Captain Obvious Figures It Out

 Sigh. 

     Well, I'm back on board the HQ, and after a week of tugboating, it was good to be home. I got to catch up with Big E, and we went right to work in 2 days of heavy freezing rain and stiff gales, which was unpleasant, but as I was still riding the high of being back where I belong, I was in fair but wet spirits. A Bohunk-flavored chief engineer from a shitbox containership had an absolute shitfit at me in the middle of all the weather, and oddly enough his temper tantrum and screaming (it always boils down to foreign engineers lying and saying we gave them either 20 or 40 tons of oil less than is on the paperwork) just rolled off me same as the rain. I'm not normally one of those cool people who just sit calmly while being fussed at, which I admire.  Normally I go nuclear rather early on, which is a character flaw, and will speculate graphically about a person's mother upon being tut-tutted.  I ain't proud of that.  For whatever reason though, I stayed calm, standing there damply in 20lbs of foul weather gear with that annoying cold-weather snot-drip you get, which made the engineer more and more upset (my calmness. Not the snot drip). It was wonderful. Bro was incandescent.  After the job was done, even better, we got to go to a lay berth and have a day off. 

         So I'm all back to normal(ish) here for now. And that's a good thing, because all hell broke loose at the comstruction site of our house in Brazil. 

          So the Brazil house has been under renovation for 1 year now and it looks horrid. Inappropriately Hot Foreign wife and I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the builder... and out of the blue a few weeks ago the pool builder, a subcontractor, told a friend, a cousin of my wife, thst the builder stiffed him about 10k and the pool guy was about to swear out a complaint. This started a cascade effect, where we discovered that the builder has built himself a nice new farmouse out of town, and putting together the lack of progress at  my house against the substantial building materials manifest... yeah, the materials got used, but not on MY house.  Best guess is that I just got fucked for somewhere between 50-100k US. Oh, and apparently he lied about filing the engineering drawings with the city. There may be no engineering drawings. WTF? 

       Thankfully we are not without options. 

   Now, Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife many years ago was the law clerk for a judge who is still in power today in the city where this is all happening. The law firm we have hired to go up the builder's ass? Owned by a cousin. The local Federal Police office is run by a colonel, who is also a cousin.  So the builder is about to have a bad week next week with civil and criminal referrals coming in. I might get some money back.  

      I spent last week kicking myself for not seeing the delays in construction for what they were.  I Dunning-Krugered myself. I assumed I was much too bright to get utterly suckered. 

   Well, I have moved past saying things about the builder's momma, and into my wife asking the city sherriff to go full Spaghetti Test in throwing civil and criminal charges at the guy. 

 The money's gone. And though I might get some of it back, I've got enough of a thick veiny pulsing hate boner for that trashbag that a pyrrhic victory will be 100% fine by me. 

  I hate that I can't make the guy pay.  But I can pay lawyers to lay the hate. 

   Anyhow, that was my week.  Oddly, now that we had our crisis, I'm feeling at peace. Ain't shit I can do, having paid a sucker tax. At least I have some answers now, and don't have to keep throwing money at the guy. We did our part and will now see if the guy pulls an auto da fe or what.