Things are still moving along on the house. We're painting this week. The color selection was a little tedious and I'd been dreading it for some time. I like to think that I have a pretty good grasp of aesthetic values, but historicaly speaking decorating and color coordination falls to the womenfolk. We finally managed to come to an agreement on the colors, and though they don't tend to go well together, the colors that clash are behind walls, so they shouldn't be too bad. I did manage to get Tina to compromise a little, but we ended up leaning much more toward her ideal choices than mine. For instance, there is an interesting shade of green that will cover the living room walls, and I've never been a fan of green. In the end it wasn't so much which colors to choose, but exactly where to put them. One thing we've decided to opt for is a chair rail in the living room walls at least, and some sort of wooden border between colors in the bathroom.

I've acquired my sound system for my home theater. I made frugal choices going with a 500 watt JVC system available from Wal-Mart. I got a receiver, and then a 5.1 speaker system separately. The overall price counting mounting hardware, wiring, receiver, and speakers was under three hundred dollars. They camne in yesterday, so I hooked up a DVD player to play a CD just to test them. I was quite pleased. When I switched the cabling for a digital coax audio, I could immediately hear the difference. Thanks to Aaron for giving me a couple of really great RCA coax cables a while back. Though they're really meant for analog audio, as I found out they will transmit digital signal just fine, and I'm sure the other one will work to go to my subwoofer, since the supplied cabble is about five feet too short.

Of course as soon as the paint is on and dry, we can start the processes of attaching the outlets and laying floor. Then it will really get exciting. Of course meanwhile we'll be working on the septic system, and having the heating/air guys doing their thing. I'm still hoping to be in by the end of November, but we'll see.

In the rather long interim since my last update we've come quite a long way. As you can see, the roof is now on and the vinyl siding is on. The back porch is now built, and not pictured we now have steps leading from the porch down toward the basement door. Drywall is in being applied to the walls at this time. The next step will be to pour the rest of the concrete in the back, including a peer under the end of the steps, and an area outside the basement door and under the porch. Heating and air will be in a couple of weeks, and I expect flooring to be under construction very soon as well. I still expect to be in sometime in late November, but if the current pace holds up it could be even earlier. Due to the slowdown in construction I've been able to get contractors to practically show up on demand. Keith Justice did the siding and he'd an old poker buddy so I'll be happy to give him a plug. His completed job was almost exactly what he estimated when I first asked him, and the work was timely and very high quality. Also Tim Snowden seems to have done an excellent job on my insulation and actually got it in a little under his bid, mostly because my dad was there to help him all the way. Speaking of my dad, I can't begin to estimate how much his labor and skill would have cost me if I'd had to hire someone to do what he's done. Also thanks to my uncle Dukie for taking care of a couple of things house-related, and thanks to Tina's grandfather, Roger Baker, who helped for two days in pulling all the electric wire through the walls.

In other news, I've ordered phone service for my new digs. I just kept the old phone service when I moved in where I am now so I had to change my number when ordering the new service. The new number will be 663-6024 and should be operational on October 22nd.