PhineasC

I understand the rationale for reading the pages. I don't understand the rationale for taking gossip you read in those places personally.

If the older folks can work at Home Depot, as many of them have been doing since March, I don't see why they can't be just as safe at a polling place. This in-person voting concern seems like a repeat of the beach concerns from the spring. It's basically an urban legend of sorts that has become fact in people's minds for various reasons, but with little real science or logic to back it up. People just "know" in-person voting couldn't possibly be safe just like they "knew" a bunch of people sunbathing was sure to be a super-spreading event. They have these thoughts while standing in line for tacos or sitting in a restaurant or perhaps while packed together at a political rally/protest...

I agree it's not glamourous. It's terrible work. But when you start in a trade you always get the shit assignments (sometimes literally as a plumber).

Depends on the crew. I will say that we have had much better luck overall with the Hispanic crews. We have one we use in DE that shows up in 2-3 big conversion vans (like the A-Team) with 15+ guys (and some young kids sometimes) and knocks out every job in 2-3 days and then departs. Love those guys. They are messy, though. Never clean up properly. These guys are not available in Coos County, NH...

LOL those are some good ones. One of my best was when we were having an addition put on the house in MD. It was framed and under roof but not enclosed yet. My wife poked her head in to look around one morning and found one of the "helpers" passed out drunk and high on the floor. He was the cousin of the lead guy on the job too. It's always a f*cking "cousin" with these guys...

I have toyed with trying it. I have the capital to stand up the business end of it and get these guys working and sending invoices properly. I just am not sure I want to deal with the drama I know sometimes comes with these guys, and especially the "helpers" who are often one step above drugged-out homeless transients. I would need someone who knows construction to be the GM and control the zoo.

No, she needs that to read what they are saying about her on the closed Facebook groups.

Something needs to change culturally with the trades to get kids back involved. I have noticed the skilled guys are getting older and older and slowing down. There is so much work there. Yes, it is hard at first, but if you are organized you can quickly grow to having a crew and stepping back a bit. I often think about gathering up some of these local tradesmen up here and forming them into a single company with back-office and billing support. Make them all wear company branded polo shirts and khakis to the on-time free estimates too. LOL

Yep, that's probably it. Sure, the guy working on my deck with 2 helpers may be slammed building patios for restaurants too, but that is small-time work compared to building a brand-new hotel. It's also work that will dry up shortly.

6'2" Greek god physique with Einstein IQ... yeah, the kids of America will get right on that!

If you are an organized business-minded person who likes to work with your hands, there is a ton of money to be made in the trades right now. Biggest hurdle I see with these guys is they have so much work being thrown at them they lose track of it all and get stunted to where they can't grow. Skilled tradesmen are literally being flagged down in parking lots and begged to take jobs, but they are not able to handle the business back-end aspects of that. It's funny and sad to see.

The skilled contractor I have overseeing the work at my house says he has more jobs than he can handle, but his two issues are shortages of materials and shortages of helpers. It seems the work is there but the usual younger helper types don't want to do the work, or they can't for some reason (work ethic, personal issues such as drugs, etc.). It's concerning if construction numbers are already down in the summer, as that is when business is usually booming for these guys. Winters tend to be the lean time.

That VT number seems like an outlier. Did they have a tighter lockdown that is to blame?

Get off my lawn!

The people who become wealthy off the restaurant business have several of them and they are high-end/pricy. They also take their money from that and parlay it into other more profitable ventures. The guy who owns the local Italian place in town is not getting "rich." I cringe when I see young idealist types point at someone like that and put them in the same category as Jeff Bezos: a rich fatcat who needs to be taxed to death.

I feel like a lot of people are just "floating" right now without a job and exhausting every last source of credit they have, which gives the impression that all is well, but the huge crash is coming soon. There is a lag effect at work.

There is plenty of work out there, you just have to want to do it. Many don't. A lot of kids from the middle class don't even work in HS anymore. When I was in HS, we all worked part-time jobs. You had to make money somehow.

They have thin margins and require good management. There are many stories of packed restaurants with great reviews that still somehow end up underwater and forced to close because the management was not watching supplies, pay for employees, taxes, fees, etc. It's a very tricky business.

It sounds like you are a lot more engaged with local gossip and happenings than I am. I have three houses in different states, and I can't recall ever caring what the locals were yapping about online. I just pull in my driveway, go in my house, and go about my business. Never had an issue. Maybe the grannies are peering through the blinds at me and making posts on Facebook about it; I wouldn't know. I did have one neighbor in DE send me some BS text in March about how me coming down there would be "a huge risk given the health situation." LOL it wasn't a big deal, dude is always a bit of a butthead and we followed the state lockdown orders anyway.

Why not both?

Why do you subject yourself to worrying about what people are saying on social media? It's toxic there. I would pay it exactly zero mind.

When I'm in Randolph, it's very easy to forget almost entirely about COVID, protests, riots, and politics. It isn't until I return to MD just outside Baltimore that all that stuff comes rushing back to the forefront. We are rapidly heading towards making Randolph the primary residence for the foreseeable future.

I never wear a mask. I am always blazing hot when skiing. I am the guy with the jacket half unzipped when it's single digits.

It's like the beaches. There was never any rational explanation for the concern over beaches, but, for whatever reason, people focused in on them as a major nexus of COVID spread. It never made much sense.

I have never skied Black Mountain but it definitely appears to be very "rustic." I could see there being some debris just off the trails.