Cursed

I'm feeling jinxed. Cursed, as it were.

I finally decided, several weeks ago, that it was time to move ahead on the next home improvement project - replacing the kitchen counter tops. I've been saving up and pondering the options long enough. Time to do it!

I put in a call to the place I wanted to get them from and couldn't get through. Two days went by. Three. I tried their website, using their 'contact us for a quote' feature. No response. OK - not them, then. So I found three other possibilities to visit, and Mark and I set out on a Saturday to shop for new counter tops. The first place was closed - inaccessible - due to road construction. The second place was only open during the work week. The third place was no longer there. Driving by a 4th possibility, we decided to stop. Finding some good options - and bringing some samples home - we were promised an estimate based on our pictures and measurement the following Tuesday. Tuesday came and went; so did Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We got no response.

So the next week I went to the only-open-during-the-week place and got some more samples and a promise for their project manager to call. Nothing.

I left multiple messages for the first person. A week later she finally called back but didn't seem to remember who we were or what our project was about. With a promise to look back in her files, and get right back to us, we waited for another week. I finally tried to reach the second place's 'project manager' and again got the story that she hadn't gotten the message...

I did finally get a quote from the second place - a week ago - but no follow through on the questions I had about process and timeline. The first person just emailed me today - "sorry, I've been off for a few days - would you like an appointment?"

I'm not actually sure I want to try to do a big project with either of these folks. Unprofessional, uninterested, not able to keep things straight... no follow through. And they don't even have money from us yet!

So, leaving that project as a possibly bad idea, I turn my attention to the problem of replacing my old car that is getting dangerously close to being unreliable. News reports indicate that car dealers are desperate and financing is available at very low interest rates. Maybe this is a good time. And on Sunday we visited a dealership and found a possibility in a new car. All set to take it for a test drive, I gave the salesman my driver's license to make a copy - and he came back without it. And no, it wasn't in the copy machine when he went back for it.

They lost my driver's license! Is it just me?

Well, I did get the license back the next day - it had fallen under something - but was, by then, leery of working with this dealer and his possibly cavalier attitude about protecting private information, especially if I had to give credit information for financing. So today I contacted another dealer via their website. I immediately got an email back promising a phone call 'very soon' about details and assuring me that this would be a hassle-free process. Sounds good to me!

No phone call ever came.

Now is probably not a good time to be spending money anyway, right?