House Related Archives
When I talk of plans for an addition to our house I often say I want a turret. What I actually mean is I want this. Now if I can just do something about the light pollution in the area.
If I were to make a parody website this would be it: The washlet site. Only this isn't a parody and that makes it all the better. I happen to be shopping for a toilet and this dual flush model from TOTO is looking to be the ticket as it will save a lot of water over the course of the years by using less water for when you don't really need the full flush. But then I came across the upgrade option, a heated seat that uses water to wash you and then dries you afterward. A quick stop at the site, and I was immediately taken, ahem, aback. Checkout what all the actors have to say. I especially like the testimonials read by the "happiness girl" - I mean aside from the introductions, LOL! The funniest joke of it all, however, is that I kinda want one, especially the s400 that "senses your presence", opening and closing the seat, and flushing for you.
I have added my wishlist to the Curbly Christmas Giveaway and you can too.
Prefab homes are still garnering a lot of interest, especially amongst designers and like-minded folks. In fact, a designer friend of mine, Pete is building a home using Hive Modular (not to be confused with Hive Designs). The Flat Pak House is another firm I have covered here before but alas I cannot link to them because their site sucks and tries to control my browser and make it display full screen. Perhaps that is why "flat pak" is currently the largest search term leading people to Alt Text and why the Alt Text page is Google's first result as well. And there are several more variations that bring in a lot of traffic to my site (flat+pack+house+minneapolis and flat+pak+house). Not surprisingly, I think that the chronicling of my home building experience [posts and photo gallery] is giving me more credibility to Google and other search engines.
Due to infrequent posts as of late I wanted to mention some of the things that have been keeping me away from the web lately. Living in Minnesota means taking advantage of god weather when you can get it and the end of the summer signals to me that it has been time to do something I have been holding off on doing. First came the landscaping, yard work and planting. Jena and I have built a stone fire pit and patio this summer, planted 40 or so plants here and there around the house, and had contractors come in to pour a new patio and re-grade a couple areas (prompting more rock moving and grass planting etc.). I still have some more projects too (ugh!): complete the wiring of some columns in the front of the house, attach rock/faux rock to said columns, and clean up from the previous projects.
In addition to yard work we have found time to take a couple trips. We just returned from 4 days in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, which was great and over Labor Day Weekend we drove across South Dakota to the Black Hills and the Badlands for some camping and sight seeing.
Add to these things a major product release at work and a couple kickball leagues (yeah I said kickball) and there is precious little time to surf and post. Rest assured, however that as the weather here in Minnesota gets worse the posting frequency will increase as I am quite excited about the web and Alt Text lately.
Thanks to Mark I am set up with a nice new photo gallery and annotation tools. Now it is up to me to customize the look of the new photo gallery. Perhaps it will coincide with a slight update to the look of the site.
The annotation tool would have made all those homebuilding posts and images (which are incidentally the most searched for content on this site) that much more interesting. Hopefully I can make use of this in the near future.
One thing that greatly surprised me during my interactions with the actual people who built my house (as opposed to the general contractor) was the many times I would find them trying to figure out how to deal with a particular challenge. It seemed like every time I turned around there was something new that they had not encountered before. There was much learning on the fly and I learned right along with them. I would recommend that anyone contemplating building a house plan on spending at least an hour a day (broken into two visits) at the site interacting with the various sub-contractors. With our house it was the only way to keep things on track.
It is surprising how non-scientific and exact the act of building a house is. There is a lot of guesswork and "thinking on your feet" that I really would not expect. I mean people have been carpenters for at least something like 5000 years - couldn't they have it down by now?
Another thing that is much more art than science is putting up a boulder retaining wall. i am just hoping that there is enough art to look nice but just enough science to keep the wall in a more or less vertical orientation. Photos to be posted when I find my digital camera.
This past week, and the one upcoming, I have/will put my body through much physical strain. I have been hauling concrete blocks (over 100 of them) to and fro between my house and the local home stores, I will, this weekend, be applying mortar to and moving around all those blocks; building a wood and steel railing; I will be building a boulder wall out of 10-18" fieldstones (20 tons of them); I played basketball for the first time in months, and I painted (actually more physical that it seems).
It only takes a week of work to realize how little I use my body for physical activity. The variety of activities have all worked together to make nearly every muscle in my body sore - but it is a good feeling. Hopefully I can continue some of this exercise regimen into the long dark Minnesota winter - or as I have often thought of it - the blubbering.
Considering building a house? Don't. Unless of course at least 2 of these 3 criteria apply to you:
1. Money is no object
2. You don't care about moving into your new home anytime in the next year.
3. You are a masochist and enjoy pain.
...our house is begining to feel like a home. No, we do not have front stairs yet, and our yard is still a big mound of dirt, but we do have our home network up and running, and even though our internet connection is only 56k we cannot complain. Here's to life settling down again, more frequent posts, and the beginning of house warming party season.
Oh yeah. I closed on my house yesterday.
We have yet to close on our house - but I am not in despair yet. I should have a closing date by the end of the day. It should be later next week I am assuming. Pardon me if I don't hold my breath. There are a couple more new photos up for the few of you who still care. They can be found
here and
here.
I have posted a slew of new images to the
gallery section of the site. Most of them are in the
exterior,
flooring, and
fixtures. By this Friday everything had better be ready, and then I will no longer subject you all to mundane posts about my house building extravaganza.
More photos are up, including
these of the slate floor and
countertops in the kitchen. It seems like most everything will be done by the end of the week. We could be ready to close next week even. I am not holding my breath however.
New house photos are up. Specifically here, and here. Still longing for more? Here's a bonus.
We seem to be very close. I am very close to going crazy. The floors are being done as I type this, and the siding should have been done weeks ago. On Tuesday the countertops get installed in the kitchen.
New photos up since they have put the cabinets in. There are also a couple new ones on the outside and if you look closely you can see the cedar shakes on the outside. They look better than I thought they would.
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Childish exercises for grown-ups. I actually do this second exercise listed periodically and it does make me aware of my skull. And gleeking... that got me in plenty of trouble in junior high - with a crescendo being getting punched in the face. [from metafilter]
There are some more photos posted of my house. They have begun putting in all the final trim work on the inside including the most exciting stuff - the cabinets. We are having a lot of built in cabinets and some window seats. They are also installing the siding and exterior trim - complete with pink plastic house wrap (not for chemical weapons safety concerns, I assure you). It is now more than one year after we initially purchased the lot. It seems that for each day of progress we lose 2 days for some reason. I doubt that it will be done by March 1st now.
I have been doing some housekeeping on the site recently - updating links and such. I can expect more in the coming weeks. Especially if our house ever gets done.
They are nearly done trimming the house now. It seems everything is waiting now for the cabinet makers. There are some new photos in the
misc,
trim, and
insulation sections of the house building galleries - look near the end. The basement floor was poured yesterday and they will soon bring the final furnace in and bring in the plumbing fixtures.
I have posted
new photos of the trim and other woodwork in the house we are building. It is really becoming crunch time as we just 3 weeks remaining to get the following completed: interior paint and trim, exterior trim and siding (we may need to wait to paint until spring), concrete poured in the basement and garage, cabinets and built-ins built, installed, and stained, countertops cut and installed, appliances and fixtures installed, final electrical wiring completed, floors installed, deck built, and many other odds and ends that will need to be tied up. Ugh!
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I finally got around to seeing a movie I have wanted to see for quite some time:
Y Tu Mamá También. Although I had originally had very high expectations for this film, I tempered them after hearing some less than resounding praise and so, as it turns out, I found that I liked the movie - perhaps more than I liked the
story this film presents. Having spent 3 months in Mexico during college I feel a special bond with the country. I had a chance to travel around for a month of that time and saw a lot of the Mexico I knew in the periphery of this movie. I think it was great that the filmmakers made a point to give you a look at Mexico's natural beauty, its political landscape, and its people. In a lot of ways I thought these little glimpses we get were more compelling than the primary story that seemed a little to shallow for me.
More photos of the house
have been posted. Some of the newer photos can be found
here and
here. They are beginning to put the trim around the windows and install the doors. yesterday they brought the water into the house from the street. I am hoping Xcel energy will allow me to have the power line in front of the house buried. If not I will not be happy.
They have painted and are beginning to trim the house now. I will have new photos up tomorrow. Does anyone know a good cabinet maker?
One thing can be said about building a house as a team (husband and wife): each persons belief systems will be galvanized. I am basically trusting in nature and take the contractor and subcontractors at their word, while Jena, who is basically untrusting by nature tells me I am naive and we are being taken advantage of. Of course the truth is likely somewhere in between our two views but the stresses of making daily decision that will affect our living conditions for years to come can sometimes polarize us.
There are more photos of the house up in the
Insulation and Drywall gallery. We pick out cabinets this week and pick up the tub for the master bath.
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Froogle, the latest development from
Google is a search engine spcifically for things being sold online. Not the newest idea but when its from Google it makes me think it is going to be much better than the current offerings out there.
I would like to see them add
c|net-like price comparisons at some point - the narrow by price isn't going to cut it.
On a related note, next year is the year I do all my x-mas shopping online. I am very sick of stores. Of course I have been saying the same thing for the past 3 years.
I do feel bad but not as bad as I should most likely, I haven't been ignoring the web entirely but it has seemed, at times, to me that Alt Text is so far away from me.
I have been taking a ton of
photos of my house. It is now on track (in fact it must) to be done by Feb 11th.
I also just finished up a class last night that I have been taking at the
Carlson School of Management. I am pretty sure I got an A as I got an A on everything up until the final presentation and thought we did well for ourselves on that and the final paper. One note, college students are not what I remembered them being. It seems like high school - no effort, no intelligent discussion, rarely any questions. Though I do feel a bit like I miss school. I have been thinking about getting a Masters degree in something. Not an MBA though - I couldn't stand the thought of 2 more years of talking about how to manage a sales force.
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Here are some collected links over the past couple weeks since my last post:
Build your own Bag End, from the Lord of the Rings. Damn I already started building an above ground home!
Slightly related:
a petition to George Lucas to let Peter Jackson direct the 3rd Star Wars movie.
Did anyone catch the CBS nightly news show a couple weeks ago about doctors who do not take insurance and were able to cut costs and better serve their patients by doing so? There was one group who didn't have offices and for a $1300 annual fee would visit you in your home all year. Others were able to cut their fixed costs by 2/3's in some cases because they did not need the extra office space and staff required to satisfy the insurance companies requirements. it was very interesting. My only concern about not having insurance would be for big things that would occur - car crashes, major illness, etc. I wonder if I can change insurance premiums to have a higher deductible or something and make anything like this worth while.
Thanks to
Mark I now have all the house
building photos up in a gallery.
Halloween may have been originated in Scotland among the Celts, bastardized by the Romans and the Christians, but it was first celebrated in its current form in Anoka, Minnesota.
"Modern day Halloween did not get started until around 1920. Anoka, Minnesota, held the very first yearly city-wide Halloween celebration in 1921 with two parades, a Pumpkin Bowl and a huge costumed square dance. In 1922 Allentown, Pennsylvania followed suit, with New York City joining in, in 1923." {
source]
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More photos of the house have been uploaded.
They are to the second story. The recent snow and rain has caused some delays, though they say it should be no more than 60 days away from completion.
We have moved again. Now we are in a much better neighborhood, with a fenced in yard and 3 bedrooms. I feel better now. if I could only unpack all these boxes - I just can't do it with another move less than 3 months away. My life is a disorganized mess.
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White Oleander was a
good book and a
decent movie. I thought it was well acted all around. There was a lot left out and the movie definitely felt less yucky than the book, but so did the sense of the main character's ordeals and the true, deep reach and hold that her mother had on her life. Worth seeing with your significant other even if you have not read the book.
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Buy this for your loved ones this holiday season.
...have been posted. Still slow - haven't moved that big mountain of dirt - want some? - will almost certainly close in January.
We are moving again in 7-10 days to our second temporary house while building is going on. I can't complain - much.
The new house is in a much nicer 'hood and we will feel safer. Plus, there is a fence for Sadie.
We are actually even thinking of getting a second dog - didn't we learn from the ripped clothes and flesh of
our last puppy-raising?
One of the first things I ask someone in my industry (web) when I meet them, is whether or not they have a personal site. I am usually very disappointed when people do not. Most of the time I mentally "mark them down" as someone who isn't very serious about what they do? I mean why wouldn't you have your own site to experiment with and express yourself on, if you were *into* what you were doing. I can see not keeping it up when you get busy, but to not even have a domain or a place you can point me to see some of your work or thoughts? - It's just disheartening.
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I have posted some new
photos of the house building experiment I am a part of. The photos are of days 10-16 (I only count business days) and show the progress (or lack thereof) of completing the foundation, weatherproofing it, and backfilling against the outside walls of it. It is all very exciting stuff. They tell me the framing is supposed to start this week. I guess sub-contractors are like mogwai and can't get rained on lest they turn into gremlins. Framing could be completed next week. Wow.
I can already say that I am not entirely pleased with the house we are building. It is kinda crazy, but we are too far into it to change much and I don't think I will *love* the way the house looks once it is completed (the first phase anyway). This statement is very unfortunate seeing as I am likely going to live in this house for the next decade or more of my life. I am not really sure how it happened - I guess I fell in love with the inside features of the house, then had to scale back on what we could do right away (due in part because of the expense of the lot and in part due to the extreme costs of building a nice* home these days. We just weren't expecting our small little custom home to cost so much to build. Anyway, I am still very excited about the house and all the features we are building into it. If it's ugly for the first half-dozen years of its life then so be it. We are planning an addition at some point in the next 5 years. This may sound ludicrous but we just can't afford to do it all right now and it happened that our house plans could be phased relatively easily and without much waste in the future.
* For my purposes a
nice home is defined as a home that is built with care out of high quality materials and does not fall into the category of home where the builder says "here, pick between these 4 layouts".
Jason
expands on an idea that was
brought up recently by
Justin Hall, and countless others, that personal websites like Alt Text,
Kottke.org, and
Links.net can serve as efficient vehicles for getting to know its owner/operator post haste. This idea is on track and has both positive and negative aspects to it. From reading Justin's site I (and many other people) may feel a little *too knowledgeable* on some aspects of his life. But that is the nature of the web today and always and I wouldn't have it any other way.
It is for this reason that I have been pushing a couple of people I work with to start sites. I enjoy talking to them sure, but I find reading what someone actually "deems worthy" for post on their site very interesting. I can't do much more than buy people their own domain (which I have done) in order to persuade them. At some point the desire to express oneself has to come from within.
On tap for tomorrow: more thoughts on these ideas.
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It has been slow-going on the house building front. They have been waiting to start framing and backfilling against the foundation. We have to decide what general color scheme to use for the house and I really don't know how to decide.
Need to get caught up on the house-building process? Here are some links:
I have posted
some photos of the progress through the first week or so of our house building endeavor. I plan on posting more every couple of days. It is very suprising how fast they can go once they start up. A week and a day ago the lot just had a bunch of weeds on it.
They broke ground on my house yesterday. I am going to set up a little deal on this site for those who care to track its progress.
I have a lot of explaining to do. I have yet another project that has me working 14 hour days or more. Arbitrary deadlines are fun!
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Is
Fear.com not the worst looking movie you have ever seen? And is it really a good selling point to say it is from the creators of House on Haunted Hill? That movie reeked. Plus how lame is it that they could get the actual domain, fear.com? Of course none of this means I won't see it. I don't think there can be anything web-related that is scarier than looking at nearly 2 full weeks gone by without a post at AltText.com
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One good thing about being so busy on projects is that I don't have time to surf other sites ... oh wait that is a bad thing.
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My house is finally going to be built. The date of the ground breaking is now set for this Thursday.
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I just got back from a recent trip along the north shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota and Canada. No West Nile symptoms yet.
As a
Big Brother I am... frustrated, out of my league, looking for ways to connect, needing a break.
As a "blogger" I... am looking for my groove, trying to give Alt Text a voice, unsure about what type of information to present, perhaps preoccupied with my "audience", perhaps not as conscious of my "audience" as I should be, frustrated, lazy, in need of a mission-like statement, planning, optimistic.
As a home builder I am... seeing a ray of hope, settling disputes, breaking ground, relieved, impatient, excited, not accepting it all as real yet.
As a friend I... am not as good as I should be, demanding, am "high maintenance", need to reach out more, should require more of myself, will let my friends know they are important to me, cognizant that I need to be a better friend.
So a glimmer of hope came to me in my bid to build a house. Last Friday the neighbor who had been holding up the ground breaking on my property asked if the offer I made over 2 months ago was still on? Specifically would I help to fix his driveway in exchange for his releasing of any claims on my property.
Lets just say that I was more than willing to give him $2000 over two months ago to get this thing behind me - but now - after paying interest on a construction loan in excess of $3000 plus losing my interest rate lock and potentially having to pay another set of loan origination fees - I am a little more hesitant to give in on this. Forget the fact that it is entirely unfair that I have to pay a dime, forget the fact that I went over to this guy's home before purchasing the property to introduce myself, had coffee with him and 30 minutes later he had not said anything about these claims, forget all these things and you still have a practical question? What am I willing to do to take destiny into our own hands and end this thing?
Now, we could wait 30-90 more days for the courts to decide but then we would be paying more in interest and could potentially need to go to court ourselves against one of the parties in this initial suit. Needless to say its a bit complicated. I am hoping that by the end of the week it will be much simpler.
So its not really the real hood, it is still St. Paul's East side and there are still little naked kids runnin' around with (what I am hoping are pellet) guns. Having spent a month here in the "new" house I have come up with a list of differences between living in the city and living in the suburbs.
When comparing the suburbs and the city you will often find...
- ...alleys.
- ...people working on their cars in those alleys.
- ...more small businesses and family run restaurants as opposed to chains owned by McDonalds.
- ...more loose dogs running around.
- ...those loose dogs tend to be much larger in size and also of breeds more prone to rip your face off.
- ..."stoop-sitting" is much more prevalent.
- ...a wider variety of grocery choices. (within 5 block of my house I can get Mexican, Asian, and Indian groceries.)
- ...more crack houses or houses condemned for other reasons - you really don't see much of that in the 'burbs.
- ...far more naked children running around in the streets.
I am sure I will be back with more. I like being able to walk to places, I just hope I get where I am going before one of those dogs gets to me.
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I have something else to say here. Senility. I hope I remember before I go to bed. Its always tough for me to fall asleep if I can't remember something.
We have sold our townhouse and are now living in a small (1 bedroom) in St. Paul. We wait now for the legal wrangling of our future neighbor and the jokers who sold us the lot we intend to build on. Hopefully we will know the outcome in a week. I hate all this waiting. (especially since it will likely take between 100 and 120 days to build our new slightly larger home (still 1 bedroom though). So now we must root for the jerks who sold us the lot to prove that our neighbor has no claim on the lot at all - then we build. If the (nicer) neighbor wins we are going to have to get lawyers involved ourselves and sue the previous sellers. Not fun.
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I would much rather have a president who is in bed with an intern than one who is in bed with big, filthy business.
... I hate moving. Especially when I am moving to a house without central air during the hottest weekend of the year.
I like sweating but I hate sweating. Its not bad when you are playing sports or exercising but not when I am standing up in my house and that is the extent of my exertion. I hate not being able to escape the heat.
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There is a new
Two Towers trailer at Apple.com
Pledge of Allegiance ruled unconstitutional.
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We are still having problems with home building situation. I don't know who to be angry at. The people who sold the lot to me screwed up and are jerks, the neighbor is a nice but fed up with jerks who sold me the lot, the real estate agent never said anything about any of this, and my builder made a mistake in not letting me know about these problems before he signed the dotted line. Now we are waiting for the previous owner and the neighbor to hammer out their differences while the clock runs on our 150-day interest rate lock, and interest continues to accrue on the construction loan. More than you ever wanted to know I am sure. Anyone know a good real estate attorney?
I am also moving this weekend to a house in St. Paul (proper). It is not in the best area - ok its the hood - but its free until it sells or until our house is ready. It will really make us appreciate our home when (if) ever gets done.
I just found out that milk, something I love, something I make excuses to eat chocolate for, is actually enriched sweat. How disgusting is that? I found a couple
sources online corroborating what I heard while driving in the car. I must try not to think about that too much because I don't think I could bear not drinking my 3 glasses of skim
sweat milk a day.
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House Update: Jena and I sold our house today. After 44 hours on the market we got our asking price. Should we have held out for more? I don't think so. We do not have any contingencies on the sale and things worked out well. So why do I feel cheated? Jena and I did so much work getting the house ready for sale - the cleaning, packing, moving things out, hiding the dog for showings - that we feel cheated by how quickly it sold. Weird? Maybe. A relief? Definitely, my stress level just went down a notch. We move out July 1st and then await our new home to be finished. I will update you on that next week. Pray that I do not have to go to court with my new neighbor.
I finally got
my house up for sale, I am trying to work through the issues with my new neighbor while juggling the building process, and things seem a bit better - though my computer at work doesn't work now becuase of a mishap while watering a plant - ugh!
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Here is s a topic I have been thinking about latley: tipping.
Specifically tipping people who don't serve food (I am not sure why that is different it just is) like the baggers at those full service gorcery stores or coat checkers, or hair stylists. And its not a matter of being threifty or not - it just seems weird to tip people outside of a restuant setting - it feels... like there is some class system built around it. I just feel weird about it like. I don't know.
I have had a rough week - probably one of the most stressful in my life. Sure there is the work stress but I also am trying to get my house up for sale, start the building of my new home, deal with new neighbors who claim to have a usage easment that takes up 10 feet of my lot along the northern line, and a townhouse association that will never return my damn phone calls about an insurance claim I want filed.
I think I have had more stressful times in my life, but I think I had better ways of dealing with it. Right now it is just balling up in me. I don't have all the physical activity that used to tire me out and not let me dwell on things.
I think I will like
Vanilla Coke and somehow living in Minneapolis I get to try it a full day before the rest of the world.
Too bad living here doesn't afford me the opportunity to see Episode II "the way it was meant to be seen" - projected digitally. There isn't
a theater equipped with a digital projector for hundreds and hundreds of miles. They have them in Budapest, Hungary and Bratislava, Slovakia for pete's sake!
[The previous tidbits of info and links courtesy of
Broomeman.com]
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Updated house plans are now posted to the server. The plans listed below are of a much smaller file size but will more clearly show the plans:
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I have taken some photos of my blueprints (
per request). They are large file sizes and taken with
this camera if you would like to buy it.
There are some modifications to the plans being made. They are pretty subtle however. I will post a list of them along with some cleaned up plans that show details later today.
I have half-finished posts that never were to see the light of day and I thought, hey in the spirit of reduce, reuse, and recycle I could clean out all my old draft posts and turn them into some lazy Saturday afternoon reading. Enjoy.
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I stumbled across this
page of old maps of Minnesota and found them very interesting. Some of the maps show growth by area withing the Minneapolis St. Paul region while another show the burgeoning transit system in the area. The last map, dated 1935 shows a city planning map of downtown Minneapolis. Areas are marked by what was found there or who lived/worked there - Lower middle class, Workingman's homes, Slum, Middle class residential, etc. There is even one area marked "Negro Section (Largest in City)". I believe that to be much different to city planning maps of today - but I wonder how much different mindsets are.
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Also in the How to Piss Me Off curriculum: Tell me that part of the land I just bought actually belongs to you.
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A
hoax was reported by Salon.com over a year and a half ago about an apparent suicide due, in part, to the most popular online game
EverQuest and the addictive way in which it affects many players. The
EverQuest online community claims that people with addictive personalities can become addicted to anything and that the game is not inherently addictive. But isn't it? I have only played EverQuest once for a total of about 10 minutes, but once spent many, many hours playing
Ultima Online, another (PSW) Persistent State World where things are constantly happening even when you are not logged in. You cannot just save and expect everything to be OK. Your home (which you really need to save money up to purchase) can be broken into when you are offline, your treasures could be stolen, and entire storylines, quests, and news can pass you by. In this way you are compelled to stay online as much as possible. Plus you "know" people online. There are often tens of thousands of other players online at once and you get to know them - you join guilds with them, or go to war against them. There is so much at stake (literally months if not years of time spent playing and accumulating goods) that you can sometimes forget that none of it is real. If you were then somewhat less stable then the average bear, I see how it would be possible to get very depressed about losing everything. Especially if the only thing you looked forward to in your real life was your fantasy life.
The suicide reported in November of 2000 turned out to be fake, however last November's
suicide by a Wisconsin man was no joke and is bringing back the questions about these types of games and has prompted a lawsuit by the man's mother against Sony (who owns and runs EverQuest.)
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On occasion I have had the opportunity to meet someone of the Mormon faith or a Jehovah's Witness and I am, each time, astounded that they are the most upbeat and optimistic (if not also somewhat naive and innocent about the "ways of the world") people I have ever met. This holds true for Mormons and JW's that I have been exposed to via TV and magazines. They all just seem so damned nice and content. (of course
I could be wrong)
Don't get me wrong, I tend to be pretty optimistic in general and some who know me call me content as if they we're hurling an axe at me, but these Mormons and JW's are just too content. Without getting too much into where that feeling comes from, I can only say that they seem at peace while the vast majority of us are in various stages of turmoil throughout our lives.
As Jena recently said to me, "All I got from being brought up Catholic is all this crappy guilt. I wish I was a Mormon!" after coming to the realization, yet again, that Mormon's are always happy people.
I find myself envious of them too. I would love to be at peace with questions of who, what, where, why, and when of my place in this world and the next. We both have said we wished were were born into a family of Mormon's or Jehovah's Witnesses. But we are damned. Damned to always doubt and damned to never know what it truly is like to be content.
How did that happen that we're into May already! Wow I had planned so many posts. Here are some:
The new
Sony Vaio Handheld is very cool. I go back and forth on the idea of electronics convergence, but mostly end up on its side. I would like my organizer/contacts list/pda-type thing to have an MP3 player built in I really would.
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"Extreme Programming" is an interesting idea but can it really make for better more efficient coding?
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Old News about kicking granny to the curb.
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On Monday we officially closed on the land on which we plan to build a house. They are surveying it and "staking" it next week. We hope to break ground the week of the 20th. I hope that isn't optimistic.
Have you ever tried to pick out a gas fireplace? They have many configurations! Luckily most look like ass and there are only a few that look nice and fire-like. Photos coming soon.
This has definitely been the most trying week of my home building experience. I have the seller's real estate agent breathing down my neck to schedule a closing date on the lot (it needs to be completed by April 30th) and we are in negotiations with the builder to try to get our house into the affordable range. I think we are very close. If all goes well we will have closed on the lot (or I should say our builder will have) and we will have building permit by the first week in May. Hopefully breaking ground the second week. I plan on taking at least 1 photo per day to mark the progress but I will likely take more.
Our servers will be down again tomorrow due to construction behind the house where this server is sitting. Hope to be back up by lunch.
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The home building process is going excruciatingly slow. Getting all the bids back from the subcontractors is taking forever. More updates as they happen.
We have finalized our blueprints for the house and now are in the "what do we have to leave out and finish later" phase. I may need to become much handier than I am now in order to complete many of those tasks.
I have made a
very rough page with some very rough ideas of what the house we are planning is to look like (well at least the plans anyway).
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On a side note, if you were at SXSW and missed me or met me, but didn't trade for a t-shirt,
let me know and I will trade you one of mine for one of yours.
I uploaded a couple more photos of the land we have purchased. You can
see them all here. I plan on taking a lot of pictures of the process as a sort of documentation process of the building of our first true home.
Since the sold sign officially went up today I thought I would post
a photo of the land my wife (I like to say land more than lot because it sounds cool to say we are land owners) and I just purchased. Here is
another one with said sign.
I have been reading a book recently,
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins and to be honest I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I have. Robbins' writing style is like nothing I have read before and many of is ideas echo other things I have read and adds pieces to the puzzle I am constructing that is my view of the world. Incidentally, if you have seen the movie,
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues you may have a bad taste in your mouth for this book. I haven't seen it but I have heard it was pretty bad - which it really had no right to be but Gus Van Sant's projects are sort of hit (Good Will Hunting, Drugstore Cowboy, Finding Forrester) or miss (To Die For, Psycho - remake) I guess.
Anyway, one point it stated, that I truly believe but that many people have a really tough time swallowing is the idea that early man lived better than we do now.
"In General, primitive man enjoyed great stability...Primitive culture was diverse, flexible and completely integrated with Nature at the level of the particular environment. Primitive man took from the land only what he needed, thus avoiding the hassles that result in modern economics from imbalances of scarcity and surplus. Hunting and gathering tribes worked only a few hours a week. To work more than that would have put a strain on the environment, to which they related symbiotically."
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We put in an offer on a piece of land yesterday. I assume we will find out if it is accepted today. Because the lot is much more than we were thinking of spending we will be looking for less expensive ways of building our home - possibly doing it in phases over the next 10 years or so. Who knows - we still haven't found a builder to build our home anyways. That comes now.
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I miss
Ad Critic
I met my "little" on Monday and saw him again yesterday. He is a great, 9 year old, kid named Kelby and I could not be happier. Considering that I will likely be matched with Kelby until he graduates high school (or beyond) I count myself as lucky to be paired with him. Plus, now I can do a lot of childish things with him and have an excuse!
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Meeting with a real estate agent today and will likely put an offer down on a piece of land that is just what I have been looking for (minus the hefty price tag). I am almost past the first step in building the house my wife and I really want.
