Catastrophes

Well, the start of my week could have gone better.

After starting the softball season 3 for 3 with a home run and error-less play at second base, I was feeling fairly good about the upcoming season. Then there was this Monday, where our team Ether Binge -- Don't ask -- was playing the Steamers. Started off ok. I swung at a bad pitch and weakly grounded to short (maybe third, I was concentrating on running to 1st), but made some good plays at 2nd, including snagging a relatively well hit ball to my left.

Then came the play, which was embarassingly routine: Ball hit into right field with men on base. I am the cut-off man. The throw back in is slightly offline, so I have to run left to get to it, but really not a big deal. I want to make sure I get the ball back into the infield quickly to keep the runners from getting any more bases, or possibly scoring, so I plant my leg to pivot quickly and toss the ball back in. I am not sure exactly what happened, but I can tell you I didn't do it right. My foot caught on the surface and my weight came over it all wrong with a twisting motion. I felt a great deal of pain and went down in a heap, although I did manage to weakly toss the ball back in (that's focus people).

It looked bad from the outside as well, as a good hunk of the team immediately ran over to check on me. Nothing popped as far as I know, but it was fairly clear my day was over. To make matters worse, this was the game I finally got Candy and the girls to come out and see. Sigh.

So now I am trying to take it easy and let the swelling go down. I am not in a lot of pain (almost none, really) but I am trying to be very cautious as my family has a history of tearing knee ligaments. And my knees have never been great to begin with. For now I am using a cane, which again I don't really need except to play it as safe as possible and keep strain off the knee for my walk from the car garage. I have an appointment to see a doctor in 10 days, the delay for tedious insurance reasons I don't want to get into. I could hit an urgent care sooner and pay out a little more cash, but I am hesitant because of how dubious I am that a doctor will be able to do much for me until the swelling is gone down. The knee works fine, so the question is just whether anything is partially damaged that might need repair long term. For that, I don't see why the doctor trip can't wait a little.



Of course the title of this post is plural. My second catastrophe this week was our first inspection-related work stoppage. Our contractor had laid out all the forms and rebar for the footings of the addition, porch, and new support beams. Here are a series of pictures of guys working on the main forms, which are wooden frames designed to hold poured concrete that will be the base of all the new walls. Basically they are molds that form the concrete into the shapes you want (i.e., walls or pillars bases for support beams). There was nothing wrong with the way the forms were made, but it turns out that the set of plans describing them was missing the proper approval stamp.



Now my architects handled most of the city approval stuff, but for multiple reasons, not the least of which is an attempt to save money by not sending a contractor to wait in line at city hall, I was the one who actually went into the Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) to pull the permits for the job. This was a very uncomfortable errand, as I had no prior experience doing this and every time I asked for a detailed description of what to do, I was told "You go down and pull the permit."

Uh-huh. Yeah...



So I went down with a pile of plans and forms in my hands and repeated the mantra that "I wanted to get an Owner-Builder permit". This usually led to further questions, none of which I had answers to. My fall back position was to mumble something incomprehensible and shove the forms and plans in their faces. Surprisingly enough, after studying the things I gave them they always seemed satisfied and pushed me to the next person down the line. Eventually one of them unrolled my big wad of blueprints and began stamping APPROVED on them.



To back up one step, every plan I have from my architect has been signed and stamped by the city. Specifically, I believe a city engineer has looked over the plans and made sure that nothing dangerous or not to code was being proposed. The final issuing of the permit tells the city who is doing the project (me) and starts a clock on the official permit. Most importantly, it makes sure that the city is being paid. No check and the city does not stamp your plans. The final permit issuing does not appear to be a high level transaction, being something two highly trained chimps could have pulled off, one with a suitcase of cash and the other with a rubber stamp. This is why my contractor and architect just threw me to these proverbial lions. It really is a mindless event.

Which only makes this failure all the more infuriating. In addition to the 2x4 feet of big blueprints, it turns out I also had a small set of 4 sheets of little blueprints. These were basically blow-ups or cut-outs of areas of the project that needed a bit more detail. These had been examined and signed off by the same city engineer on the same day as the big plans. But they were missed by the rubber stamping monkey at the LADBS and the inspector refused to sign off on our concrete forms without these approval stamps. Remember this is not a safety issue, the engineer signature is clear. The inspector was just making sure the city had got paid (even though obviously from the receipt it had been). And, of course, covering his own ass.

So now it is 3:30 on Tuesday and I get a panicked call from Ely (the contractor) that we failed the inspection and our architect should have gotten ahold of me hours ago. The whole project is now on hold and we are going to start hemorrhaging money as people that are lined up are just being sent home. So I need to go RIGHT NOW, traveling from my mom's (near Pasadena) to our house (near Van Nuys), pick up the plans, and get to the LADBS before is closes at 4:30 to get this straightened out. Mind you, on Monday I tore up my knee so I was sitting at home in bed with an ice pack on my leg at the time.

So I do just that. I hop in my car (ouch, knee did not like bending), drive like a maniac to my house, get the plans from Ely (who is properly chagrined at my severe limp), and then on to the City Hall. Of course, in many ways nothing has changed since the last time I went there. I still have only the vaguest clue as to what I am doing, only now my mantra is "I need approval stamps on these pages". I am eventually directed to an odd little fellow who seemed to talk to himself more than he was talking to me. He repeatedly asked questions that seemed rhetorical, but then he waited for an answer. I grunted. Eventually he found my receipt, deduced that these the small plans had just been missed the first time, and stamped them.

The system works, I guess. It is now Thursday and the inspection has succeeded, so I should be getting concrete soon. Stay tuned. And for God's sake be careful with your limbs.

Now for our regularly featured baby. We went to the beach over Memorial Day weekend and I took this one of Rylie after she stole my hat. As you can see, she is the life of the Beach Party, a veritable Annette Funicello of the baby set. Beach blanket bingo indeed.