Home for a day!

Sorry for the lack of posting this week. I simply haven't been home and will be gone again starting tomorrow. This past Sunday through Wednesday, I went with my wife to a conference that is connected with her business. The conference was held at the Hyatt (Boo-Hiss!), which I think is a TERRIBLE hotel. Although the rooms rent for $150 per night, they stick you for every little thing - like $21 per night for parking; $10 per day for internet access; etc. It's a total ripoff if you ask me (although as a landlord, I am a confirmed cheapskate). Are these "fancy" hotels really worth the price? I think not! Give me a Comfort Inn or Holiday Inn anytime, where you don't pay to park; don't pay for wireless internet access; and get a free breakfast; ALL FOR HALF THE PRICE!

Anyway, we had a good time and the business that sponsored my wife paid the tab for the room, internet, parking, and all that other stuff so I guess I shouldn't complain. It just rubs me the wrong way to throw away big money on substandard service. While I'm on a rant, I did have one more complaint. Since I didn't want to attend all the events, I took my personal taxes with me to complete (they're on extension). After I finished it up, I wanted to print one page and then copy 9 pages. The Hyatt had a business room, where you could accomplish all that. It cost $5 to hook up the laptop and $1 per page to make black and white copies ($2 for color copies). So, to print one page and copy my 9 pages, it would have cost about $15!!! Talk about ROBBERY! So, instead of doing that, we stopped by Office Max when we went to dinner. Office max copied them for a whopping 89 CENTS! They even gave me about half a dozen paperclips for free.

During our trip, Ohio received the remnants of Hurricane Gustav which combined with a cold front over Ohio. The result was hurricane force winds covering almost all of Ohio. As this occurred, I began receiving calls from tenants. When all was said and done, I had four properties damaged, thankfully none of them badly. One had some rolled roofing blown off a porch; two had some siding and shingles blown off; and one had a large tree down in the back yard. I was very fortunate that the tree fell parallel to the duplex, with the damage was limited to the edge of the roof and a fence that was smashed. All in all, not too bad, especially when compared to all the damage in Texas. We had about 2 million people without power in Ohio due to the storm, but most of my tenants had their power back on within a day and a half.

We got home yesterday about 1pm and I spent most of the remainder of the day checking all of my rentals for storm damage. I also had to re-initialize the remote viewing capability of my surveillance camera system at the Pink Elephant because the cable and power had been out. The surveillance system was working but the IP address for my remote viewing had been altered and that had to be taken care of.

Today, I did several small jobs, including signing leases for two apartments; fixing two minor water leaks; fixing a broken toilet; trashed out a basement; and steam cleaning the carpet in one apartment. Tomorrow morning, I'm planning to paint one bathroom and hopefully cut up the tree that fell in the back yard of my duplex.

Then, in the afternoon, we're going camping! We'll be gone Friday through Monday on another 4 day weekend. It should be a lot of fun with the beautiful fall weather coming to Ohio. I'm looking forward to some great mountain biking and a lot of good fellowship with some friends from church.

That's about it. We're caught up. I probably won't post while were at the campground. The campground is still out of power (due to Gustav) and I'd bet that the internet access is out also. We won't have to worry about electric - our Motorhome has a 6.5 KW Generator, but we don't have an independent source of internet access.

Have a good weekend!