Working on an engineering overview for the Lovira project. The website DNS records still haven't propogated out to the world yet. It takes up to 72 hours so maybe I'm just being impatient, but the last time I did this it seems like it happened instantaneously.

Got the check in the mail for my daughter's birthday doll. That took some running both to get a cashier's check and then stand in line at the Post Office. Killed my lunch hour.

Finished pouring the patio extension for the barbecue "nook" this evening. Ready to move in. The great wall is still only about 10-15% complete and the rest of the so-called yard still resembles a war zone. But I'm now ready to move out into the greater yard having finished the work close in to the patio. It's a milestone.

Since I've been asked by so many people, I feel compelled to answer the question, "Why are you spending so much time, effort, and of course money - fixing a perfectly good house"? The answer is twofold. The primary reason is that I see a lot of things which were just done wrong, both in architecture and landscaping (which was absolutely horrible). I have to live in this place, so I want to take everything that was wrong and make it right. Everything from poorly thought out room layouts to the almost criminal drainage system. Secondly, (and this is a distant second), I'd like to reflect my connected life in the home in which I live. When it was built there was no such thing as 10-base-T networking and having immediate control over the entire electronics matrix was a fantasy. But the primary reason continues to be the poorly thought out architecture. Nothing was made to last over 20 years and the house is approaching 25 years old. Huge sections of space were made inhospitable because the room design artificially fenced them off from adjoining rooms. In short, nobody gave a second thought in 1976 to what this place would be like to live in in 2001 (or even in 1978 I presume). I've given it that thought, and tried to anticipate how it might be to live in it in 2030 and beyond. In doing so it was readily obvious that a bunch of things needed to be fixed and changed. Some folks will go out and buy an 1870"s home for historical value, but few will do so because it fits their lifestyle. My goal is to have the home keep pace at least partially with the contemporary lifestyle. And I really don't want to replace the plumbing or roof ten years from now. I'll do it today and make it last 50 years thank you. If I'm not living in this space twenty or thirty years from now, I don't want the future owner to have to worry about drainage from a rainstorm or whether the pipes are going to burst or whether the roof is going to leak. Pretty much everything I've done is good for fifty years. The expense to fix it for fifty years (vs. twenty) is marginal. Why wouldn't I?