Masonry Magazine March 2001 Page. 15
Their bid about 1:47. Someone must have talked. The toilet accessory guy called me at 1:51 to "see how his number looked." I love those guys.
This time I came in 5th out of 18. It was an open letting so the bids were read aloud. Pretty good number. I was about $48,000 over Douglas's low bid of $802,900. All the bidders were bunched together pretty good. No silly highs or lows. Only $50m over this time, so they'll probably be able to make it go. I didn't attend the letting. We sent Becky with my mobile phone. I stayed at the office to field any last-minute bids. At 5 minutes to 2, I gave her the base bid number to write in. We'd written in the alternates earlier, so all she had to do was seal the envelope and give it to the receptionist. She called me later with the results. She said the letting room smelled like a gym sock. Of course it didn't help that she was sitting next to a very nervous Bubba Douglas. Bubba seldom bathed, had no-where-near 32 teeth, and had a strong, strong crush on Becky. Bubba's bid was read first and he was low. As the other 17 numbers were read, Bubba was nervous. Bubba was sweating. Once Becky called and gave me
the news, all of the pent-up stress and emotion from the day began to leak out of my body. I went from exhilaration to exhaustion in under a minute. I guess everything in nature really does achieve equilibrium. I exhaled in full for the first time all day. It was no use starting anything else because I knew that I wasn't going to accomplish a lot anymore today. Tim went golfing. Becky came back about 3:40 but left early because she'd missed lunch. She needed to let her dogs out. I answered the phone for awhile but it was all subs and suppliers wanting to know how they looked on the bid.
The ones I liked I'd told. The one's I didn't I didn't. I was feeling kind of playful, so I started telling everyone who called that they were low with me. I'm sure Bubba would see the humor in that later on.
Friday was pretty uneventful and I was still tired from Thursday. I woke up feeling "run-over" and pretty much coasted through the whole day. In the morning, I set up a couple of spreadsheets for bids coming up and fax'd out some bid requests to subs and suppliers for those jobs. At noon, I ran around to check on the jobs. I told Becky I'd be about an hour and a half but I didn't come back until 3:30 PM. "I got hung up," I told her when I got back. She glanced up knowingly, smiled, and went back to reconciling her lien waivers. I went into my office. Tim was gone now for the weekend so the week was officially over. Now I'm home and all is quiet. Real quiet. "Boy, that (sound-deadening, friction-fit, R-11 fiberglass) insulation in the walls really works," I think as I force myself up and over to the (black cherry with raised panel doors; dove-tailed drawer bodies) cabinet.
God, I'm glad the week's over and I don't have to think about work.
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MASONRY MARCH, 2001 15