Rolling with the punches...

I am not sure why Blogspot is no longer putting in spaces, endentation for paragraphs (yes, I am doing it... they magically dissapear, sometimes if I add bullets, it's better... sometimes it's not).

It's been a strange week, full of highs and lows. The process feels strangely out of my hands currently. After a relatively lucky run of helpful and caring government employees, I've come across the inevitable minority that makes one wonder if they were all this way, would no new business ever launch?

I now know why businesses don't make it past the first year. Who can spend a year not working (and opening a business is a full time job... unpaid, of course), spending thousands of dollars a month of tithes to the various government bodies to get the umpteen permits, licenses and variances and not go broke?

Most of the people get it, most of the places I've dealt with have gone over and above to help me. They feel bad for those of us brave enough to try and... you know... stimulate the sluggish California economy. The Building Dept however... has just been miserable to deal with.

Today Stan told me the Building Dept actually did a seminar last year where they told the building owners they would likely have to boot out all of their tennants so they could retrofit the buildings. Boot out all of their tennants... for a year... so they could retrofit the buildings. How do you think something like that would effect the economy of the Downtown area? You can imagine the surprise when Stan talked to the engineer on Friday and was told it was a 2-3 week process and no tennants would be effected. That kind of alarmism is irresponsible imo. And that has been my experience with them as well. I think they think they are being "helpful", but looking for any reason to stall and stall (after I've already gotten thru two of the more exhaustive processes with flying colors) at this late juncture of the process is financially and mentally a huge burden.

Anyway, I am sure it is bad Karma to even vent about it.

There is a bunch of good stuff that has happened too... I swear! But I am too annoyed at yet another moment of "Crap... what happens now?" to write about it. I know I will hear more as the week goes on, and hopefully this only will delay me a week or two. But... yet... harumph.