitting here for the past hour chuckling over this story in the Seattle Times. I can only wonder what the cats, mentioned in the story, thought about the situation.

The new MacBook Pro

I am in the midst of setting up my MacBook Pro (13") which replaces my four-year-old 12" Titanium PowerBook. The Titanium had pretty much recovered from The Cat Pee incident, but it wasn't able to run Snow Leopard. As I'm now commuting to Olympia, I needed a reliable laptop, and I want to be able to use Snow Leopard's "Back to My Mac" feature to access the iMac at home.

First impressions:

• The new environmentally aware packaging is pretty elegant for cardboard. It was nice not to wrassle with a lot of plastic wrapping.
• I like the magnetic power cord (not new on MacBooks, but new for me).
• I love the backlit keyboard (again, not new for MacBooks, but new for me — I remember when this was just for the highest-end models).
• Choosing an account photo made me smile — I recognized several of the images (flowers) from the early iCards galleries I worked with.
• The screen seems wide, but not very tall.
• The new track pad with one, two, three and four-finger controls looks intriguing.
• I noticed that I will have been a member of .Mac (Mobile Me) for 10 years come Valentine's Day.
• The set-up, including settings and a complete sync of mail, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, via Mobile Me was complete 30 minutes from when I opened the shipping box.

All that remains is to install Microsoft Office, iWork '09, Yojimbo (which syncs), and Storyist.

Tomorrow.

Happy Holidays

Tonight the energy shifted from pre-holiday frenzy to actually enjoying the season.

I got out today and went up to Swanson's Nursery to spend my holiday "Swan Dollars" on some white pansies for the doorstep planter.

There is a camel at Swanson's Nursery. He seems very friendly, and is sharing his yard with shaggy burro (see photo of snorgling). There are also two magnificently antlered reindeer, who were busy attacking two Christmas trees suspended from the rafters. For that purpose.

I stopped by the new gourmet shop on Market Street in Ballard, Savour, and discovered the cheesemonger there is an old friend from Brie and Bordeaux (the cheese shop in the old Meridian neighborhood in Wallingford/Green Lake).

Savour has cheeses, Spanish ham, olives, and things you can't get anywhere else in town (except Pike Place Market). It's expensive. It's worth it. And they have gift certificates, one of which I bought for a friend.

Finally, I swung by Classic Consignment and got a beautiful Banana Republic A-line wool skirt for work ($18.99). I'm going to be working in Olympia two or three days a week in January and need "real" clothes.

Broken promise

Discouraging news for pet owners: Pet Promise cat food, a nutritious line developed under the supervision of Dr. Andrew Weil, is no longer available. According to the website, making and distributing pet food made from organic meats, and selling it at reasonable prices in supermarkets, didn't make enough money for the company.

So, there you have it. I'm back to the choice of crappy food I can afford and can pick up while doing my regular grocery shopping, or jaw-droppingly expensive organic food (well, the sanctimonious sales people insist it's organic) that I have to traipse off to special pet products stores to purchase.

Actually, I split the difference. The only wet cat food the cats will eat is Fancy Feast (definitely the Bad Commercial stuff) but I can get them to eat various types of premium or organic dry foods. The wet food is important for Garibaldi, the feral cat, because feral cats often don't have adequate access to water in the dry months.

Mabel, the new house cat, loves Pet Promise Healthy Weight forumula, as does Sheba the deaf white cat. Their last bowls of it are nearly gone. I've been scouring the area stores for it. If you see it, please let me know.

And tomorrow is Friday!

The week started out with a nasty email and floundered along until this morning when, at last, the karmic sun began to shine.

My new MacBook Pro arrived and is ready to be unpacked this weekend. It will replace the 12" PowerBook G4 that has been a little unpredictable after Kaylee the tabby peed on it and I poured odor neutralizer over the keyboard. I plan to keep it around as a loaner machine for people who just need to get webmail.

Garibaldi the feral cat, last seen on the heated outdoor cat bed Monday night, has reappeared again, demanding food. I think a neighbor who feeds several of the local ferals may have locked a bunch of them in his garage at night to keep them from freezing during the cold spell.

Two difficult writing projects got past road blocks today, and I made an amazing find on eBay — an item that perfectly matches a Company Store item I purchased three years ago, one that is no longer carried by the company store.

Everything I've ordered for Christmas gifts has arrived, so all that's left to fuss over is Christmas cookies (gingerbread this year) and shipping.

We've been invited to three parties this Saturday night, and are trying to figure out which ones to attend when. (A dance friend's annual white elephant Christmas/Hanukkah gift exchange is a must, but the neighbors' evening event is renowned for delicious seafood. Hmmm.) Other than that, our holiday calendar is relatively low key. There's nothing corporate, so I can wear steampunk fashion: lace, velvet, and boots!

The two nodding lawn reindeer we picked up at a church rummage sale this summer are already set up and entertaining the neighbors' kids, and I brought several boxes of Christmas decorations over from the storage locker this morning. It turns out to be a very odd mix of stuff, and much of it will be listed on Freecycle this weekend.

As for a tree, we'll get that next weekend at the Top Banana tree stand. They were nice enough to let me leave my car there over night last week after the tire exploded.

Yes, it's been like that recently. And today I couldn't get the garage door (one of two large swinging doors) to open. That's because the wet ground under the driveway froze, expanded, and raised the asphalt up nearly an inch. (In New England, this is a called a "frost heave.") The door can no longer swing out over the asphalt. Fortunately, I don't keep the car in the garage, so this does not constitute an emergency. Frost heaves rarely resolve when the ground thaws; I suspect this will require taking the large door off the hinges and planing the bottom a good half inch.

But I think, for a while, I'll just ignore it and go out the back door.

More dog and cats

The dog is at a lovely farm-like setting with friends for a few days.

The cats are glad he's gone. Our feral feline, Mr. Garibaldi, is back on the back porch twice a day, and I'm preparing a heated, insulated bed for him in the outside basement area — even though last year he rejected the heated bed and insisted on sleeping in the unheated one.

Meanwhile, a friend reminds me that you can click a link on this page to to donate food to the Petfinder.com-affiliated Animal Rescue Site. If you click once a day, it provides the value of .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. And you'll find a link to Jacquie Lawson's card site.

Oh, dog

Five cats I've dealt with before -- but five cats and a dog?

A friend of ours adopted a rescued dog a few months ago, only to discover that the dog -- a sweet, not-very-bright, large spaniel, six or seven years old -- had been neglected and was both needy and untrained. Our friend hasn't had the time or resources to train the dog to signal her when it wants to go out.

I thought this was her problem, until she had to go out of town for a week and we found ourselves with the dog. And there's simply no choice but to train it.

So, every three or four hours we take the dog out for a walk. The system is working well. The dog is happy. The house has not suffered.

As for me, I just got up at 2 a.m. to take it out in the back yard, and I have mixed feelings about this schedule.

To complicate matters, the dog is arthritic. Taking it out into the enclosed back yard means getting it up the basement stairs -- and tonight it slid all the way back down, with a terrible clatter. I have thick blankets and quilts for it in a few rooms. The dog likes to paw them into heaps before flopping down on them.

I am trying to figure out how anyone with a dog has time to do anything but walk the dog, feed the dog, and clean up what the dog has drooled on.

The dog, fortunately, barely notices the cats (four indoor, one outdoor semi-feral). The cats, for their part, seem utterly incredulous that there is a dog in the house.

I'm on the side of the cats.

A week of "suspicious activity"

Thanks to Citibank, I had to make four separate phone calls this week to insist that four routine charges on two of my credit cards were not "unusual activity." The charges were in the $20 range, and the merchants involved were major online companies. For each purchase, Citibank left two messages on my cell phone, three minutes apart. Of course, you can't hit "reply" — you have to key in a completely separate number, your ZIP code, and a special access code (that you had to write down from their message).

For the first incident, I called the number on the card itself and wended my way through the system to a live person. Why, I asked, was a renewal of my Classmates.com membership ($20) considered suspicious? The answer: "It's a very large company and criminals are likely to make purchases from large companies."

So the criminal sets up a Classmates.com account with their purloined credit card number. Wouldn't that, er, be kind of traceable? Never mind.

At this rate, it's soon going to be faster just to drive to the mall and wander around buying things the old-fashioned way. Or perhaps I should pay for all online purchases via PayPal — as far as I know, those payments don't have to be defended.

In which much is resolved

The job at the Big Company in California was not, as I suspected, a good match for me. But I enjoyed the four rounds of interviewing.

Meanwhile, I'm a finalist for a three-month contract with an Olympia web strategy firm. If I get it, I'd be writing a large, complex website for a state agency. I find myself highly enthusiastic about the firm's approach, and think I could learn quite a bit from working with them.

Unfortunately, commuting would be a pain. I thought "No problem! Amtrak to Olympia!" But it turns out that the 7:30 a.m. Amtrak from Seattle doesn't actually go to Olympia...it stops in Lacey, where the only option for getting to Olympia (a mere 5 miles) is a meandering local bus route that takes 50 minutes!

I find this mind boggling. Surely there must be hundreds of Seattle-to-Olympia commuters who would switch from car to the train—if only someone ran a morning shuttle from the Lacey station to the state capitol.

What happened?

One of the reasons I write about conventions and conferences while they're going on is because I know by now that I won't get around to writing about them when I get home.

Instead, I'll grapple with piles of laundry, try to catch up on sleep and exercise, and deal with the emails, messages, and work missed while traveling.

Tonight, instead of reflecting back on the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, I'm dismantling the refrigerator, washing all the shelves, and throwing out lots of jars of jams, jellies, chutneys, relishes and olives whose origins are lost in the mists of time. Anyone who really wants to hear about the convention should come on over. And bring rubber gloves and baking soda.

Halloween at World Fantasy

Most science fiction conventions involve massive numbers of fans honoring a few professionals in the field, but World Fantasy is different. It's all about the professionals (writers, publishers, agents, reviewers, book dealers) doing business with each other while a smaller group of (mostly local) fans runs the logistics and looks on respectfully.

So forget the convention stereotype of Star Trek fans stomping around dressed as Klingons, or furries in full fox suits...the look here is definitely chinos and t-shirts for most, with black jeans and black t-shirts for the urban noir contingent. It turns out that the governing board even prevented one of the book dealers from displaying their steampunk hats — the three jewelry dealers (two high-end, one not-so-high-end) apparently got in as fantasy-themed artwork and are doing a brisk business in steampunk-related items.

However, with the convention coinciding with Halloween this year, the unwritten "no costumes" rule is tough to enforce, even with raised eyebrows and management disapproval. As the day goes on, more and more witches and wizards are turning up in the elevators. In fact, they've got one running Ops.

World Fantasy Convention initial impressions

Arrived in San Jose late last night and discovered I'd forgotten my decorative stuff (jewelry, makeup, steampunk hat). The Scholarly Gentleman had already set up the shop in the dealers' room and wanted to take me to a party to meet famous and about-to-be-famous writers and editors.

I met one extremely famous writer in the elevator and chatted just a bit about his books set in Tibet and Nepal. After a fairly exhausting hour at a huge party that stretched on for several rooms in the Fairmont, I concluded that the older a famous writer is, the friendlier he or she will be.

I'm working on my own projects in the hotel room (no power outlet within 15 feet of the desk; marble desktop that doesn't work with a mouse, exorbitant wi-fi charge) in between running down to the dealers' room to help out the Scholarly Gentleman. Tomorrow I'm going to help out Sarah in Ops.