Tidings

Well, today is Lilah's last day of work at Mercer Health and Benefits. It's been a few years and this seems like such a major change. Still, we're both so happy about the change in commute time, from 3 hours a day to about 20 minutes a day. I know I've professed for years how great it was how close my work was and how I walked to work every day... with Lilah's new job, she'll be even closer than I am. It's great.

In other news, for those of you who don't follow Projectsoup.com, it's been growing. I finally got Google Adsense installed and you can now see the advertisements over on the right hand side and at the bottom of the page. So far the clicks have earned me a mighty whopping Three Dollars and Fifty Cents, but hey, it's a new blog. Traffic wise, I've more than doubled my unique viewers each month, and have gone from an anemic 5.7 megabits of bandwidth the first month, to a still well below petite though statistically larger 40 megabits of bandwidth usage last month. That amounts to 4300 hits in March and 2034 page views.

Ah, so anyway, seeing as my millions aren't made yet, I continue in my employ at the shipyard. It's been a busy travel month! I've been to San Diego, Hawaii, and San Diego thus far this month. At the end of next week I expect to head to San Diego again and at the end of the month I'll be heading to Northrup Grumond Newport News in Virginia to give a presentation on Eddy Current Inspection to a consortium of fellow DoD employees. If that sounds important, it kinda is. Nothing to get me elected to Congress or even to the local library staff, but it's some much needed face time with NAVSEA and potential exposure for long term solutions to inspection criteria that will do some good for both the Navy and my resume'.

The house the house the house. We finally received the contract papers from our designer. Now it is a matter of getting back in touch with our banker to make sure that they are willing to fund us for the increase of scope... which basically amounts to leveling this house and building a new one. This was suggested from the beginning by many family members and friends. To all of you: please take your moment to say it: "nanny nanny boo boo, I told you." There, you feel better, I feel better, we're better together. SO, what spurred the change of scope? Mostly it was discussions with the Architect, the Developer, the Engineer, and the City. Anything that was as grand of scope as our "remodel" would have required us to buy into any new zoning and regulations... in other words, we would have torn the house down to make remodels meet codes that we're grandfathered into so long as we never touch the place, but the second we start cracking into retaining walls, our foundation has to be re-engineered; the second we start adding a second story, the first story framing has to meet new load limits (which it most likely does, but I would still have to pay for the engineer to prove it... money that could be spent more wisely). And in the end, the engineer pointed out: you're trying to make a million dollar home and you might well do it, but you'll always have 100 year old framing and that won't sell nearly as well as a million dollar home made out of renewable products with all the bells and whistles that Engineering can buy.

Besides, we're really excited about being able to design our house outside the footprint we're currently living on.

Anyway, that's my update. Lilah is heading to Texas next Monday for a week vacation between her jobs. I'll be home alone with the dog; just us two kids. He he he.

:j