Word is, they may start banging on the deck in the next few days -- might I have a deck for the weekend? Maybe next weekend even?

That's kind of how the whole early process made me end up feeling.

However, I feel that way no more. As of today, we have a roof, windows, a garage floor, rough plumbing, and rough electrical. WHEEEE.

There's a slew of photographic evidence on Rich's Flickr, but I'll go over the highlights here.

First, at the end of January, the guys took down the fence and the old deck. It was a really warm winter here, for the most part, so they didn't have much trouble.

Shortly after that, in early March, the digging for the footings and foundation began.

Within a few weeks, the walls started going up.

By late April, the roof trusses were going in...

...and the six Guatemalan roofer guys tossed off the old shingles and put on a whole new roof in a single day.

At the same time, the builders were continuing work inside, framing up all the interior walls.

And by the first week of May, the windows had all been installed.

The new hot water heater was an unplanned but ultimately welcome addition.

For some reason, siding doesn't go on as quickly as roofing...this is two days work.

And today...the garage floor!

So yes, lots is happening. And we'll try to be better about actually keeping up as the interior finish begins.

So much for "the year of the house".

That well-conceived plan to start construction in the spring, complete by the fall, and celebrate New Year's Eve in the new addition? Right out the window. The proximate cause was a combination of a lazy surveyor and bad spring weather: the surveyor was supposed to have back in March, but had bigger fish to fry, apparently, and weeks of wet weather gave them a convenient excuse to show up three months after their original promised date. Now, we're going to be lucky if we can get the slab poured before the weather turns nasty, and guess what? The self-same surveyor is dragging their feet on putting together the site plan (something that, by most accounts, should be done within the span of a single day, seems to be taking these guys a week). So, I'm not exactly holding my breath.

If the slab gets poured before year's end, then construction should start around the beginning of April (weather permitting, ha ha ha) and we should be living in the addition by midsummer. Maybe.

In the meantime, we're living in a five-pound house with ten pounds of shit in it, trying to find a place for everything to go, getting rid of what we really don't need, reorganizing the rest, and trying not to go insane.

Still, there have been small victories. The kitchen's a different place thanks to a new dishwasher, range hood, and (new this week) a gas range. There still isn't enough room to swing a cat (a state of affairs about which Reggie has decidedly mixed feelings), but the gear we have now works better than what used to be there. (The new faucet still sits in its box, taunting me. Laugh it up, faucet; your time will come.)

The basement, previously a wreck of moldy old things, has been cleaned up, reorganized, and filled with boxes of new things ready to become moldy old things. (There's a dehumidifier to help slow the process.) Room has been made in the finished part for my working set, so I don't always have to be working on the sofa. (There's a lot more to be done: we gotta make room for all the thread in the world.) A gigabit backbone now connects downstairs and upstairs. The front door and storm door have been replaced to keep the elements out. (The entry floor needs to be redone. Oddly, the builders don't want to touch it; apparently the job is "too small". Go figure.)

Then there are the big victories: K and I got married. Our family more than doubled in size, thanks to the addition of a cat, two little birds, and a big bird. None of these are disposable pets, though the big bird is unique in that it will outlive us, and more than anything else, having her in the house has been like bringing home a little sister for Spud. It's been an interesting adjustment for all of us. And then there's the friends: I've started new friendships and evolved old ones. I like my friends. Thank goodness. :-)

So, as busy and and stressful as 2006 has been, and as much as parts of it haven't really gone according to our best-laid plans and desires, it's really hard to write it off as a failure. That wouldn't be fair. But I'm really kinda glad it's over, because now I can brace myself for 2007. And maybe it'll be the actual year of the house...

We're pretty much settled on a two-cars-wide garage with a pillar in the center. While I like the idea of a single large opening, the doors of that size are a lot harder to deal with, and you get that extra load-bearing support, so you don't have the temptation of using a steel beam.

They're going to have to do some finagling with the roof line -- I'm not sure how it's going to end up, but I just hope that the best engineering solution doesn't wind up looking insane from the street.

We'll hear back in a week or two with the actual specc'ed drawings, see if we like them, and then get the head engineer to sign off on them.

On a different note, we've also got all our wedding plans made. The judge, the location, the dinner, the hotel rooms -- even my invitation database. Invitations are being printed today (could it POSSIBLY be any later?), and now I just have a lot of sewing to do.

Speaking of sewing, Rich got me a wedding present a bit early. It does this. My old Janome New Home 5700 kinda did something sort of like that. But frankly? Two different worlds. The Baby Lock Ellegante CUTS THE THREAD for you. It trims jump stitches as you embroider. It has a TEN INCH HOOP.

I sat in front of it for several hours this weekend, and I giggled every time it cut the thread and automatically lifted the presser foot for me.

Doesn't take much, I guess.

The main reason we had to have it done was because we didn't know where the property line was on the side of the house where we wanted to build. If the property line was at the fence, then we only had 27 feet from the house, which would mean, with the mandatory ten-foot setback, we would only be able to build 17 feet wide. Which would be a bummer.

We have FORTY FEET. We could build as wide as thirty feet and still not have to go to the zoning board. YES! That's going to mean a bit of a change to the plan -- but now we can have a two-car garage, instead of just a really long one-car garage. Which will be awesome.

Our engineer has a copy of our survey now, and so we now need to meet with him to get a septic plan, and start on that. Maybe by my birthday, I'll be able to take a bath in my new bathtub.

I called the builder back this morning to let him know we were making progress, and he suggested I call the engineer he likes to work with. SO I DID! Apparently the contractor passed the printouts on to the engineer, and he kept saying things like, "Yeah, they were great, no problem, let's get started!" I was kinda floored.

I told him that we still didn't have a survey report, although they'd come out yesterday, and he asked who was doing it. I told him, and he said, "OH! I'll call Mark and see where he is with it." Apparently this engineer works with this surveyor regularly. This is a good thing, or so they tell me. For the first time in this process, I feel like we're starting to make progress.

Next step...design an expanded septic system, and get blueprints.

First, I called and harangued the surveyors AGAIN. Well, yes, blah blah blah. At this point, I just want it done. They said they should have it by the end of this week.

I feel like...I don't know. I feel like I'm already in construction hell, and we haven't done anything yet.

But! I talked to our first-choice builder this morning, and, well, things are a little slow right now. So he's going to come over on Thursday afternoon and meet with us and look at our renderings and drawings and such. Frankly, I'm ready to have 'em come and start excavating as soon as the survey is done.

We've also been talking about re-doing the existing bathroom -- it has an acrylic tub enclosure thing that's just a freakin' nightmare. We'd like to rip out the enclosure, tile the walls, and put in a nice new tub. Also, we've looked at and decided on a new vanity top, to match my lovely paint job on the vanity. And since we're going white in that room, a new floor and a new toilet are also indicated.

I know THAT is going to turn into more of a job than we want. I know it. There's a leak someplace that has to be fixed, and where there's a leak, there's rot, so there's some subfloor and maybe even some wall that's going to need replacing, too.

Frankly, if he can get started on the addition now, I'm happy to wait on the bathroom. If he can get started on the bathroom while we're waiting for other stuff to fall into place, well, that would be great, too. But I get the sense that the dizzying spiral is beginning...stay tuned.

So, today we were talking about fixtures. I don't quite remember how, but we got to talking about what will be the 'guest' bathroom, and what we wanted to do with it. It's currently got a sheet vinyl floor, and that's going to go, probably replaced with Pergo. It's got a one-piece shower/tub thingus, which is the sort of tub I'm sure they have in HELL. And to top it off, it is BEIGE. And so is the toilet. And so is the sink.

We don't like beige.

The vanity is ugly, too. The top is Formica, sort of a greenish greyish with pinky and bluey flecks. Basically, it looks like something you might see in a bucket the morning after a long night at a frat party. And the base is a sort of honey maple nastiness.

Well, it was. All this discussion got me to thinking about something I could actually do -- so I decided to paint the base of the vanity. We had to go get paint, and of course the GOOD paint store in town isn't open on Sundays, so we went to the Despot to grab a quart of Pot of Cream-colored Behr. Bleh.

I already had the proper primer...like Kilz, but Zinsser or something? I don't remember what it's called, but you paint it on anything -- including finished wood, and then the paint will stick to it and not peel off. I used it on my kitchen cabinet project a few years ago, and it worked great. No peeling or bubbling or anything. Perfect.

This made for a busy day. I made breakfast for the boys, and then we went outside to document the changing of the bulbs. A big event for us. I guess. :-)

Then the trip to the store -- we looked at vanity tops and tubs and tile, too, and got some ideas -- had a Del's, and then I made chicken salad sandwiches.

I just realized this is turning into the most boring entry ever. Oh well.

So, coat of primer, and then I let that dry for an hour while we did some more car bulb photographing. Got the pics all processed, and then it was time for the first coat of paint. It went on fine, and I made very little in the way of mess, surprisingly enough. Pause to dry, so I made dinner (a really nice grass-fed pasture-raised London broil, sliced thin, and stir-fried with fresh organic sugar-snap peas), and then slapped on coat two of the paint. After a short wait, it was time for coat three, and then I declared myself DONE with this project. At least for now. When it's all dry and the door's put back on and the drawers are replaced (oh, did I mention, Rich went through the drawers, threw anything that was old, crappy, or expired, and lined the bottoms of the drawers with contact paper?), I'll take a picture. Don't get too excited, though. It'll just look like a boring white vanity.

And to cap off the busiest day in recent memory, I just played about 90 minutes of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2, finishing sections A and B of the Dance Master ladder.

Can you call me a dance MASTER? Yes, yes you can.

Also, now I need a shower. Like ya read about.

It's been months since we started looking for a surveyor. Several didn't even call back. I finally had one recommended to me by a neighbor I trust, and the experience started out well. I sent them a check. They said three weeks.

It's been almost eight. We still don't have a survey.

They are completely apologetic. They promise that they'll be out by the end of next week. But still. This seems less and less real as the days plod on.

The good news is, we met with my cousin, the architect, a week or so ago, and sketched out what we think the addition will look like, including the most challenging part, the roof line. His goal is to make the whole thing seem like it was built together, not tacked on as an afterthought. And it's a challenge, because we're basically doubling the size of the house...so it'll be tough to make two halves look like one whole.

After he sketched it out, I fired up Google SketchUp, and tried to make a model that reflected his sketches (which, I might mention, were done on a piece of paper backed only by his thigh, at a cookout where it was hot and damp, with kids splashing around in the pool and all -- but that's OK, we all agreed that architecture is just common sense and pencils). The good news is, the model I made looks, he says, JUST like what he was imagining, and once we get the survey completed, he'll start with the *real* drawings!

Now, for a builder. I've got a few leads, and should probably start talking to them NOW...although most don't want to talk to you until you have plans and a survey. Meh, it's Rhode Island. I know people.

The main floor of the house is mostly open plan, with medium pile carpet in the living room and hallway, sheet vinyl in the kitchen (NOT FOR LONG!!), and Pergo in the dining room. I was really only interested to see what kind of job it would do on the carpet, so we set up virtual walls and let the thing go to town.

What I didn't expect was that Reggie, the cat, started wigging out! I, being at heart a dog person, never really know what to expect out of our little Queen Kitty. I figured Rufus would just want to play with it for a while, maybe posture and bark at it a little, and then ignore it. But I never expected a skeerdy cat!

I recounted these events to my colleague Carole, who explained, "The Roomba is her size, but it doesn't smell like a cat, it doesn't sniff her butt, and it makes scary sounds and moves without apparent human intervention. It is a MONSTER."

Come to think of it, under the whining noise, it did kinda sound like it was mewing, "BRAAAAANES."

So, how well does the Roomba work? Eh. Too soon to really tell. We didn't let it run for a full hour, or on Max, or whatever. We just let it putz around for a while. It kinda picked up some specks on the floor. It left probably half of them. Had we let the Roomba run around longer, it probably would have cleaned more and more specks asymptotically, until the carpet did look as though it had actually been vacuumed.

We also had no end of obstacles in the room -- the movers came and things were in places they didn't belong, so there were quite a few fits and starts. On the regular cleaning cycle, the Roomba actually did a pretty good navigating around, with random but effective error correction. But in Spot mode, when it encountered something it wasn't expecting, it just sort of gave up after two or three tries.

We'll keep trying the Roomba, much to Reggie's chagrin, and give it a chance to show its true colors. If nothing else, it's good motivation to put away some 'obstacles'.

We had on occasion talked about getting married, and having both previously done it for the wrong reasons, we knew that this time we'd be doing it for all of the right reasons. But for us it wasn't a priority - labels aren't important, all that's important is how we feel about each other, and if those feelings are such that we are together for the rest of our lives, then a piece of paper that says we're married isn't going to make a difference. And if we aren't going to be together for the rest of our lives, the piece of paper won't make a difference there, either.

For our second anniversary (or twenty-fourth monthiversary, if you want it to sound a little more impressive), after much thought about what to get K. as a gift, I decided that the time was right to broach the topic of buying her a ring — not because I thought she wouldn't like the idea, but because it's an object that she will be wearing for the rest of our lives together, and so it makes a lot of sense to pick out something that she would like.

So, over dinner at Café Nuovo, I brought up the idea, and she was strongly in favor. On the spur of the moment, we decided to go diamond shopping at the mall, just to see what was out there. Unfortunately (fortunately?) the only jeweler we cared to look at didn't have any Asscher-cut stones (the only cut in which K. was really interested).

In the truest spirit of our relationship, we continued the search on line - sitting in the living room, she on her G5, I on my MacBook, we looked at diamonds and settings on Blue Nile. We found a stone we both liked (again, independently and almost simultaneously), K found a setting she liked (a decision that I left in her capable hands), and we were off to the races.

The ring was due to arrive this morning, and in fact it did — but not before we had fun employing the FedEx tracking system for our spectatorial amusement. When it arrived, I promptly unpacked it, took a picture, and sent it to her. Then I proposed bringing it up to her office, so that she could wear it to a big project presentation that she had to attend about two hours hence. The response from the other end?

"*Thud*"

So off I went.

This worked out great - ring applied, requisite oohing and ahhing from the colleagues, then we decided to escape for an early dinner — at Ten, a place that she'd taken me for my birthday and which we both liked. It was early, so we were the only ones in the place. Since I hadn't done it before, I "officially" asked her to marry me, and she said yes!

So then we finished dinner, and headed down to her folks' place, because it seemed like a good idea to get permission from her stepdad, what with him being a really good shot and all. Mom and stepdad both seemed happy with the concept of having me as a son-in-law, which hopefully will continue to be the case after the darts wear off.

So, we're gettin' married! No, we haven't set a date. But we will — just as soon as everything else settles down. We are agreed that we don't want to feed the wedding cartel, or make a spectacle out of ourselves in the process of getting married; and if the planning and execution stops being fun, we'll punt, go down to the town hall, dig up a couple of witnesses, and just do it. We can throw a party whenever we want.

p.s: picture here.

At the same time, we took advantage of the opportunity to do more cleaning and organizing in the basement - we had to, really, so that the Verizon tech could get into the corner of the basement where the wiring came into the house. We made a lot of good progress there, though there's still plenty to do.

Finally, the home networking setup is a lot saner. Previously, my (downstairs) office used a pair of Airport Extreme base stations connected by WDS to get to the Internet uplink (previously, the cable modem in the upstairs living room). This had a number of problems, in-house bandwidth being one of them, and a hostile 2.4GHz environment being another. For example, I was unable to use my Bluetooth earpiece in the house, because (as Glenn Fleishman so helpfully explained) Bluetooth 1.1 doesn't frequency-hop around the part of the spectrum used by Wi-Fi, with disastrous results for both, in the case of an access point and a Bluetooth pair in, say, the same room.

So, another project that was undertaken in advance of the FIOS install was to pull an Ethernet cable from the living room down to the basement. The placement was fortuitous; the corner in which everything happens is the same in both rooms, so it was a simple vertical drop. My future father in law did most of the hard work while I assisted, then I terminated both ends of the wire in a socket and wall plate. (I used the Leviton QuickPort connectors and wall plates, and they worked great.) So, now there's a high-speed (1Gbps) link from downstairs to upstairs. (In retrospect, I should have pulled multiple wires since that would have afforded more flexibility in the future, but if I feel ambitious I should be able to do that at my future convenience — and when the addition goes in, it'll probably happen anyway.)

A 5-port Netgear gigabit switch next to the router provides switching isolation for the internal LAN, so that gigabit devices don't get bottlenecked by the router's own switch (which is 100mbps). Another 5-port gigabit switch in my office is connected to the main switch, as is a 100mbps switch for the various networked printers, and upstairs an 8-port Netgear gigabit switch provides switching isolation for the machines upstairs, including the Airport Extreme base station which serves the wireless devices in the house. (And yes, even with all those switches, the network topology is much simpler than it was before the wiring was done.)

The upshot is that all of the fast machines on the wired LAN can talk to each other at full speed, regardless of whether they're upstairs or downstairs. The SqueezeBox in the living room no longer bogs down the LAN by saturating the wireless network. And I get to use my BlueTooth earpiece again — as long as I'm not sitting next to the AirPort Extreme in the living room...

It turns out that she's a lot older than anyone suspected. The shelter thought "five, maybe six", but of course they didn't even get her sex right, so what do they know? The vet knew that wasn't right just by inspecting her teeth and tummy wattle, and suspected seven or eight (but of course it's hard to pin down an exact age by inspection).

I was able to get hold of her previous vet, and it turns out that she was born in June, 1995. That's right — our little friend will turn eleven next month. This doesn't change anything as far as we're all concerned, all it means is that we'll have less time with her than we had thought previously. It'll be a good time, though — she gets around like a cat half her age, and when she plays, she plays like a kitten. And the man in the cat detector van was rather put out, because her purr overloaded his gear. Such is life.