It turns out that we had some earthquake damage. The wooden gate which leads from the driveway to the backyard was damaged. As you know, a gate has to have perpendicular columns for it to swing properly. My gate was on the old side and on the top it only have a few millimeters of clearance.
Well it seems the earthquake effected the posts so that they are no longer perpendicular. This eliminated the clearance, and caused my gate to rub when you tried to open it. I took a saw and cut about an inch off the post that was rubbing, and that seems to have fixed it.
It was close there for a minute (I'm hell on wheels with a saw), but there were no serious injuries involved, and I've received no further reports of damage. But in order to remain in keeping with the political sentiment of the day, we will be filing for a relief grant from FEMA, and are drafting our petition for economic relief through the 2010 stimulus plan. As you know, I'm not actually in the carpenter's union, but I think that problem can be ... ahem... "addressed separately"... if you know what I mean. This is NJ after all.
In order to dedicate the time necessary to complete the required paperwork my business is going to suffer a bit. So I'm going to have to lay off one employee (my wife) and cancel the plans I had for hiring one more. But by the time we get done with our federal government checks, we should be about $190,000 ahead of the game.
I wonder if I can get them to pay me in silver bullion?
2 comments:
Did you forget a building permit? - those gates are life safety issues you know.
No... no building permit. Instead we applied for a minority waiver from the minority non-compliance office of the bureau of compliance.
I know what you're thinking... I'm not a minority. But it doesn't matter because as passe as this may be these days, my wife is a woman.
Yes... I know they're actually 51% of the population but it still applies. After all:
"Earthquake strikes east coast. Women and minorities, hardest hit."
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