It's starting...

I'm trying to get a hot tub installed and solar installed on my house. I've probably mentioned that. Just to be safe I had a structural engineer take a look at the shed that the hot tub is going in and he determined that it wasn't strong enough so I paid him a crapload of money to draw up plans for how to reinforce it sufficiently.

Plans in hand, I hunted around for a construction company to do the work and ended up using a place recommended by the structural engineer.

Then I started trying to get a permit for the work. The city of edgewater was not only very helpful and fast with the procedure but gave me a great deal on the permit. But it took like a week to get all the stuff together and get the construction company their license to work in edgewater.

Permit in hand, I had the construction company get going on the work. Well...1/2 week later they got going on the work anyway. So Monday as I am trying to get ready to go workout a guy walks into my yard from the back and damned near shits his pants when I step out of the shed and say "Hi." He drops off 800lbs of concrete, an 18'x1'x2" board with 3 other 7' boards bound to it and some hardware. I move all that shit into my shed, getting a really amazingly painful bee sting almost directly on top of a pressure point in the back of my neck, and I let the construction company know that the materials have been delivered 4 days late, but happily the night before the construction is supposed to start.

Next morning (Tuesday) they are supposed to start construction. When I get home from work at 5pm they are just starting. Happily it takes them less than 1.5 hours to build the forms and pour the concrete for the structural bases.

Today they did nothing. Tomorrow they are supposed to get the inspection done and install the actual structural support and then they are done. Hopefully that'll happen.

Unfortunately my tile guy is busy until at least Friday and it's very likely he won't start on the tile install until next Monday. Happily the hot tub isn't here yet, but given that the tile will have to sit and cure/harden for something like 2 days that means that even if the hot tub does get delivered I won't be ready for it until just before I leave for vacation. Even with my unemployed friend house sitting for me I'm not going to fill the hot tub just before I leave the state for 10 days. So...I'll have to wait until the second week of September (assuming the hot tub company really will just store it for me until I'm ready to install without charging me).

So...that's all stressful.

I'm taking my first pre-test for 4th black this sunday. I've only been back in kung fu at all since January, I've only really been able to keep up with class and be active for about 3 months. I've only been working toward testing for 2 months. When I started I couldn't remember my lower belt material. I'm pre-testing over 30 long forms, and about 30 short forms of various kinds some of which have up to 30 pieces to them. That's incredibly stressful for me. I don't feel prepared, I haven't lost enough weight, and I don't remember my material well enough.

I'm also studying for a very difficult computer security certification which I'm taking next Tuesday. The studying is causing me headaches and is taking me much longer to do than I'd expected...I'm very likely going to have to study all weekend this weekend in order to be ready by Tuesday. I hate taking my work home with me. The best part is, my boss just turned me down for a reclassification (basically a promotion) because she doesn't think I'm doing enough to qualify for the new classification. The new classification is actually not sufficient to even cover what all I do I work, but I wasn't trying to push for the classification that does cover it which would be two higher than my current classification. I wish I had some idea what the real reason is, but at least she's willing to set up a "development plan" to get me to whatever it is she feels is required for the reclassification . So that's very stressful.

And sometime in the last month my tools and boombox got stolen out of my shed. No signs of forced entry that I could detect, but then the lock would be pretty easy to defeat. Which is why I replaced it with a deadlock last night and I'll be adding more security measures to the shed and the house once I buy new tools. The value of the tools and boombox were about $20 short of my deductible on my house insurance. and of all the dumb things, for probably the first time in my life I didn't have the serial numbers of my tools written down. Somehow I forgot. One of the things I hope to do this weekend is get the serial numbers off of new tools and other stuff to make sure that I have them all someplace safe. Being stolen from makes me stabby.

The "change oil soon" light keeps coming on in my car. I just had it changed 1000 miles ago, so I have to get that looked at before I leave for vacation.

And I'm rapidly running out of project money and even more rapidly running out of my savings and pocket money. Very stressful.

And then today I got the project plan for my solar installation. It included panels on my east facing roof. Those only partially qualify for rebate, and I don't want panels on my east facing roof, and I certainly don't want to have to pay for them. Turns out all these times we've talked about putting panels on my south facing porch roof they've just been blowing smoke up my ass about it working. So...now I have to get a smaller solar installation by about 8 panels which should reduce my power generation by 1680kwh leaving me with a 6.7kwh system. Still more than I really need, and I'm sure it'll cost less, but I really wanted to generate more power than that. But at least this is just annoying, not stressful.

On the positive side...I'm going to see Cirque du Soleil this sunday with Ellie. That should be a great time. Ellie is my not-girlfriend that I go on dates with. Apparently that is "complex" to a lot of people, but it works great for me.

Then I get to go on vacation. A nice relaxing vacation involving about 2000 miles of driving. But I'm going to get to see a huge number of friends and I'll be going to the North American Disc World Convention. First one in the US. I'm going to be volunteering which makes me a bit uncomfortable but should turn out to be fun and a great way to meet people at a convention I don't know anybody at.

Preliminary walk-through / Hot tub installation.

Last week I had the preliminary walk-through with a tech for the solar installation. My house is a bit non-standard so we had to come up with solutions to some problems. One of them is that there isn't really a good place for the inverter in my house, so it's going outside on the west wall where it will be shaded by the elm tree. Thats fine, I'll be attaching some sort of monitor to it at some point, or just plugging a cat5 cable in there and getting the data directly and publishing it on my web page. Other than that everything looked fine with the install and the tech was a nice easy going person. Installation will start after I get back from my trip to LA/Tucson/Phoenix so that should be tons of fun.

Another project I've got going right now is trying to get a hot tub installed. That one is costing me great wadges of money I didn't expect. I'm putting the hot tub in my shed and so I got a structural engineer to come out and make sure it was strong enough (it's built very strong). Turns out it's not, so he drew up some plans and I got them approved by the city. Problem is now the contractor I had come out to take a look hasn't responded with a quote to do the work. I need the quote so that I can get the permit, and I need the work to get done relatively soon as the hot tub may be here any day now. It was supposed to take 4-6 weeks or 6-8 weeks and we're at week 5 since I bought it.

While all that was going on I was trying to come up with a solution for the floor/walls to keep water from rotting the wood and getting into the basement of the shed. When I say shed, what I really mean is a 20'x20' workshop with a full attic and a 4' tall carpeted basement with shelves and lights in it. More of an artists cottage/workshop/whatever. Anyway...I talked with Adam several times about the thing and finally got a friend who is a contractor to come over and take a look and it turns out he's a flooring guy, so this is his specialty. So he's going to tile the entire corner and put waterproof plastic sheets on the walls for me. I've got that quote and agreed to it so now it's just a matter of him getting the time to do it. That has to be done before the hot tub can be delivered, so hopefully that'll work out. Then if it has to, the hot tub can sit there on the tile until the structural part is done. I can't fill the hot tub until the structural support is in. Then once all that is done, I get Donna to come over and hook up the power, the guy from the hot tub store to come over and give me a quick lesson on how it works, and I'm SET!

I just gotta figure out how I'm going to pay for all the incidental stuff. Ugh. Here's hoping my reclassification at work goes through.