Coffee heat rising

funny

This post may be a paid guest contribution.

Live-Blogging from Hell

by

Mwa ha ha!  You’ll recall I thought it was a lovely day this morning? Even vacation-like? Well, when you think about it, nano- means very, very, excessively extremely small. That does describe the extent of today’s minivacation.

Before long I get around to loading the sheets in the washer. Check one item off the list.

Next quickie project is to water the potted plants outside, which fortunately are fairly close to the side door to the garage, where the washer & dryer reside. I reach over to turn off the spigot and hear this husky “drip-drip-drip” and by golly it’s coming from inside the garage.

The garage sink, into which the washer drains, is COMPLETELY PLOGGED UP and water is now pouring onto the floor.

Shut off the spin cycle. Get the plunger. Plunge and plunge and plunge and plunge and plunge and plunge to no avail.

Call the plumber. He’ll come over sometime this afternoon.

Try to mop the water up off the floor. Lost cause. Open the garage door, move the car outside, get the wide broom, sweep puddles of water out onto the driveway.

The washer is now full of soapy sheets and white underwear. Pour cold water into the bathtub. Haul out the undies, wring as much soapy water out as my ancient hands will permit. Rinse them out in the tubful of water, wring, hang on plastic hangers to dry. Decide I’d just as soon not leave the sheets sitting the the washer all day. Remember how  my mother and I used to have to rinse all the clothes and linens, including my father’s enormously heavy khakis, in the big utility sink in the service porch, then drag them out to the backyard and hang them up on the clotheslines. If a shamal (a sandstorm) came rolling in from the desert or a rain squall washed ashore from the Persian Gulf, we would have to run to grab the clothes off the line before the flying dirt or water hit.

Those were the good old days. Not.

Funny. The plumbing never seemed to back up in those halcyon times.

Haul the sheets into the bathroom, rinse them in the tub, wring them as best as I can, drop them back in the bucket, haul them to the backyard and hang them on the makeshift clotheslines out there.

Hm. Walking through the kitchen, I notice that the kitchen sink is backed up, too. Call the plumber to report this, so he’ll know what he’s contending with. He says that means the kitchen line we thought we’d unplugged a few days didn’t really get unplugged. He’s armed with all his machinery.

It’ll be a while. The really BIG thing I needed to do today was to file The Copyeditor’s Desk’s annual report with the Corporation Commission. I’m late, and probably accruing late fees as the days pass. But it’s easy: get online, enter the corporation’s registration number, update a form, fork over about a hundred bucks, and click “done.”

Sounds easy, anyway.

But….

I get up to retrieve my wallet, wherein resides the corporate credit card.

It’s not in my purse.

It’s not in my class junk bag.

It’s not in the car.

IT. IS. FUCKIN’. GONE!!!!!!!

I can’t find my wallet anywhere. Nowhere. Anyplace. Noplace!!!!!!!

Maybe I left it at the window & door guy’s shop when I took out a credit card to pay him. Of course, they’re “family oriented” and close over the weekend. No one there.

Okay. So…can I find the credit card number and just enter the damn thing at the Corporation Commission’s site? It means taking a chance that someone is madly charging up truck tires and boom boxes on that card, but hey. All I have to do is say I didn’t realize it was gone when I was submitting forms online.

Well. No. I can’t find the credit card number. My file folder full of statements is over at the accountant’s. Fortunately she lives across the street. She comes over with the statements, and with advice:

CALL. AMERICAN. EXPRESS. NOW. NOT. LATER!

And while you’re at it, call the Mastercard vendor, too. Do not even THINK of waiting until Monday when you can get the window dude on the phone!

Oshitodamnohell…

BUSINESS OWNER: Okay, but how’s about I post the annual report first?

ACCOUNTANT: You could probably get away with that.

Welp, we find the full account number in a piece of correspondence AMEX sent at the time I opened the account (otherwise, they show only the last four digits on their statements).

So I sit down to do the annual report and…that’s when I realize I don’t know when the card expires.

Rifle through all the papers and receipts in the files: no clue.

Damn.

So, get on the phone to AMEX and Mastercard to report missing-or-stolen card. They cancel the accounts and say they will reissue new cards. While chatting with the AMEX CSR, realize that holy god! My flicking Medicare card was in that wallet, and Medicare kindly stamps your goddam SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER on the card and then demands that you carry it everywhere with you! Have a near melt-down on the phone.

Moving on… Transfer the amount of down payment for the windows from savings over to checking and use that to pay the balance on the Mastercard, with which I paid the window guy.

After all these tergiversations, I remember—a day late and a dollar short—that at one point along the line I photocopied the contents of that wallet. Dig this out, and yes, it shows the Medicare card, a Mastercard, two AMEX cards, a driver’s license… Hmmm….Apparently I also had a J.Jill card in there.

Can’t get a human being at J.Jill, only the MOST infuriating robo-answerer in creation. Only option there is to cancel the card altogether. Good. Less opportunity to charge stuff up.

Now I am without a charge card. And I charge everything. I do not carry cash. I buy gas at Costco, and you have to use your AMEX card to buy gas there, unless you go inside and buy a cash card (which I’ll have to do tomorrow, with a check, since I have to drive from proverbial pillar to annoying post next week).

The plumber shows up. “This looks bad,” says he.

He breaks out his rotorooter tool and climbs on the roof. As I write this, it is 109 degrees in the shade of the back porch. You don’t even want to think about what the temperature is like in the full glare of the sun atop a dark roof.

In the presence of another human being, my hysteria abates from its high pitch. A vague memory arises: didn’t I read some PF blogger’s advice somewhere that a person should take her Medicare card out of her wallet and stash it someplace in the house? And didn’t I…did I?…act on that?

Dredge through a file drawer to find the hanging folder for Medicare, and therein find a file labeled À la carte. And hot dang! There’s the damnfool Medicare card!

Somewhere along the line, for one brief shining moment, I experienced a flicker of common sense. A miracle!!!! Whoever has my wallet does not have my Social Security number.

What. a. freaking. nightmare.

…..oh, but it gets better….

[PLUMBER walks into kitchen and runs water in the sink]

HOMEOWNER: Hm. Looks like it’s running.

PLUMBER: Actually not. It’s plugged up solid.

HOMEOWNER: Get the jackhammer.

PLUMBER: That’s what I’m doin’!

I think he’s joking. I hope.

PLUMBER goes back on the roof, having asked me to stand next to the sink and watch what happens. Spends another ten minutes laboring with the drain snake.

He comes down and opines that the drain is now clear.

I remark that I can’t recall blocked pipes when I was a little kid.

“Well, people didn’t rely on the plumbing as much then. We didn’t have dishwashers, and a lot of people didn’t even have washers in their homes.”

Right. And when water came out of a faucet, enough came out to matter…

Moving on, he notices a gallon of vinegar sitting on the garage table—I use it in the dishwasher. He says, “If we could pour a gallon of that down the drain, it would be good.”

I say, “How about ammonia?”

Says he, “That would be even better.”

I haul out a half-gallon bottle of ammonia. “Pour it all down the kitchen sink,” he says. “And use some of it to clean the sink!”

I put on a pair of rubber gloves and proceed as directed. We let the ammonia sit there for ten or twenty minutes. Then fill the sinks—what with the hateful low-flow kitchen faucet, it takes another ten or twenty minutes to fill the kitchen sinks. I ask if it would be possible to get one of those plastic faucets, like the one on the utility sink, that actually works and put it on the kitchen sink. He thinks (erroneously) that I’m kidding.

It’s 3:03 p.m. I have not done the annual report (nor will I, now, until Tuesday or Wednesday), I have not picked up the piles of paper off my desk, I have not read the rest of the client’s MS, I have not read any part of the ARC awaiting attention, I have not printed out the stuff about the windows and filed them, I have not gone to Costco (nor can I, until new credit cards come in), I have not graded student papers, I have not cleaned the floors or dusted, I have not washed the windows. I have not scanned and deposited the most recent check from Google Adsense. My hands are burning from scrubbing sinks and sink grids with Barkeeper’s Friend. It is hotter than Hell in here. I am going to bed, perhaps never to arise.

With any luck.

 

 

Nanovacationing

by

Up at 4:00 a.m.; parked in front of the computer by 4:30; worked on a client’s manuscript till 6:00. Wrote a to-do list. Then walked away from the desk and into a lovely little nanovacation.

What a beautiful, beautiful morning! Jumped in the pool and swam around for awhile, all the while tossing the ball that Cassie kept throwing into the drink. Put on some clean clothes, fixed a light breakfast, and came to light in a rocking chair on the deck. Smugly dipped a strawberry into a pile of crunchy sugar while reading about Nanny Bloomberg’s scheme to ban New Yorkers from slurping down a Big Gulp.

Ah! This is the life. Taking an hour or so away from the contract work and the blogging work and the housework and the yardwork is like going on a tiny vacation: a nanovacation. By the time I came to the end of my second cup of coffee, I felt nice and relaxed.

Things are going well just now. A spate of business has been pouring across the minicorporate threshold, and incredibly, when I cite our new hourly rate, people agree to pay it! Crystal, the ad agent extraordinaire, recently came up with another plug of money for FaM, which is always good. If this keeps up, we may very well have enough income from the work we know we can do for both Tina and me to knock off the menial work—waiting tables on her part, teaching freshman comp on mine.

I’ve been invited to join a new networking group, something called WOAMTEC, and the energetic proprietor of K&J Windows and Doors proposes to get me invited as a guest (and maybe as a member) to the chapter of BNI he belongs to. The guy is an effervescent businessman and networker, and when he found out what we do, he expressed interest in possibly hiring us, but more to the point, he started to dispense advice on how to get leads and how to generate business by developing lots and lots of business contacts. He pretty much confirmed what Tina and I had already come to realize: One of us needs to function as the rainmaker and one needs to run the actual work and supervise the subcontractors.

Ultimately I did decide to go with K&J, much as I like the estimable Chip of Freelite. The product he’s selling, Simonton, seems to be very good—in the same quality range as Milgard (in some respects somewhat better)—and the price is a little lower. He ended up underpricing Chip by about $2,000 on the three doors I decided to install. Instead of cheapying down with only two doors, I decided to select the narrow rails instead of the more expensive wide “French” rails and go for all three, rather than end up with two in white vinyl and one in black aluminum.

These doors should be marginally more secure (they’ll still need to be shored up with a stick in the runner) and much more energy efficient. They’re low-E, EnergyStar windows, and they come with tempered glass, which is a little harder to break. Unlike Milgard, Simonton also will provide a supplemental barrel-type lock, which can go into either the floor or the frame above the door—believe I’ll outfit each door with both. The cost of lead abatement magically dropped from the $150/door that I thought was being quoted to only $50 per door. That may have been what his manager was saying in the first place, and I may have misunderstood. Anyway, a total of $150 is a big improvement on what I expected would be a $450 hit. The total cost is a little over $4,000, which is about what I had privately budgeted for the job.

So, I think these will amount to a desirable improvement to the house for (objectively speaking) not all that much money. They’ll not only look a lot better, they’ll be safer and much more energy-efficient.

The pool is so lovely at this time of year, as the weather starts to get warm. Yesterday it was 112, but the water is still cool enough to refresh. Dropping into a clear pond of cool water is a perfect way to start a hot day…and an even more perfect way to end one.

Getting rid of the hated devil-pod tree was the best thing I’ve done, where that pool is concerned. We’ve had a few days that were breezy enough to blow junk into the pool, but I haven’t had to spend an hour at a time shoveling bushels of long, strappy leaves and pots off the bottom and unclogging the cleaning system. It’s now safe to let the system go for several days at a time, without having to hover over it and check several times a day to be sure it’s not choking. That makes pool care really very easy.

Sure is better than having to mow a lawn! 🙂

The arborist was right, though, that the devil-pod tree would try to resuscitate itself by shooting up runners from the roots. The other day I found one sticking up between the flagstones, 35 feet away from the trunk! And several keep struggling back to life on the far side of the east wall. The only thing that will beat these things back is undiluted Roundup concentrate. Yuck!

Updated my Linked-In profile and invited a whole bunch of people to “connect,” many of whom I’d almost forgotten about. Built a contacts list in Google and realized that Google Contacts can be made to work, in a crude way, like a bare-bones database. It will do what I need it to do, anyway, which is sort contacts by category and build mailing lists of clients, to whom I intend, very soon, to start sending a quarterly e-newsletter. Realized I’d forgotten to file this year’s annual report with the Corporation Commission, which turns out to be just as well, because this will provide an opportunity to add Tina as a director, giving us more credibility with our application to the AAAME program.

And so, I think, to brew another pot of coffee and enjoy the last few moments of moderate temperatures this morning, and then to work…

 

The Workman Waltz: Angie’s Dance

by

So yesterday a guy who’s ecstatically recommended on Angie’s List came over to measure and give me an estimate on installing the three proposed sliding doors. And as experiences go, this one took the cake. It may be one of the most amazing episodes of the Workman Waltz to date. 😀

First off, he didn’t even want to be bothered with measuring…said he’d been in business long enough to know what the dimensions of sliding doors are. He just wanted to cut a deal.

When I insisted that he look at the door in the back bedroom because a previous owner built a wood frame around it, he was surprised to find it’s a different size from the other two doors (which themselves are not the same size, though at a glance they look like they are). He said it’s a nonstandard size. Then he opined that the original opening had been built for hinged French doors. Wrong on both counts: the original opening is the width and height it is because a happy handyman simply took out the window, cut the wall opening down to the floor, and framed the resulting opening to fit a standard small Home Depot sliding door.

Oozing into a chair at the dining-room table, he next tried to sell me a used door. His company just moved to new digs, and they removed doors they’d put into the place they were renting. So wouldn’t I like a FANTASTIC deal on a 13-year-old sliding door! No warranty of course.

Moving on, I asked what he does about lead abatement, something I learned about from the K&J Windows and Doors guy. As it develops, if a house was built before 1978, the federal government requires contractors who do any kind of renovation or replacement to test for lead paint and, if they find it, to jump through some nuisancey and expensive hoops. For example, K&J charges $100 for the lead test and $150 per window or door for the extra work that has to be done.

He now says he will not do an installation if there’s lead, because it’s too much hassle and the rule is too oppressive: the fine for getting it wrong is $37,500 and possible jail time. So, says he, the way to deal with this is I’ll give him a letter stating that I know the house has no lead in it. Then he’ll have his crew install the windows without screwing around with the lead abatement safety procedures.

“Well, I don’t know that,” I say. “The house hasn’t been tested.”

He says that doesn’t matter—just give him a letter warrantying that the house is free of lead and don’t worry about it.

In other words, instead of him paying $37,500 and going to jail, I can do it.

I say, according to the figures the EPA has published on the Internet, a house built in 1971 (the year mine was built) has a 24% chance of having lead paint.

He scoffs. “You can find anything on the Internet,” says he. That figure is wrong, he says: “I took the lead certification course, and I can tell you the chances of this house having lead paint are almost nil. Just give me the letter and we’ll install the windows.” I let this line of conversation drop, having found the figures from a chart published at the EPA’s website and recognizing a bald-faced lie when I hear it.

Now he demands to know how much others have bid. He emits an offer that underbids K&J, proposing not to install the Milgard or Simonton windows I’ve researched and specifically asked for but to substitute an off-brand. Then he says he’ll give me this SMOKIN’ deal only if I sign with him right that instant.

I say I have another contractor coming over to give me another bid, and I will decide which company to go with after I’ve gathered all the bids.

He now tries to high-pressure me, saying it’s pointless to get any other bids and that I’m being silly to ask for several estimates.

I say I’m not going to be pushed into signing a contract until I have all the bids I want.

He says unless I sign with him RIGHT THEN AND THERE, he won’t do business with me.

I say fine, good-bye.

He leaves, but drops his card on the table and tells me to call him if I change my mind.

Man! That was an experience.

The K&J guys are coming over this morning. So far, their bid, based on Freelite’s measurements, is a LOT less than Freelite’s. However, when I looked closely at their bid, I saw it did not itemize the 6.04% tax by each door, as Chip the Freelite owner had done in his bid. So I had to try to figure the tax on each piece, by way of deciding whether to buy all three or only two. But even with that added, they’re $1,461 less if I buy two narrow-rail doors and $1,835 if I buy three. That’s including K&J’s $150/window lead abatement charges, about which Chip said nothing. Yesterday I e-mailed Chip to ask if his bid includes the lead thing, but he hasn’t replied.

Calculating the tax is complex because it may apply to some things and not to others, and so I won’t know for sure what K&J’s bid will be until I’ve talked with an installer and asked him to provide the real, actual, final bottom line.

Freelight did nothing in the lead department when they installed the skylights and front windows several years ago, and I have yet to keel over dead. But that was before 2010, when this regulation went into force. So if there is lead in the house (which, this being Arizona, we can assume is the case), I was exposed to clouds of lead-laden dust. At the outset, the rule was supposed to allow a waiver for homes where no children and no pregnant women live; however, the EPA threw that proposal out before the law took effect.

If the required test reveals lead in the house, the hoops they have to jump through are quite dramatic. All the occupants have to leave the house and stay out until the job and the cleanup are done. They have to tape off your house with yellow hazard tape and put up those orange cones to keep people out. They have to seal off the work space by taping plastic all around each window, and the workmen have to wear protective gear (in 112-degree heat!). So as you can imagine, if there’s lead in the house, it’s unlikely the job is going to get done this summer.

Or at all…I’m inclined to skip the whole project, if that amount of hassle is entailed.

An option is to find out if there’s lead in the house and then just not do the work. However, it’s better not to know. If you do know, when you go to sell the house you’re required to disclose the presence of old lead paint, even though it represents exactly zero hazard if it’s been covered with latex paint and is not chipped or peeling.

Anyway, the crook described above has rave reviews at Angie’s List. He probably put people up to joining and entering cheery reports, no doubt by giving them even deeper discounts on the junk brands he’s peddling. I’m tempted to describe this story at Angie’s List, but if he gets nailed for violating the federal law, he’d probably hire Guido from Chicago to come do some serious damage to my house or me.

Image: Renoir, Bal à Bougival. Public domain.

Debit Card Overdraft Fees Pose Hidden Danger for Unwary Consumers

by

A new study by the Pew Center has revealed that consumers are continuing to pay high fees for debit card overdrafts two years after federal regulators put rules in place to curb this highly profitable practice. In 2011, banks raked in $16 billion in debit overdraft fees. Astoundingly, that is actually a decline of 16 percent from the 2009 peak.

According to the Pew Survey, one in five consumers paid a overdraft fee at some point in 2011, with the vast majority saying the overdraft was a mistake both in terms of the purchase and in their understanding of how their debit cards worked. The card users failed to understand they agreed to incur such charges at the time their debit cards were issued.

 Debit Card Overdraft Fees Are Voluntary

When the Federal Reserve revised the rules under which debit card overdrafts can be assessed, the fees are allowed only for customers who have “opted in.” The banks responded with alarming and aggressive marketing campaigns that led consumers to believe if they did not agree to be charged overdraft fees, their cards would be rejected more often and thus of less use to them.

Consumers surveyed said they did not understand what they were agreeing to when they signed their debit card contracts, and at least half said they had no memory of signing such an agreement. Another third said they did not even know the overdraft program at their bank existed until they were presented with the fee.

Banks Insist Consumers Want Their Transactions Accepted

Banks respond to critics by saying that consumers would rather pay the overdraft fee and be given access to funds when they are in need of them. The Pew survey, however, found that 75 percent of those who paid an overdraft would rather their transaction had been denied. Younger card users and the working poor are especially hard hit by such fees, which tend to be levied on consumers under the age of 44 who earn less than $30,000 a year.

Another study on debit card behavior conducted by the Center for Responsible Lending found that 60 percent of consumers opted for overdraft protection believing that they were avoiding fees if their cards were denied. Those fees do not actually exist. By the same token, two-thirds of consumers thought the agreements they were signing were protecting them from bounced checks, which are actually covered by completely separate elements of account agreements.

 Federal Regulators Revisiting the Debit Card Fee Issue

These findings, and complaints by consumers, led the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to open an investigation of overdraft fees in February that will include an examination of how banks are wording the marketing language associated with these programs. If the initial reforms did not go far enough in halting deceptive and confusing language, stronger regulations may result.

The use of debit cards has, for many consumers, replaced the use of checks and physical money. The perception is that when the card is empty, it can’t be used. That may not be true, however, as banks have found a way to earn money from consumers even when their accounts have run dry.

This article was contributed by Suzan Bekiroglu. Ms. Bekiroglu is a published author, freelance writer and editorial consultant for secureloanconsolidation.com. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Florida, she faced the mounting obstacle of paying over $24,000 back in student loan debt. Determined to eliminate the debt, she became knowledgeable about money management. She seeks to educate others with tips on managing student loans and other kinds of debt, as well as in general personal finance and money saving tips.

Workin’ on the Business Plan

by

I’m going to try to enroll our business, The Copyeditor’s Desk, in a really interesting-sounding program that comes out of a partnership between the Small Business Administration and Arizona Public Service, a large utility. Called AAME, it’s a two-year program of workshops, training, and mentoring designed for small minority- and women-owned businesses.

Yeah, I know: it’s a 90-degree turn from the real estate scheme. However, there’s some reason to think building the editorial business, which is something I know well and in which I have a talented business partner, might be smarter than leaping into an entirely new enterprise in which I have no experience and for which I have no idea whether I have any aptitude.

The main reason is that we’ve started getting work from people who don’t blanch at our hourly rate.

• The community college district hired our company to help compile what amounted to a very large application. Pay was good and there was no caviling about it.

• A scholar in Tucson wants us to help edit her latest book; an arcane study of Japanese sociolinguistics.

• A large nonprofit asked if we would edit an employee manual.

• And an old client reappeared at the door with a new book in hand—and news that the work we helped her with has found an excellent publisher.

 And IMHO the other reason is that we’re not getting the kind of work we want for the kind of pay we expect is because we’re not working hard enough at it. And for that the main reason is that Tina and I are each trying to do too many things at once. Her life is as gestalt as mine, maybe more so: in addition to working three jobs, she’s also trying to bring up a little girl, cope with a crazy ex-, and build a life with her fiancé. Because we’re both trying to do too much, neither of us is fully focused on any one of our several endeavors. The result is…we’re not giving our all to any of these enterprises.

What if instead of running off after some new money-making scheme, I worked a little harder at getting the one we have to fly? We need to focus more on one thing and less on three or four things.

This AAAME program looks like just the thing to jump-start that:

• Mentoring
• Workshops
• Training in business management and marketing
• And opportunities to network with just the kind of business owners who can use our services!

To say nothing of schmoozing with some of the biggest movers & shakers in the state…

Part of the application process entails writing a business plan. Naturally, we have a business plan, of sorts. But it’s vague.

That right there may be part of our problem! 😉

To create the plan for the AAAME application, I’m following the SBA’s business plan template. It’s pretty simple to do, and very clear. Rather than fill it in online, I simply hit “continue” all the way through, copying the instructions into a Word file. Now I’m following the SBA’s steps to create a business plan tailored for the AAAME application’s needs. I’m about half-way through it.

It’s pretty useful because it forces you to re-articulate your ideas in terms of a specific structure and asks you to identify exactly who you think is going to buy your services and why on earth they would want to. It also asks you not only to describe what you think you want to sell, but more to the point, why your product or service is competitive.

These are things that we just sort of know, but that we’ve never really put into words. And they should be put into words, outlined in very specific detail. No question: this is the platform for a new business’s marketing plan.

Marketing is our weakest point. But just putting the requested business plan together is spurring some ideas that should make a difference. I’ve started to build a database of past and present clients and intend to emit a quarterly newsletter. The first one will talk about our effort to reposition ourselves toward businesses and professional practices, and that will give us a nice opportunity to articulate some of these very topics to our customer base: what can we do for you and why?

The business plan is a valuable exercise as well as a potential tool if you need to apply for grants or loans. It’s something you can apply to just about any enterprise you want to pursue, including blogging.

If you’re thinking of monetizing your blog, or if you’ve already monetized it but are more or less flying by the seat of your pants, you might want to consider writing out a business plan. If you don’t want to follow the SBA template, there are several others on the Web, or some versions of Word have a template. It really clarifies your ideas… Try it. You’ll like it.

Best $20 I Ever Spent?

by

So the plumber came over on Monday to deal with the Memorial Day Weekend Fiasco. By the time he got here, the drain was running again, albeit slowly. He said that often the weight of water sitting in the sink will push a clog through; that was probably what happened. He applied some Magical Crystals, which fizzed their way through the drain and forthwith, presto-changeo! The drain was running just fine.

Asked what I owed him, figuring it would be about $65.

“Oh,” says he, “how about enough to cover my gas?”

So I gave him twenty bucks.

While he was here, we got to chatting about the late, great SWAT team adventure and I remarked as to how I wanted to change out all the sliding doors to get something more secure, because two of them don’t even latch.

He looked at me kinda funny and said, “Why would you do that? You’re already doing the best thing you can do to secure a sliding door: dropping a stick or metal bar in the slider groove.

“Doesn’t matter how good the door’s latch is. To get in, all you’ve got to do is take a rock or a hammer, break the glass, and open the door.”

Hm.

Well, one of the doors is extremely not low-E. Even on a reasonably mild day and even though no direct sunlight ever hits that door, the ambient temperature outdoors will make the glass feel warm to the touch. Explains a lot about why the bedroom is hotter than a two-dollar cookstove by about 4:00 p.m.

And the one that came with the house has a pane of something that doesn’t even seem to be glass. Plastic? Did Superlite make sliding tinfoil doors with plastic panes???? It’s cheesy and it looks cheesy and its decrepit and I’d really like to be rid of it.

The third, in the dining room, does possess a functioning latch. Though it’s not my favorite color or style, its glass doesn’t get especially hot in the summer and it works just fine. Sooooo….

Why am I doing this?

Why, instead of replacing all three doors with expensive fancy white wide-rail vinyl sliders, why not keep the narrow, dark-framed dining-room sliding door and then…and then and then…

Get two narrow-rail Simonton doors, which not only happen to be cheaper and better reviewed than Milgard but which also come in a wider range of colors. Order them in “bronze” on the outside to match the existing dining-room door and “tan,” which is the darkest interior color. This would come close enough in appearance to the existing door as to not be too annoying, I’d get low-E doors with the best cheesy latches available on any sliding door product, and it would cost ONE. hell. of. a. lot. less.

For the saving, I’ll bet I can replace that last bedroom window and still come out ahead. Or at least have enough to hire a painter to spiff up the interior.

That twenty bucks on the unnecessary plumber’s trip was probably the best twenty dollah I ever spent!