Update December 1

Phew!! We had all sorts of warnings for the weather last night, saying it was setting up just like the 1988 tornado outbreak that wiped out neighborhoods and the KMart when my bro went to college here. Most people I know get something called "WeatherCall" which means you register your phone number with the local TV station and they'll call you if your physical address is in the path of a storm. The number of sleepless nights I've had, worrying about bad storms coming thru in the middle of the night has been tremendous, so WeatherCall has been a blessing to me! Turns out the mountains squeezed the worst out of the storms so by the time it got to us, it wasn't bad (at 4:30 am). I got more sleep than I thought, and we didn't get any damage. Yahoo!

We had a guy come out from Precision Overhead Garage Door company to work on the garage door. Rich and I couldn't figure it out on our own, so we figured with the Angie's List discount, we could pay someone. Told him our spending limit as he examined the door. He changed out pulleys, springs, and cables, lubricated the whole thing, added safety cables to our springs and still charged us less than my spending limit. He even advised me on how to strengthen the door panels to make them limp along a few more years before we replace everything. Not surprisingly, it appears someone hit it with their car at some point. What a shocker.

Now the garage door works!!!! yay!!! I highly recommend that guy, Scott, at Precision. Ask for him by name if you're local!

As far as the diagnosis of the door, turns out it was a combo of things, including two different spring sizes (again, what a shocker--did this owner EVER pay a professional for any work he had done?), making the door raise at different rates depending on the side. Now it's even and the bottom is parallel to the ground. And in my worry about the storm, I got to park in the garage last night for the first time!!!!!! You have no idea how excited I am that my car fits, even with all the extra crap on either side of it right now. It's a Christmas miracle!

I've been battling an unusual number of migraines recently, so work on the house has been slow. In one of my better moments, I was able to run around the house and add sheetrock mud to areas that need it, including trying to mask the seams in the permanent wallpaper in the dining room. I think I made it worse. How can water not make the paper come off the wall, but water in your drywall mud makes it bubble from the moisture? Maybe if I skim-coat the whole dining room, the paper will finally come off? Which, of course, defeats the purpose. Sigh.

I also got to spend a little time for fun (shock!) painting up the doors to the laundry room cabinet. Barely anyone will see it, but it's kinda cute and adds a tiny touch of "whimsy" to the laundry room. I found some old ads from the 40s and 50s having to do with laundry, like "drop your pants here" and "laundry - 25 cents a load (don't have the cent character on my keyboard, but that's what it has) *wash *dry *fold". After sanding the doors, I printed the artwork out as large as I could, ran my pencil lead across the back of the pages and then transferred the stencil onto the cabinet doors. Then I went to work, handpainting everything. Overall, it looks really cute. Still needs some more things to fill it out, but I like the start that I have. It's nice to do something entirely unnecessary and fun on occasion. I've forgotten what that's like.

Been doing our job jobs and work work when not fighting the migraines. And of course, my big-un is coming up, so some days have been spent shopping or "ide-ating" for what we should do, or not do, for it--have a party? buy a big thing? travel?. And we took a train to Charlotte for Thanksgiving that was a blast. We rented a movie, took the laptop, and watched a movie the whole time. Never had to deal with the rain, the traffic, shoppers, or anything. We had tons of leg room, I could pee in transit, and it was clean. Blissful!

Other than that, not much in the house has changed. Maybe this weekend Rich and I can really knock stuff out. We really do need to finish enough to get the final CO sign-off from the permit office. Nagging things like sealing drywall corners with wood paneling, replacing the bathroom fan, crimping one shower flange, installing one last light are the things that are preventing the final inspections. I have a couple of clients who are starting to make noise about getting serious about buying, so my plans may get thwarted, but we can try. Wish us luck!