Seeing More Clearly

The Champion Window installers came on Monday, and I was impressed. They replaced the window in the living room, the two windows in the front bedroom, and the patio door (the new one has little blinds between the panes of glass).

All that remains is the 8-foot wide window in my bedroom and the 4-foot wide window in the kitchen. That's another $1500, so will have to wait until I see that the tax refund looks like.

Champion was founded here in Cincinnati, and has become a national firm. Their reputation is pretty solid, and I saw why during the installation. The installers were polite, neat and thorough, and after the installation, explained the warranty in detail and gave me all the information I could ever want. Then they left, with a handshake and a "Thanks for using Champion."

Despite the cold outside, I've already noticed that the furnace isn't cycling on as frequently as usual, so I'm hoping that these energy-efficient windows will mean lower gas and electric bills.

I ran out the same night and bought new curtains for the living room and bedroom windows, and both rooms now have a new look. The yellow walls of the living room are now complemented with pale gold faux silk curtains with light cotton semi sheers underneath (they have a lovely lace border.). The bedroom, which has periwinkle walls, now has creamy damask balloon curtains.

The patio door will get a white wooden rod and white tabbed curtains eventually, replacing the former very 80's vertical blinds. The room is painted in two shades of yellow with white woodwork and a cobalt and gold border paper above the chair rail. I think the white curtains will look great, softening the expanse of glass in the doors, and will usually be open. There is a white wooden shelf about the door that has part of my teapot collection arrayed on it . There are 15 teapots, in shades of white, yellow, gold and blue.

Rehearsals started up again on Tuesday, and it was good to get back to music. We've begun to learn Ralph Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony, and it's difficult. We have only 5 more rehearsals to learn it, so homework will be needed.

Also on Monday, I came back to work after the long break for the holidays. Things are still pretty quiet. I've got one major regulatory project mandated by the FDIC, as well as a number of small maintanance projects for an existing system. All our systems will continue to run for two years, as customers are going to be converted to the other bank's systems by geographic areas over the conversion period. Once they're all converted, we'll turn the switch and we'll all be together for real.

I'm not yet involved with any conversion projects, but I'm hoping that I will be -- which would mean continued employment for a while. This not knowing what's going to happen business is irritating. The other bank doesn't seem to have a clue as to how to approach such a massive integration of customers (they have 2.5 million accounts, we have 4 million) so we're doing most of the work, it appears. That's a good thing, and should keep some of us employed for a while. I hope I'm one of them.