today was my aunt’s retirement party, so there was a large gathering at my aunt and uncle’s house so everyone could get together and be happy for her not having to go to work anymore. this was the 2nd time i’ve seen my mom’s side of the family in the last two weekends, something i don’t do enough of.

i played golf with one of my uncle’s on friday….did pretty well considering i hadn’t played since january. afterward, my uncle invited me to play on the coon ass golf tour. you pay $100 and you play tournaments in the NOLA metro area. pretty cool, huh? hopefully the blisters i developed friday will heal up so i can practice and get some callouses back on my hands.

part of the hurricane assistance was not only fema but also getting an sba loan to fix your house. i signed up for everything back in september, and guess how long it took for anyone from sba to call me? at least march, when a guy came out to my house to check things out. too bad i already had most of everything fixed by then. so he tells me someone will be calling me about getting approved, how much i’ll get, etc. nobody calls me, weeks go by, and my sister calls to tell me someone from sba called my parents house looking for me. i NEVER gave that number out as a contact number when i was signing up for stuff. the guy gave a number to call him, but i just kept forgetting. so someone calls my cell phone a couple of weeks later and asks if i had gotten my paperwork. i told them i had not gotten anything. they say “well, you should have gotten your package. we’ll send out another set”. great, so they confirm my address. another week or so goes by and nothing comes. i get another call “did you get your stuff?” so i told them i did not get anything, and where did they send the package, NOT my house, but to my grandfather’s in baton rouge. so that’s two sets of papers and neither came to me. what an example of efficiency. i told her i’d see about getting my paperwork from my grandfather. she says “well, i’m not sure how far baton rouge is from slidell, but you could just go see someone locally”. i felt like telling her “you’re assisting with disaster relief, don’t you have a map of the area?” so they tell me i can just set up an appointment with someone locally and they’ll have my paperwork there. the lady says “would slidell be okay for you since you live there?” so i asked about scheduling an appointment and she says “well, the person scheduling appointments is busy…someone will call you later to set something up”. right, i’ve heard that before. so the next day (saturday) someone calls me with a heavy latino accent to set an appointment up. i’m going friday to see someone. this is why you should not depend on the government to bail you out….i couldn’t imagine waiting around until now to have money to fix my house. thank God for insurance. and after all this, i don’t even think i’m going to take the loan!