While on the phone with one of the city inspectors yesterday, I find out that he had just talked to Jen not more than ten minutes prior to me calling. Now I knew that Jen was planning on stopping by the city offices sometime during the day, but to time my call so close to when she was there was quite a coincidence. But then again, considering that we often share the same thoughts and ideas independently of one another, it shouldn't come as a surprise to me any longer.

The reason I was calling the city inspector is that we've been getting conflicting information regarding one of the items on our inspection report. Our inspector detailed in the report that in his opinion, the piers that make up the pier-and-beam foundation under the house were spaced too far apart. In time, that could allow some deflection to occur in the beams supporting the house, which would cause uneven floors, things of that nature. After talking to the builder, other home construction experts, and people from the city, neither the current owners nor we could get a firm answer as far as what was the actual building code.

We were told by some that the regulations stated that there could be no more than 8 feet between the piers. Others were telling us that the spacing really depended on the weight of the house and how that weight was distributed, so in fact, it could be further apart than the 8 feet. Everyone seemed to contradict everyone else.

It finally came down to Jen and I going over to the house Sunday afternoon and measuring the actual spacing ourselves, so we would be armed with the necessary information as far as what was actually existing. And then we were supposed to take that information to the city and get the final word on if the current spacing satisfied the building code. Since I didn't know if and when Jen had gone to the city, I thought I'd call and speak to someone directly about what the code was. Only to find out that Jen had supposedly just been there and talked to one of the city building inspectors. And that he was going over to the house shortly to take a first-hand look and let us know whether everything was up to code or if improvements needed to be made.

Surprised that Jen hadn't called me about these new developments, I quickly tried calling her at home and then on our cellphone. Proud at myself for knowing something about her that she didn't think I knew about, I gloated about how I knew she had just gone to the city. Her response floored me. "What?" she replied, "I'm over here at Patricia's. I haven't been to the city offices yet."

Incredulous, I asked her again just to make sure I heard her correctly, "You weren't just over at the city offices talking to the city inspector?" She replied, "No, I was thinking about going over there later this afternoon after I got home from Patricia's, but I hadn't gotten over there yet."

Now completely confused (not hard to do to me these days), I started pondering why the city inspector had told me my wife was just there inquiring about the house we were buying when my wife wasn't even within twenty miles of the city offices. *bing* Suddenly a lightbulb (a mini fluorescent one at that) came to life in my ever atrophying graymatter. It wasn't Jen that had just been over at the city offices. It was H who owned the house we were buying. She had taken it upon herself to go talk to the city inspector! I relayed my revelation to Jen thinking it was somewhat humorous that he seemed to think I was H's husband. But then again, I didn't give him any indication that I was the buyer, not the seller. I quickly decided I better call H and let her know I had also talked to the city inspector and that he might tell her that he talked to her husband where in fact he had really talked to me. It was a simple case of mistaken identity, but one that could prove to be potentially awkward in case it came up.

The bottom line: the city inspector didn't find anything wrong with the current foundation and found everything up to local recent building codes. Whew. Boy am I glad to have gotten that taken care of. So in the meantime, we are just finishing up the work on securing our home mortgage, getting quotes on homeowner's insurance, and waiting until the settlement date at the end of August. But we've also taken the opportunity to attend more open houses the previous couple of weekends to get decorating ideas as well as looking at other potential houses we would've considered had we not found this one. And the good news? We haven't found anything that we like just as much or more than the one we bought.

I could say that all this house buying business has kept me too busy to write. I could say that I've been overworked at work trying to get an extensive project report out the door and haven't felt much like being on the computer after getting home in the evening. I could say that my ankle sprain I suffered at volleyball a week ago has laid me up in bed unable to move. I could also say that we've been preparing for and celebrating Braden's fourth birthday. Or that perhaps we're preparing for our mini-vacation trip up to Paducah, Kentucky to pass Ariel off to Jen's folks for the next month. But the truth of the matter is that we finally got DSL internet and I've been having way too much fun playing with that than writing. But now that the novelty has worn off a bit, I'm back into my normal routine (at least I can hope so.)

Gone are the days of calling us & getting a busy signal because we happened to be on the internet. After being "online" now (at least for me personally) for the last almost 20 years, starting way back with electronic BBSes & 300 baud (0.3k!!!) modems, we have joined the modern internet revolution & finally subscribed to DSL broadband. Gone are our connection speeds of 44kbps and download speeds of <3k per second. In comes blazing fast connections at upwards of 500kbps and download speeds of over 50k per second. Hopefully the speeds will double once we move to our new house as well! Gone are the days of having to dial-in and wait the precious 30 seconds while it connects.

After having it since Saturday, we are loving it. :) Pages load instanteously - we're always logged in so emails get to us when they are sent - I'm sure those of you with broadband can relate. (And if you need our new email address, let me know. Our old ones are still active at the moment.) It's awesome, bay-bee!! The pages sure load quickly, but the biggest benefit IMO after having it for these two weeks is the availability - the fact that it's always on. It's so easy now to just pop up to the computer and look something up that we need information for.

While having DSL has kept my spirits high and in an almost constant state of euphoria, spraining my ankle playing volleyball a week ago sure killed that state of mind. I'm not so much upset that I got hurt. I'm mostly angry because it shouldn't have happened in the first place. I had noticed some of the more amateur players were getting more and more aggressive as they played more with us. Net violations were becoming more and more common and people were starting to go into and under the net more often. I had thought about saying something about these rule violations, but I didn't. One of the guys who plays occassionally with us, who also seemed to be getting a bigger and bigger head, went up to block me and came completely under the net onto my side. As I came down I landed on his leg and rolled by ankle pretty badly. Grr. It's been a week, and it's only within the last couple of days that I've started walking on it again. Man I hate arrogant, conceited people.

The rest of the week will be busy preparing for our trip to Kentucky and celebrating Braden's birthday with Co-worker buddy and his family along with some other friends of ours from church. But at least the report at work is finished and on its way to the client. Hooray for that!

A year ago today: Routine Maintenance