Within the past week, we had tickets to see Black Lillies, Al Stewart, and Michael Martin Murphey. All concerts were good. Never seen MMM before; country/cowboy isn’t really my thing, but my other half really wanted to see him, and it was good. We’ve seen Black Lillies before; I felt bad for them this time, because the theater was only half full. Al Stewart, of course, sold out. Fourth or fifth time we’ve seen him at the winery, which has bistro type seating, instead of movie theater type, and he always sells out. I got us front row tickets for that one. He had Mark Macisso with him again this time. We’ve seen him have Peter White join him onstage for a song or two before, as well as play with with Dave Nachmanoff. That was a lot of concerts packed into a small time frame for us. Next one is BoDeans in July.
I had to schedule our pool opening for tomorrow because the company I use for opening and closing said they were only doing openings on commercial pools next week, when I originally tried to schedule it. Oh, well. At least I got the first appointment of the day, which probably means ~8am. It leaves me plenty of the rest of the day to run errands. I really ought to learn how to do this myself. I am learning by watching them, which they don’t really mind. They’ll answer any questions I have while they work, and if I can help them fold up an stash the cover, I will. For me, it’s sort of like an apprenticeship. For them, I watch, but am not hovering all over them while they work, which would creep out anyone.
It’ll take two or three days with the pump running on “circulation” constantly to get the water clear, and safe to swim in after the chemicals get dumped in. After that, an hour or two per day will do. It should be okay before we leave for Memorial Weekend with family in MN. I just hope we don’t come home to a bunch of dead frogs and baby toads clogging up the filter baskets. Live frogs are easy to fish out with a net, and toss over the fence on the yard, so they can hop back down to the pond. Scavengers will eat the dead ones, but they’re sort of yucky to remove for disposal. Not as bad as a drowned floaty, bloaty squirrel, though.
ETA: Wow. The pool guys were here at 7:30am, and gone by 8:00. Granted, I helped them out a little by skimming off the largest bits of floating debris that managed to make its way under the cover over the winter (mostly bits of arborvitae leaves and maple seeds). They did the chemical additions, brushed down the sides and bottom, and made sure the DE filter grids were in good shape. They asked about the heater, but I told them the bottom had rusted out a couple of years ago, and since I never used it, simply had the water supply rerouted to not run through it, rather than have it removed or replaced. This year, the water looked remarkably clear when they took the cover off.
If we ever sell the place, I’ll probably have it removed. Nobody’s going to cough up an extra $3k on an offer to cover the cost of replacing it — if anything, they’d insist that I replace it as a condition of the sale (or ask that the $ to do it themselves be rebated from the sale price), in addition to nickel and dime-ing me on whatever small repairs might need to be done that we missed before we put it on the market. People nowadays seem to expect perfection in a house they’re about to buy, even if it’s 150 years old. Plus, building codes change over the years, and things that might have been grandfathered in no longer are upon resale.
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