Brown Town

The excitement is overwhelming for me.  The new (Third) town square is now open in The Villages.  In spite of what our friend "FRED" calls it, Brown Town, it is actually called Brown Wood and Paddock Square is the spot where all the old goiters will now go to get hammered each night.   AS with everything in The Villages, it is very well done and authentic to the last detail.   The Barnstormer is the theater that has nicer seats in it than our furniture in our living room. 

For whatever reason, The Villages designed the new square to look like old Florida in every way.  They transplanted 2000 huge trees, had sculptures made and brought in from all over the country and have not missed any details right down to horse shoe prints in the concrete on the dance floor.  Now picture this.  Mabel is what, 108 this year and is looped on rum and coke and decides to take a spin with Gomer and she trips in the horse hoof.  Believe me, I've fallen off a sidewalk in The Villages and it was not pretty.  Seeing Mabel spattered out on the dance floor as she attempts to Wobble would not be pretty and would most likely defeat Gomers plans for when they got home at 9:00 pm.

As you can see, part of the new square includes stadium seating which I don't understand.  When you're what, 110 the last thing you need to handle are steps every time you want to do the Wobble.  I look at it this way, The Villages already has 880 clubs, the broken hip club would be a big seller.  The steps unto themselves are not such a big deal nor is Ethel being 112 but when they pickle themselves all night it could just be ugly and something this old fart doesn't want to see.  Having someone's depends come undone in the square would certainly be embarrassing so I will staple mine together so I won't be embarrassed when I fall into the horse hoof print. 

The best part of Brown Town is that everyone who has been occupying Sumter Landing where we hang out will hopefully head south to Brown Town leaving more room for us up at the landing and we won't run out of 7 & 7's.  I'm curious to know if their happy hour down there is one hour or two.   Needless to say, this is the first phase of the town expansion along with 10,000 more homes and a huge shopping mall.   I am very excited to get there.  I always judge a town square by the softness of the bread at Subway.  Highway 466A had dry bread and no change.  The one in Sumter Landing is good, soft bread, proper change and nice people who call me sir.  I think that young whipper snapper behind the counter is wondering if I can actually chew the bread. 

The other new thing in The Villages is a Marcus Welby type medical system.  Less patients and personalized service.  If you're old enough to remember Marcus Welby you'll notice that every time a patient called him at home with a problem he was always drinking and then hopped into his car to go fix their bunions.  I'm not sure but I think Mark had a drinking problem, but Dr. Kiley (Mr. Streisand) always wore his helmet.  What a babe.  The question is this;  Are the new medical services in The Villages good, or a bunch of drunks in Lincoln Continentals coming to lop off a toe in your living room?

What's Behind Door One

There are so many things Steve said he would never do again.  The first was hanging a suspended ceiling.  If you go further into this blog you'll see that he just could not help himself and put up another ceiling which was just a dog.  We bought plastic sections which we thought would snap together with little if any problems.  I think he still has the scars from trying to snap hundreds of pieces together. The second one was that he never wanted to install another shower door. 

Steve installed a shower door at out other house on Theodore Street and vowed he'd never do it again.  He really was trying to get me to agree to a shower curtain but I was not going to budge on that.  Putting a shower curtain over a shower stall would be like putting a sheet over your living room window and I just didn't want a living room window in our bathroom.   The problem that Steve has with installing a shower door is really not the installation itself but the stupidity of the designer.  The door frame has 90 degree angles but the bottom corner of the shower stall is curved.  Now I was no brain with geometry but I know that a 90 degree corner would not fit into a round hole.  After reading the directions, which we kind of do depending on the project, really helped us this time.  It really turned out nicely.  There are two questions remain unanswered, first, is there really water to the shower and second, will the door leak.   Stay tuned.  If anyone ever uses that shower we will certainly post it.  Please remember, when Steve and I put the new valves onto the sink connections and were so happy that we didn't have any water leaking we were thrilled.  Come to find out, the supply lines were not connected to anything hence there not being any water when we cut off the supply pipes.  We were so proud of ourselves.  The next plumbing issue will occur when we attempt to install a bar sink and glass washer.  Sooner or later the floor drain in our basement is going to come in handy.  This reminds me of the Lucy Show episode where they install a shower door backward and the drain is stuck closed.  Sooner than later we will end up soaked and or floating in the water. 



We're Board

At long last we're making major progress on the basement. It took us ages to get back into the swing of things but indeed we are now putting the finishing touches on the trim work.   We thought we were so smug and that the door casings matched the door, after all, white is white.  Unfortunately, we found out that sometimes white is really gray.  Instead of painting all the doors we figured it would be easier to paint 400 feet of trim.  

Steve started out painting each board with two coat and it was taking for ever.  I finally told Steve that is would be nice to have the room done sometime before I die so we went out and bought a power painter.  We were a bit nervous about it and how much over spray we'd get.  So finally we got back at it, we set up the staging area, covered everything with plastic and put the sprayer together.  Steve started to spray and it was going pretty well.  We did six boards and it started to spit at us.  As it turned out those six boards took an entire quart of pain.  We stopped and put out last quart in and did more until is started to spit at us again.   This time Steve had to go get more paint as we figured at this rate we'd need to start purchasing paint by the drum.  He went to Menards in hopes that the paint left in the head of the sprayer would not clog up.  I thought about putting it into the refrigerator but just didn't know if that would ruin our cheese.  We finished the painting in short order then it dawned on us that what we had for floor trim would hardly finish the hallway so it's back to Menards to buy more trim and back to painting again.  We have three gallons of paint now so spray we will.  

You might ask, "What did Brian do?"  Well, I put the boards on the saw horses and helped take the wet boards off.  If there is one thing I hate it's to get my hands dirty.  Once I made oatmeal cookies and the only way to mix that crap together was with my hands.  It was absolutely disgusting.  I guess I will need to get myself a pair of rubber gloves.  I knew when I was a little boy that becoming an auto mechanic was just not for me.   So it's back to painting again this weekend if Steve can stop coughing long enough.  I suspect that if we clog up his lungs with paint spray he'll stop coughing.  We really need to get this done because we have new furniture being delivered in December.  After we get done with the trim we will begin the construction of a second bar in our house, one on the main floor and one in the basement.  People are starting to wonder if there is a problem here.  After all this painting there probably should be.  We will be the first to hit the bar once it's done.  

Just How Old Are We

 For those of us who remember Going Out Of My Head, When I Fall in Love, and Hurts so Bad, you will remember The Lettermen who still do a fine job singing in three part Harmony.  We invited The Lettermen to come back to Jefferson to perform at the end of September because they were so well received the last time they were here, a couple years ago.  Our former executive director had become good friends with the only remaining Lettermen, Tony Butala, the little gray haired guy who can still belt out a rune.  Not only are they good entertainers after all these years, they are also wonderful men and so kind. 

Prior to the show starting the Lettermen told the audience no video photography but we could take all the pictures we want.  As the show began I snapped some pictures and soon got a tap on my shoulder from a very rude usher telling me "put the camera away, not photography."  I looked at this old bag and said, obviously you didn't listen to the announcements, pictures are fine.  What she didn't realize was she snotted off two board members with her rude instructions.  The next day I let our new executive director know what happened. 

The nice part of The Lettermen show is that they allow people to come up for photos with them as they are singing a song and then they come out into the lobby after the show and will sign autographs and take pictures until everyone who wants them has been satisfied.  As some of you know, at a previous auction I was determined to obtain their show poster and a wine basket from the Butala Winery in Napa Valley.  I bid $350 and won them both.  This auction I only had to pay $50 for the poster.  Steve and I plan to hang the two Lettermen posters along with our Amy Grant poster and pictures of her at our house down in the rec room once we're done with it.  We also have signed merchandise from Ricky Nelson's sons who also performed here in Jefferson.   The Lettermen are such wonderful guys I hope to see them when they arrive in The Villages this winter.   Unfortunately this post ends with a bit of sadness.  As I mentioned, Tony is friends with our former executive director and her husband Rich.  A week ago Rich was taken from us due to complications from kidney cancer.  I wrote to Tony to let him know and as busy as he is, he wrote back to express his sadness of Rich's passing.  Rich was truly a wonderful man who I liked very much.  We will miss him so much. 

Fine Furnishings

Steve and I are often teased because we buy stuff that may seem stupid and a bit extravagant.  Unfortunately, that is NOT true when it comes to hotel rooms. 

This last summer we drove to The Villages with many reservations due to Steve's clotting issues.  We were assured that with proper time to stop and walk around he should be OK and they really could not link the long drive to his medical history.  We made it down there fine and it was quite a nice drive after not doing it for a long time.  One the way home we made two stop overs as we are now too OLD to do it in one night.  We always tell each other that we are NOT going to stay in a cheap dive and look for nice places but it never seems to happen.  Having Mr. Moe with us makes things more difficult as a lot of hotels will not take him.  I told Steve that I'll hide him under my coat, so who's to know?  As I've always said, it's never illegal unless you get caught.  That doesn't sit well with Steve so we stay where they will let us have Mr. Moe. So we stopped someplace north of Atlanta on the way back and as is always the plan, I get Mr. Moe settled in and Steve goes to a local fast food place to get dinner.  This time he brought back sub sandwiches which I just love.  I could eat at Subway everyday.  Steve got back with the sandwiches made by Big Buba (face of a 12 year old, body of an bull moose) but there was no table in this plush suite we rented.  We had to improvise so we used the ironing board.  At least it did have a table cloth and even a pad under it.  The problem was that only one person at a time could eat on this lovely piece of furniture and your plastic cup had a tendency to tip over so you had to be careful.   This was also the place where the holder for the shower head was broken so I had to hold it while I soaped up while still hanging on in this tub.  The bottom was like that of a canoe.  I thought, just what we need is for me to slip in this canoe and break a hip.  Needless to say, there was more water on the floor than in the tub.  It was quite an ordeal but proved that the old fossil is still bendable. 

Nothing is What You Think

As many of you may know, I have been a licensed realtor for Century 21 Integrity Group in Jefferson for a year now and it's been very interesting so see how people live and all the different older homes that I would have never seen without being a realtor. 

Each realtor in our office has their own way of advertising and I just kind of take it in and do what the much younger agents do.  One of those things is to order name riders that hang below the Century 21 for sale sign.  I ordered the largest name rider assuming it would be easier for people to see it from the road.  I ordered five of them and could not wait for their arrival.  They finally arrived and I proceeded to tear the box open to see the large black signs.  Unfortunately, they are not quite right.  Please look at the picture again and find out what's wrong.  Although I could live with the error, I didn't think it would go over well.  I placed the order again and waited more time.  Finally my signs arrive so I have Steve go with me to hang the riders on my house listings.  Of course, nothing goes quite the way you planned.  The signs were much too large so we had to bring them home where good old Steve took a tin snips to them so they'd fit the sign.  We went out and hung my signs and it made me proud.  Unfortunately, I might have been better with the first signs as neither house sold.   I guess that's the way things go in the business.  I'll hang in there and did get another listing on the lake so I will go there and hang my sign over the weekend.   You can find my listing link below.  I am also going to start a Century 21 blog in hopes that I can land some listings or perhaps a buyer.  I'm really not in this to have 10-20 clients at a time.  I'd rather have three and do a good job but I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.   My lake listing is below. 
http://www.century21.com/real-estate/brian-monfre/A10953689/

Monday Night Hottie

This is our Monday night and although we both dread going to work at bingo, once we're there, at least I love it.  If I do say so myself, "I am HOT out there".  I'm not sure if it's because the folks are getting up there in the years, their vision is getting worse or I'm just damn HOT.  I absolutely love joking with them and some nights I will even call out a table if they refuse to buy a 50-50 raffle ticket from me.  Usually it is table 12 who refuses to cooperate and pay me for services rendered.  So I threaten to expose them as cheap non-CPA supporting bingo players but that doesn't even work so I'm forced to just turn my back on them and provide my services elsewhere.  Our progressive pot is really getting up there so I will have many more people to harass this next week.  Although we are happy when a person wins the jackpot, we'd also like to hang onto it to build up our crowd.  I keep hoping that before I go to Florida on December 28th I get a chance to break my 50-50 sales record of 440 tickets in one night.  I am still wearing my summer shorts and showing off some leg but I guess I'll have to resort to my old 70's hot pants to induce people to buy.  In short, I love working with the people but I'm still refusing to wait on tables at the Pine Cone in spite of them asking me again.  I'm not that stupid.