"Alpine Condo Crossfire", a murder mystery set in a condo community. The main reason the book interested me was because of the setting and because I was told that my grandmother liked this author.
It was actually a decent mystery, it is a very clean mystery, the language is clean, no gore, no explicit language or topics. So if you are tired of the garbage that you find in a lot of current books this may be a refreshing change. I believe the book was written in the 70's. The thing that was funny to me is that the book was talking about the benefits of living in a condo association. I guess in the 70's that was an exclusive community and probably pretty nice. Knowing what I know about condominiums though it stuck me as funny.
'til next time...
Friday, October 15, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Addition update...
So, here is the update on the addition project.
Yep, that about sums it up.
Ok, moving on...
No, it is not that bad, we have made some progress just not a lot of visible progress. For the past few months I have theoretically been painting. I have gotten a first coat of paint on almost all the walls but am a long way from being finished. We wanted to finish the painting before installing the wood floors so I'm kind of holding up progress right now. Theoretically holding up progress as my husband doesn't have time to pick up the flooring, much less install it.
Mu husband has been working on insulating everything under the house, that has taken multiple days. He had to put the floor insulation under the addition, insulate all of the plumbing, and then replace all the insulation under the original house. We believe the insulation under the existing house may have been the original insulation, making it over 30 years old. It will be interesting to see the difference this winter in keeping the house warm.
He has also been working on figuring out the HVAC for the addition. There have been many opinions on what to do about that, using the existing unit, use two separate units, remove the existing and install a bigger unit, etc., etc. As of today the plan seems to be to use the existing unit and just add the additional duct work, but this could change at any moment.
Peter has also dug the ditches for the drainage system. We do not have gutters up yet but we need something for them to tie into anyway. The ditches run around the addition, along the side of the house toward the field where the ground starts sloping down. There are supposed to be delivering the gravel this week to go into the ditch, then he can lay the pipe and fill it back it. This is a must-do project. We have about 80 people coming to our house in about a week, can't have 3 foot trenches everywhere!
So, we are making progress, we are only a year behind schedule.
'til next time...
Yep, that about sums it up.
Ok, moving on...
No, it is not that bad, we have made some progress just not a lot of visible progress. For the past few months I have theoretically been painting. I have gotten a first coat of paint on almost all the walls but am a long way from being finished. We wanted to finish the painting before installing the wood floors so I'm kind of holding up progress right now. Theoretically holding up progress as my husband doesn't have time to pick up the flooring, much less install it.
Mu husband has been working on insulating everything under the house, that has taken multiple days. He had to put the floor insulation under the addition, insulate all of the plumbing, and then replace all the insulation under the original house. We believe the insulation under the existing house may have been the original insulation, making it over 30 years old. It will be interesting to see the difference this winter in keeping the house warm.
He has also been working on figuring out the HVAC for the addition. There have been many opinions on what to do about that, using the existing unit, use two separate units, remove the existing and install a bigger unit, etc., etc. As of today the plan seems to be to use the existing unit and just add the additional duct work, but this could change at any moment.
Peter has also dug the ditches for the drainage system. We do not have gutters up yet but we need something for them to tie into anyway. The ditches run around the addition, along the side of the house toward the field where the ground starts sloping down. There are supposed to be delivering the gravel this week to go into the ditch, then he can lay the pipe and fill it back it. This is a must-do project. We have about 80 people coming to our house in about a week, can't have 3 foot trenches everywhere!
So, we are making progress, we are only a year behind schedule.
'til next time...
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
reasons for not writing...
I sat down for a moment to write and all I could think about were the reasons that I don't write, the reasons why I "don't-get-around-to-it".
'til next time...
- too tired to think
- a two year old child
- should be painting the addition instead of writing about painting the addition
- have laundry to do
- a one year old child
- too tired to move fingers over keys
- should be cleaning house
- should be focusing on the 20 page things-to-do-before-big-party list
- too tired
'til next time...
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
I have trained my son right...
Yesterday I received proof that I have done something right when training my son.
We were at Walmart, I was in the process of checking out, since my cart was full I was letting Wythe walk around. While I was unloading groceries and loading bags into the cart he was playing with the various items that they put in the checkout lanes. As he was happily occupied straightening the items on the shelf and playing with the gift cards I wasn't paying as much attention to him as I should have been.
Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw him put something up on the counter, but when I glanced at the conveyor belt I didn't see anything. It also registered in my brain that he was saying "treat please! treat please! treat please!" A few seconds later the cashier says "I'll give you your gift card so that you don't misplace it" and she hands me a $25 Starbucks gift card.
Apparently my son upon recognizing the familiar Starbucks logo, picked out the gift card and put it up on the counter with our groceries! As you may know, once the card is scanned it is activated so it requires an act of Congress to return one. Fortunately for me and for my son, I can use a Starbucks gift card, in fact I will greatly enjoy using a Starbucks gift card. I'm not sure my husband will believe me if this happens again but it definitely worked out for me this time! I just feel fortunate that he didn't select a $100 gift card to a restaurant we don't go to! So, in the future I will have to keep an eagle eye on my son or avoid aisles with gift cards. Ironically, aisles with candy aren't a problem yet. My two year old doesn't know what candy is but does know that when you see the Starbucks logo you get a "treat".
'til next time...
We were at Walmart, I was in the process of checking out, since my cart was full I was letting Wythe walk around. While I was unloading groceries and loading bags into the cart he was playing with the various items that they put in the checkout lanes. As he was happily occupied straightening the items on the shelf and playing with the gift cards I wasn't paying as much attention to him as I should have been.
Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw him put something up on the counter, but when I glanced at the conveyor belt I didn't see anything. It also registered in my brain that he was saying "treat please! treat please! treat please!" A few seconds later the cashier says "I'll give you your gift card so that you don't misplace it" and she hands me a $25 Starbucks gift card.
Apparently my son upon recognizing the familiar Starbucks logo, picked out the gift card and put it up on the counter with our groceries! As you may know, once the card is scanned it is activated so it requires an act of Congress to return one. Fortunately for me and for my son, I can use a Starbucks gift card, in fact I will greatly enjoy using a Starbucks gift card. I'm not sure my husband will believe me if this happens again but it definitely worked out for me this time! I just feel fortunate that he didn't select a $100 gift card to a restaurant we don't go to! So, in the future I will have to keep an eagle eye on my son or avoid aisles with gift cards. Ironically, aisles with candy aren't a problem yet. My two year old doesn't know what candy is but does know that when you see the Starbucks logo you get a "treat".
'til next time...
Back to the land of internet...
We are finally back online. Turns out our modem was going bad, so they sent us a new one and that fixed the problem. For about 2 weeks prior to losing service completely the connection was horrible, sometimes it would take 20 minutes just to open my email.
It is amazing how dependant you get on the Internet. Even my husband who shuns all modern technology was inconvenienced by the outage. He needed me to process a payment online but we were unable to so we had to pull out the old checkbook and rely on the US Postal Service to make our payment.
But, now that we are back online I will try to post some of these updates that I have sitting here for my blog. Although, this really is not a good time for me to be "catching up" on blogs. Between the never ending addition project and preparing for an upcoming party I really shouldn't even be sitting down. However, I can justify it for now because I am currently sitting by the window on the look out for a dump truck that is supposed to be bringing gravel for our drainage ditch around the addition. I need to make sure the driver dumps the gravel in the right spot in order to minimize the amount of hauling we have to do!
'til next time...
It is amazing how dependant you get on the Internet. Even my husband who shuns all modern technology was inconvenienced by the outage. He needed me to process a payment online but we were unable to so we had to pull out the old checkbook and rely on the US Postal Service to make our payment.
But, now that we are back online I will try to post some of these updates that I have sitting here for my blog. Although, this really is not a good time for me to be "catching up" on blogs. Between the never ending addition project and preparing for an upcoming party I really shouldn't even be sitting down. However, I can justify it for now because I am currently sitting by the window on the look out for a dump truck that is supposed to be bringing gravel for our drainage ditch around the addition. I need to make sure the driver dumps the gravel in the right spot in order to minimize the amount of hauling we have to do!
'til next time...
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