Jimmy Mancusi Dot Com

I haven't had much time to post anything over the last few days because my weekend was EXTREMELY busy.

I will get into each of these things in greater detail, but here is a quick recap of what happened since Friday:

1. Went sky diving with my sister in law as a surprise for her birthday.
2. Took a Limo into NYC for dinner at Tao with all my in laws for my sister in laws birthday.
3. Celebrated Emily's first birthday with 40 of our closest friends and family.

That all took place on Friday and Saturday so I spent all day Sunday trying to recoup.

Many of you that have known me for a long time know my father has had some heart issues over the past 6 years. For anyone who hasn't known this here is a quick recap of what has happened so far.

About 6 years ago (not exactly sure on dates) my dad wasn't feeling well and ended up going to the hospital. They ran tests and found out that there was bacteria growing on one of the valves in my father's heart. Since there was risk that the bacteria could break off and cause a major stroke, he needed open heart surgery the next day. Everything went well and we were out of the hospital and on to recovery. Then a year or so later they found that he had bacteria on another valve, so once again we were off to the hospital for a second open heart surgery.

My father has had a few issues or side effects from the two surgeries, including some memory problems and fatigue. The fatigue continues to get worse since one of the valves in his heart is leaking. This leak is a condition that normally only people who have multiple heart surgeries get, or as we like to call them, the lucky ones.

The title of the picture to the right is "Houston Has A Big Heart", and I find that very fitting with everything that has transpired over the past week.

As I mentioned in an early post, my parents flew out to Houston so my dad could have a "procedure" to fix a leak in his heart. As with most things in life, there were a few speed bumps in the process. Once my dad got out there, they ran some tests to get an idea of what they were dealing with before they jump into his heart. When they did these tests they found what turned out to be tissue from one of his original valves that was removed years ago. With this tissue in the heart, the doctors weren't sure if they could preform the procedure as they planned and it looked like we were heading toward another open heart surgery...

A few months back we decided to get new windows in our house. Our house was built in the 1950s and the windows in the house were still original, so as you can imagine they were a bit drafty and inefficient. So we began the process of getting estimates and had some really poor experiences, and a few fair ones.

First of all our worst experience was with Castle Windows. They seem to like to use guilt as their main selling tool, and would recommend you look elsewhere if you are looking for new windows. I could go into this estimate in great detail with a lot of ranting and raving... perhaps another day...

Come to think of it though, I don't have a recommendation for you since the company we decided to go with, Home Remodelers Group seemed like a good choice at the time, and the windows are nice, but their customer service is absolutely horrendous.

For anyone that has been lucky enough not to have a window estimate, let me fill you in on one thing. They all take 3-4 hours. Seriously. These sales guys come into your house and want to put on a complete show. They go into detail about their competitors, how great their windows are and why their competitors are no good, warranties, service and so on. My first consultation ran close to 4 hours, and 2 family members of mine received consultations from separate companies and also ran over 3 hours each. So after our first horrible experience we would tell the sales guy we already knew all of those things and wanted to get right down to it, and were able to get through our next couple of estimates in under an hour.