The title comes from a line in the movie "What about Bob", where the main character keeps himself moving forward by chanting the phrase "Baby steps, baby steps". Sometimes when I think that about that phrase, it makes me smile and helps me move forward.
There is some very real progress happening on the Coast right now. Hwy 90, the beach highway, is now open through Biloxi and that eases up our traffic going East and West. The biggest thing to happen though, is that the bridge on Popps Ferry Rd just opened yesterday. That is one of the main North South routes down here and that should clear up a ton of traffic that was having to funnel through Gulfport. Another big piece of news for some people is that the first casino just opened back up. I saw on the news that it was absolutely packed the first day it opened. I do not care too much for gambling, I always just lose my money, but it is nice that so many people have their jobs back, and I enjoy eating at the casino restaurants sometimes.
We are making some baby steps of progress in our work here at home. Recently, our refridgerator died and then our garage door opener died. We had a lot of major appliances die like this after Hurricane Georges too, and I think it has to do with the power surge after the electricity has been off for a long time. Anyway, we were able to buy a new refridgerator within a few days and the price was good. I was so afraid that they would be price gouging because there was such a high demand for new appliances down here. Brad was also able to buy and install the new garage door opener himself. That was a bigger job than we had anticipated because all of the metal frame and chains also had to be replaced, but he did it and it works great now. Brad's brother called recently and he is going to come down here sometime in mid-January and help Brad do some repairs to the house. He had done a lot of remodeling and work in his spare time, so having him will be a huge help.
Calvin has also been earning his keep. The wall in the garage has been down for awhile now, and we have been running a dehumidifier in there 24/7. It is amazing how much water that thing pulls out of the air and the walls. When it finally stopped filling up overnight, we decided the walls were ready to be put back up. Calvin did that by himself while Brad worked on the garage door. He also cleaned up the mess when he was finished. He will make a great contractor one day. Now we can park in the garage again.
We also lucked out and talked to a fence contractor yesterday and if we can get the wood, we may be using him to do our fence. That would free up Brad to do the ceilings when his brother gets down here. Our neighbor that shares a border with us had come over and told us he had a good fence guy if we wanted to talk to him. Brad told the neighbor that yes, we would love to, and also we would gladly share the cost of the fence that borders our two yards. The neighbor says, "Oh no, I am not going to pay for any of that fence, that is your fence." It is true, we paid for the entire fence the last two hurricanes that it went down. We did not ask anyone to split the cost with us. I guess now the neighbor thinks we are obligated to do it. Well, Merry Christmas to him. We will pay for the fence ourselves. Lucky for us, this man does not live in the house. He rents it out to a guy who was works for the local newspaper, and who was kind enough to bring me a paper a few times after the storm when there was no delivery. So we will be good neighbors and overlook the scrooge who owns the house.
Other no so great news is that the Nationwide insurance has decided to play Scrooge too. Nationwide is the insurance company for the guy who hit Brad and totalled his car. Brad has been without a car for almost 6 weeks now. He had called Nationwide over and over trying to see when they were going to pay for his car. They finally came out and looked and the car and declared it totalled, but then told Brad that they would not pay for more than 5 days of his rental car, and told him to turn it in. Then they once again refused to return any calls and have not given us a dime to pay for anything, including having the wrecked car towed, or the five days for the rental. Finally they returned one of Brad's calls and told him that they would only pay the NADA book value for his car. Brad had all of the receipts and documentation to prove that his car was worth over twice that much. He also showed them that the cars like his were selling for close to 3 times the NADA. Nationwide refused to even look at the documentation and will not pay more than the book value. They also said they would allow only $20.00 per day for five days of a rental car. We were actually very lucky to even find a rental car down here, and surprisingly, we only had to pay $28.00 per day. After taxes and other stuff, it was closer to $32.00.
So, Brad has been without a car for 38 days so far, (and the insurance company still has not paid up). Nationwide is reimbursing partially for 5 days. The want to pay him less than half of what he has documented proof that his car was worth. They grudingly agreed to pay for the wrecker fee, but they made it sound like it was a Christmas gift to us. They have not paid any of the storage fee for the wrecked car, which will be a hefty fee. If that is not enough, Brad asked them how much it would cost us to buy back the wreck of his car. They told him it would cost him $1800.00. The wrecked car is not worth anything, but they know that it has sentimental value to Brad and they are counting on him paying the inflated price. Brad is a very quiet, honest person. He is not the type of person to threaten lawsuits or demand more than he thinks is fair. All he asked of them is to pay a fair price for the car and reimburse us for his expenses. They have kept us waiting for 6 weeks without the car or the money to pay for another one, and now they offer us this, knowing that we would be ready to cave in and settle for anything. I am more than disappointed in the way Nationwide has acted. I can only imagine how poorly they are treating the homeowners who were insured by them for Katrina damage. I guess that is why so many people down here are suing right now, to try and get a fair price for their homes.
