Prison Orange v. Buttered Yam
Today, I tackled a number of administrative tasks that I have been avoiding for quite some time. As in, "oh, the Department of Revenue mailed me a bunch of official looking booklets?...I'll work on that eventually" sort of tasks. All I have to say is that when I pay my student loans this month, I'm going to include a post-it note that alerts the government that my degree in Political Science and French did nothing to help me with official booklets.
That said, if I find myself in Paris to open a PJP V. 3.0, I will know how to argue about HVAC tonnage in their language...and order coffee.
If you follow PJP on Instagram, you know that I posted a picture off the booklet with the question of whether or not I could go to prison for accidentally messing up.
I've since been reassured by no less than five people that accidental mistakes on this thing doesn't lead to me doing hard time (which is good, because I don't look good in prison orange). In the end, I (and by "I", I really mean Behind-The-Scenes-Tech-Guru Jason) got them filled out and ready to mail. Sadly, we will repeat the process in a few weeks, as you get to mail that sucker in every month.
So, with that done, we were feeling pretty good. Until I opened the mail. The first thing I opened was a registered letter from Silent Stan. My first thought was that is was a "cease and desist blogging" letter from his $1,000 an hour legal team. Thankfully it wasn't. What was in the envelope was much more confusing:
Apparently, it is state law that this sticker be displayed on your cash register area. This sparked an entire debate at PJP about how the extra taxes actually work. Columbia's tax rate is 8.6% (yeah, I know)...so then we add this 0.625% to that...but we don't send that in on our pre-printed booklet? So then where does it go? It is really one of those things that if you think about it for too long, you are more confused than when you started. And if we have to collect it and pay it to someone, I hereby demand that the left turn signal from Nifong to Buttonwood be made longer as part of the special transportation development district goals.
The third thing I opened in the mail was a bill from the engineering firm that did the whole HVAC thing and planning electrical outlets and all the details I never knew you needed this time last year. The bill was $2,000.
Yeah. So, I knew the bill was coming, but I didn't know how much it would cost. I wrote the check and mailed it and then it occurred to me that I basically paid $2,000 for outlets and an epic argument about the HVAC. WINNING.
We also did some work on equipment today. We need a convection oven (just one, see above argument reference), a commercial refrigerator, a commercial freezer, and a 32 quart mixer. Luckily for PJP, we have hereby named my father-in-law as the Executive Director of Procurement and my goals over the next week are to have very few conversations with people about mixers that are gear-driven versus belt-driven, hours of use, and/or freight costs. Luckily, our Executive Director of Procurement comes free and he doesn't break out into a terror sweat when people ask him about "cut sheets."
In PJP Buttonwood construction news, the drywall guy was there today. I saw him early this morning, so I have not seen any drywalling-in-action (he was putting scaffolding together). He did confirm that we are a go for painting on Saturday, so I headed over to Johnston Paint and Decorating for some paint color ideas. Because we will be adding pallets and we wanted to stay in the tones of our logo, we are leaning toward Benjamin Moore's "Buttered Yam":
Hopefully by Thursday, we can paint a sample corner to see how we feel about that color in the space and with the light from the front windows. Whatever the result, Buttered Yam is better than Prison Orange. Always.