4/9/08

Some strange guy gooped up my hole.

So we no longer have a hole in our roof, mostly due to my lovely wife, who brought home a stray roofer the other night. It's not behavior I would normally condone, but in this case she did what she had to do.

As I said in my comments on the last roofing post, the guy I originally wanted to come and look at it never showed up. I called and left a message asking him where the hell he was, but didn't get a call back. The next day he actually did call, and he explained that he and his wife were expecting a baby. Apparently, the baby-to-be had decided that maybe it wanted out. As a result, they had rushed to the hospital, where, after a few hours, the kid had decided it wasn't quite ready to hit the buffet just yet and instead wanted to hang out in the heated pool for a while longer. He told me he would definitely be up to check out the roof the next day.

The next day came and went with no roofer, and so I called and left another message. This guy then had the gall to call me from the hospital and tell me he didn't show up because his wife had a baby girl. Can you believe that shit?

So of course I told him that if he ever wanted to make anything of himself or his business, he needed to get his fucking priorities straight, because that was a good way to lose jobs right there.

I kid, I kid. I congratulated him, and he promised to stop by the next day to look at the roof, temporarily plug the hole, and work up an estimate to fix the rest of the vents. The next day also came and went, and I still had a hole in my roof. I was sympathetic, but I was thinking it was probably time to find a roofer who was getting more than an hour or two of sleep every night.

This is where my wife saves the day. She called me at work the next day and said there was a guy working on the roof there and she was pretty sure she had convinced him to come and look at our roof after he was done. I didn't ask how she worked this magic, and I'm not sure I want to know, but around 5:30 my wife pulled into the driveway followed by a guy driving a pickup truck full of ladders. He was a really nice guy, but I think he was regretting his decision when he finally got here. I could see him thinking "What the fuck did I get myself into? There's 2 feet of snow, they have a 12/12 pitch roof, it's getting dark and I'm an extra 30 miles out of my way."

I felt bad for him, so I helped him carry all his crap to the back of the house, then held the first ladder while he climbed up. When he was set, I handed up the other ladder, followed by a small stack of shingles and a 5-gallon pail of black goop.

He re-nailed the vent, put in the new shingles and gooped the hell out of everything. He did the whole job for $140. It was really just a quick fix and I realized that - I wanted to make sure that if it rained outside, it didn't rain inside.

That was when things got a little weird. As he was finishing up, the original roofer I had called pulled into the driveway. Of course, he immediately saw the truck full of ladders and didn't even get out of his truck. He just sat there for a few minutes, then backed out and drove away.

So yeah. It was awkward. We cheated on our roofer with some cheap floozy my wife picked up downtown. He came, he gave us a quick job, then he split with a handful of twenties.

I feel so dirty.

But on the other hand, it's raining tonight and our house is dry, so just call me Hugh Grant.


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26 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:58 PM

    Ah, don't worry about it Johnny. I'm sure the cute little baby girl will end up going to college somehow. She can probably start turning tricks after running away to Hollywood in a few years while the old man takes up heavy drinking again to forget about how many clients he lost this week. The divorce is probably already pending over at their place from the stress and drama.

    The important thing is your house is temporarily dry.

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  2. Oh god JV, I am so behind on all my blog reading that I have been speed reading really bad. So when I clicked on your feed, I read "some strange guy pooped up my hole" and thought "what the hell is he writing about now."
    I am glad it was just a Nicole error.

    I had a similar situation that made me feel akward. But it involved a japanese chef and a white dude pretending to be a japanese chef. Long story.

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  3. Better to feel dirty than to get wet. Well...sometimes.

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  4. Hey,
    ..at least you didn't get arrested.
    Although I have to admit...
    I'd love to see your mugshot.

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  5. I can't believe you'd cheat on your roofer. What kind of morals do you have? Poor guy. ;)

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  6. Anonymous3:02 AM

    You can always call him back and tell him that the other roofer didn't mean anything to you and he's the one you really want. In fact you didn't know the strange roofer was coming over at all, and that your wife talked you into cheating on him. Yeah, that's it, it's all her fault!

    Fae

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  7. Fae, I was actually going to edit this post this morning and add that bit because it's exactly what I did! Except I explained all that to his wife since he wasn't home.

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  8. Nice Job Hugh… I guess the other guy in your life wasn’t interested in sloppy seconds?

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  9. Anonymous12:05 PM

    You're cheap, Johnny, cheap! You just couldn't hold out, for the real thing, huh? Sheesh!

    :-)~

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  10. Anonymous1:54 PM

    I'm thinking you need to buy the roofer (the REAL roofer) roses....2 dozen at the VERY least.

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  11. 2 dozen roses? Kobe bought his roofer a 4 carat diamond ring.

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  12. Anonymous4:52 PM

    Wet cracks and gooped up holes - sometimes I wonder why I keep coming back here... oh wait... this is why!

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  13. Oh well, the first guy would probably have over-charged you anyway. :)

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  14. It's nice to see married teams work :)...
    or is that teamwork among the married?

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  15. Your woman effin' rocks! You're cool for, ahem, "allowing" this tryst, so I'm proud of you too.

    Since you kept an eye on her flower garden during the septic tank saga, you can say she paid ya back. I'd only be concerned if the roofer had done the job for free (no one's cleavage is that nice - well not anymore). No offense, of course. Go Mrs. V!

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  16. Anonymous10:18 AM

    Well, at least you made roofer #1 think about maybe just possibly communicating with his would-be customers. Hopefully.

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  17. When you thought it was awkward with your new and old roofer there, you original roofer was probably sitting in his truck thinking "MAWHAHAHAH poor bastard he got stuck with 2 feet of snow and a 12/12 pitch roof in the semidarkness! I sure lucked out on this one!"

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  18. Anonymous2:28 PM

    "Some strange guy gooped up my hole" immediately made me think you'd been to the OB/GYN. Then I realized, noooooo, you don't have that plumbing. But now you know what it's like.

    I *love* that you got busted by the original roofer. That ALWAYS happens to me.

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  19. You feel dirty? I feel dirty having just read all that. Thanks so much for dragging me through the naughty back alleys of your mind.

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  20. Anonymous6:18 PM

    Hello. Just wanted to drop a note and tell you that, since I was first introduced to your blog (thru an office-circulated e-mail of your JC Penny post), I've been a BIG fan! During my Hour Lunches, that I frequently have to take at my desk, I take a break from my work to browse your archives. You make me laugh out loud or, more often, turn red from trying to keep it in, and for that I thank you. Keep up the good work!

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  21. Anonymous11:41 PM

    You do what you gotta do. At least you didn't have to crawl up there yourself. I fixed a leak in the flashing once (I think it's called flashing). I was pretty proud of myself and it stopped not only the unsightly water spot that was spreading on the kitchen ceiling but halted the invasion of ants (who ended up finding another way in and completely over-ran the master bath - but that's another story. I was proud of myself. My now husband took a look at it right before I sold it last year and well, he didn't comment too much on my workmanship. A plugged hole though is a plugged hole.

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  22. You know what keeps catching my eye over here? Your playlist.

    Jack's Mannequin is a big favorite of mine and of course when I saw your screen name of Johnny Virgil I knew it was a reference to Keving Gilbert's Shaming Of The True.

    I still play THUD and Toy Matinee pretty often.

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  23. You may have temporarily stopped me from spying in on you and your wife, but not for long. I'll just make a NEW hole in the roof and spy on you again. So keep that roofer's number handy, because I'm persistent.

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  24. "your original roofer was probably sitting in his truck thinking "MAWHAHAHAH poor bastard he got stuck with 2 feet of snow and a 12/12 pitch roof in the semidarkness! I sure lucked out on this one!

    JUST what I was thinking!!

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  25. Heh, you gotta do what you gotta do. Sucks for the original roofer but heh, life happens. And you have your own family to be taking of by making sure there is a roof over their heads to keep them dry.

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  26. Ah, Johnny. We've all done things fast and dirty at one time or another. You just got caught, that's all.

    You should just deny the whole thing. Call him up and be like, "What other roofer??? Honestly I have NO idea WHAT you're talking about! Jesus could you be MORE paranoid?! You're just like your mother...."

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