Yesterday we thought we might actually get the city building inspector to sign off on our house, so we can actually get a real mortgage instead of this weird family loan arrangement we have. It's taken six frackin' months to get this far... mostly spent chasing down contractors. It took us an entire month just to get someone to come insulate the heating ducts in the garage; he hardly ever returned phone calls, and was always busy, and our little job just wasn't very important to him I guess. I hate nagging after people to get them to do what they said they would do, but if that's what it takes, so be it.

So we finally got that done, and we thought it was the last thing on our list, but the home inspector arrived yesterday, took one look inside, and said "What, no handrail on these stairs? I can't sign off on that!" See, one of the items on the list he gave us, way back in October, just said "handrail on stairs". We thought, that just meant the upper stairs, which were totally open to the lower floor and definitely needed a rail... not the lower stairs as well, since those were between two walls. But it turned out to be both.

The funny part is he barely looked at all the other nione items, and some not at all. "Oh, you got that ductwork insulated? Good. No, I don't need to see it." GaaaaH! I could have just lied and saved myself a month and a half of chassing insulation contrators! Of course, I'm not all that great of a liar so he probably whould have noticed something was wrong if I hadn't been telling the truth.

Anyway, off we go on another round of contractor-chasing. Right away we got hold of the guy who did most of the other stuff, and he said, sure, he could do it right away, he might even have a handrail in stock, he was going to call back and let us know... but he hasn't yet. Well, he did good work, except for not telling us that the lower stairs would need a handrail too.

So it goes. Which reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut. I guess he was ready to go, but he will be missed. He wasn't really a huge icon of my life... but his books did have a real effect on me at a couple of crucial stages. I reread Cat's Cradle in honor of his death, but I forgot what a depressing book it is. That combined with the house stuff combined with a lot of other little nuisancy stuff that I'll not go into here, really got me down for a few days.

But it could be worse. I could work at Virginia Tech instead of WOU, for instance. That was scary to read about. I feel for everyone affected, and I sure hope nobody gets it into their head to copycat this.

Blah, now I'm depressing myself again. But it's a nice day outside, after some serious rain, and I got some solid work done today, which makes me feel like I'm getting my programming mojo back after months of frustration. And we're this close to getting our house signed off, and all the steps after that are pretty much lined up and ready to go.

I guess it's not really so bad after all.

----Ron

[link of the moment    | Making Light - a way-cool blog.]
[book of the moment  | (too busy to read lately) ]
[mood of the moment | contemplative]
[music of the moment |Moxy Fruvous - The Drinking Song]