This Weeks Update

The construction work behind the house is progressing at a rapid pace. Fortunately the jackhammer work only went on for a day or two, and they move rapidly to laying the foundation and pouring the walls. In little over a week the transformation has been dramatic, and each day brings dramatic changes. I am going to continue to document the progress in photos, and I suppose I will drop a word or two in this blog as well.

Here is 3 days progress on the unit nearest to us; they started pouring the foundation for the adjacent structure this morning. They are not wasting time.
Foundation

Foundation forms.
Foundation done


It has been a pretty quiet week at work, I have had a chance to catch up on paper work and get ahead on a few things. That has been a relief. There is just one event this week in the theatre, although a big one I think it is covered well in terms of staff, and the presenting organization has done this for a few years and are organized and ready for the crowds.

Stress items this week. My iMac suddenly boofed the other day. It had been doing a little self shut down thing and then starting up by itself a few weeks back. I did a little maintenance on it and it seemed to be fine. Then suddenly Wednesday morning it did it again but this time didn’t start back up. It tried to but would shut off half way thru the procedure would shut off again. We are blessed (or cursed) with several computers in the house so I was able to go on line to the Apple site and through their help pages determine that it is most likely a bad power supply. I brought it into the shop Thursday morning and they said ‘$225, we will call you when it is done.’ In the mean time I have been using an aging (1997) Mac that I have on my desk but is mostly best thought of as a boat anchor. It is barely usable; most of the current technology has left it in the dust. I have kept it on my desk mostly when I am testing IM or chat applications. I think it is time to relegate it to the recycle heap when the iMac comes back.

The failure of the iMac also was a signal that we need to seriously look at back-up scenarios when it returns too. When you only had a couple hundred Megs to back up. It was easy, but now that hard drives hold hundred of gigs, it is a more complicated procedure, and one at which we have been lax.

Stress item #2; we have been trying to refinance our home for months now. We made the mistake of getting one of those ARMS with a home equity line of credit 5 years ago, and the ARM is schedule to reset here any time. It made a lot of sense at the time, rates were low, housing prices were going up, and we needed cash to improve the house. Who would have ever thought things would get as bad as they are now. Can you think of a worse time to try to refinance? It has been a very frustrating process. And we have not been getting answers that we like. This week one lender with whom we have been working since August told us that it was a ‘no go’. I have been loosing a little sleep over this issue, and my stomach has not settled in days. We are not in danger of foreclosing when the rates go up, but our monthly budget is going to take serious hit. I am not sure what our next step is here.. I’ll be thinking about it.