The fall tour is starting soom and I am thrilled to be able to have a piece of my former life back and to get away from all of the depressing fire-related issues that we have had to deal with. The inventory is finished and all of the receipts are accounted for and all we have to do is have fun touring and planning our new house. And it will be nice to have a steady income for a while because our credit cards are almost completely maxed out. The insurance company has not reimbursed us for much yet, and we really need the money.
This will be our 4th year doing this show. It's a musical revue with singers, dancers, and an on-stage big band. We travel all over the country in a big tour bus, playing mostly one-nighters. It has been great to have a gig like this that we can both do together. The show is excellent and we both love to travel so it is a really nice situation over all.
Last year Doug became the tour manager which is very much a mixed blessing. It pays a little bit extra, but it requires him to spend months ahead of time arranging the hotel and travel details. I've helped him quite a bit with that but he does most of it It's a huge job and it has been a good opportunity for him to learn how to become more organized. It's been nice to be able to plan some sightseeing along the way too.
Unfortunately we don't get to hang out as much as we used to while on tour because of all of his assorted duties. The overall experience of Doug being tour manager is really less than ideal, but I guess we need the money and supposedly that is why he's doing it again. He had been considering not doing it but I think he talked himself back into it while I was out on my cruise gig. I guess it didn't occur to him that if he'd spent the time that he spent working on all of the tour details making mouthpieces instead, we would be significantly better off in the money department. And we had so much more fun during the first two years of the tour than we did last year when he became the tour manager. Maybe this year will be better now that he's gotten accustomed to his various extra duties.
This fall the tour starts in Idaho and we'll be doing shows in Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, South Carolin, North Carolina, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Massachusetts. All between September 12th and November 19th. Should be fun!!!
Showing posts with label insurance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insurance. Show all posts
Friday, September 2, 2005
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
August 2005
When I got home I finished the personal property inventory and finally turned it in on July 28th. While I was away Doug found out what the settlement amount was probably going to be and that it was based on them restoring our house rather than tearing it down and building a new one. Apparently the structure was sufficiently stable in spite of the fact that most of the inside was completely gutted. The insurance company would oversee this process and all we would have to do was wait until they were finished to move back in.
According to Doug, the problem with restoring the house was that we would have to spend an additional $50,000 or more of our own money to bring the basement up to code so that it would pass the various inspections. These code issues really had nothing to do with the fire – they had to do with it being an old house with a cellar that was dug out after the house was already built so it would have been an independent expense for us. Bringing our basement up to code would have been a very tricky and expensive process and Doug thought that it would not be worth it in any way. Actually I would have been happy to get the basement fixed and have the insurance company repair our house for us, but this was not satisfactory to Doug.
The solution seemed to be to take a cash settlement which would amount to 75% of the repair settlement and do things independently. This made me very apprehensive because in the past projects like our addition would last forever and never get finished. Our addition, which we started in 1992 wasn’t even halfway finished. That’s how fast we work. But I went along with it because I didn’t really have much of a choice. Doug said we would have time on the tour to design a really great house that met all of our needs. That cheered me up quite a bit because it meant that we might have an even better time on the tour than usual, with such an exciting project to work on together.
After the fire, we had talked about whether or not we would be able to do the tour again. Doug was kind of over it but he knew that I still enjoyed it. The tour had become slightly more interesting to him last fall when he became tour manager. We stayed in better hotels and had generally more interesting lunch stops and sightseeing trips. But he told me he definitely didn’t want to do the tour manager thing again if they ended up with the same bus driver. Doug did not enjoy working with her. She was kind of difficult. I think he even mentioned this to the producer. So things were up in the air for a while and eventually we decided that it would be good to tour again and have things get somewhat back to normal. He was still having second thoughts about the tour manager gig and I agreed that we would both have more fun if he just went back to playing the show.
Then while I out on the ship he was asked to be tour manager again and in a weak moment he said yes. I was still happy that we were not letting the fire stop us from doing the tour. If that seems naïve, it’s because it was. I was still kind of shell-shocked and I think Doug was too. We definitely made some bad decisions along the way.
According to Doug, the problem with restoring the house was that we would have to spend an additional $50,000 or more of our own money to bring the basement up to code so that it would pass the various inspections. These code issues really had nothing to do with the fire – they had to do with it being an old house with a cellar that was dug out after the house was already built so it would have been an independent expense for us. Bringing our basement up to code would have been a very tricky and expensive process and Doug thought that it would not be worth it in any way. Actually I would have been happy to get the basement fixed and have the insurance company repair our house for us, but this was not satisfactory to Doug.
The solution seemed to be to take a cash settlement which would amount to 75% of the repair settlement and do things independently. This made me very apprehensive because in the past projects like our addition would last forever and never get finished. Our addition, which we started in 1992 wasn’t even halfway finished. That’s how fast we work. But I went along with it because I didn’t really have much of a choice. Doug said we would have time on the tour to design a really great house that met all of our needs. That cheered me up quite a bit because it meant that we might have an even better time on the tour than usual, with such an exciting project to work on together.
After the fire, we had talked about whether or not we would be able to do the tour again. Doug was kind of over it but he knew that I still enjoyed it. The tour had become slightly more interesting to him last fall when he became tour manager. We stayed in better hotels and had generally more interesting lunch stops and sightseeing trips. But he told me he definitely didn’t want to do the tour manager thing again if they ended up with the same bus driver. Doug did not enjoy working with her. She was kind of difficult. I think he even mentioned this to the producer. So things were up in the air for a while and eventually we decided that it would be good to tour again and have things get somewhat back to normal. He was still having second thoughts about the tour manager gig and I agreed that we would both have more fun if he just went back to playing the show.
Then while I out on the ship he was asked to be tour manager again and in a weak moment he said yes. I was still happy that we were not letting the fire stop us from doing the tour. If that seems naïve, it’s because it was. I was still kind of shell-shocked and I think Doug was too. We definitely made some bad decisions along the way.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)