You know you're not in California when.....

• when there's a Bible Outlet store at the mall.
• when there's a Black & Decker store next door to the Bible store.
• when there's more rows of Bibles, Bible reference books, christian reference books in the local bookstore than computer books.
• when the fire alarm goes off at the hotel and everyone in the lobby is watching the Republican Convention.

So, my day and evening was exciting. I had a tour of S & D Coffee's plant. That was pretty cool. There is a guy there that can taste a cup of coffee and tell you what country the bean is from, what season it was grown in and what the weather was in the season. Pretty damn cool. The people at S&D Coffee http://www.sndcoffee.com/ are so nice its just a darn pleasure working there. Did you know that in the little "cherry", the red thing on the coffee plant I thought was a bean, actually holds 2 little green beans? Anyways, it was fun.

Back to the remodel -- the window isn't in yet, the electrian is MIA, and the plumber came back to fix all the little things his screw up drunk apprentice who stole my beer screwed up. Welcome to the land of the free. Ya think Dawn is frustrated? oh, and guess what, our contractor just called, there is a hairline leak in the tub. The tub is completely secured into its position and NOW they test it. Wouldn't you test it before you pored 3 tubes of liquid nails or whatever the hell they put there to secure it? This is total bullshit.

Thoughts from Concorde, NC

What a miserable night. I'm in a Marriott SpringHill Suites across from Lowes Charlotte Nascar speedway on one side and the freeway on another. The freeway is brutal, noise all night long. I can't sleep, I'm miserable, this sucks. It was poring rain because of hurricane Gaston, but I wish it was still raining and really windy at this hour, because then I could probably not hear the road noise and sleep. I should have known better than to stay at Springhill suites because of my last experience with them in Seattle. OMG! There was some French circus in town, I guess wannabe Circque de soleil people, but they were up all night partying in the hallways, smoking, because they are French, and drinking, because they are Canadian and otherwise driving me crazy. This is NOT a hotel for business travelers.

I forgot to give credit where credit was due in the last post -- our custom vanity was made by woodworker Stephen Courtney - http://www.stephencourtney.com. The man is brilliant and I respect his work. I would love it if I could just apprentice under him, imagine..... that would be so cool.

This weekend I spent cleaning off my favorite scrapbooking store's computer of viruses. They will remain nameless to protect them.....hehe. But seriously folks, NEVER, EVER let your virus software expire. When the little box comes up and says renew, its in your best interest. Trust me. They had a plethora of viruses but 2 of them were very, very clever. The virus they had was trojan mitglieder strain N and can be seen for all its glory @ http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/trojan.mitglieder.n.html this trojan horse is particularly interesting because it self preserves, it protects itself. If you load any antivirus software, after you are infected, it prevents that software from running after you load it. Very, very clever. Check out the link as it tells you all the programs that it prevents from running. It also uses your machine as an email relay. Also bad.

I watched some of the closing ceremonies of the olympics, very dull. I think its only meaningful for people that are there. It probably doesn't have the same impact on TV as it would in person. Bye for now,

Trying to sleep in North Carolina

Behold our custom made vanity. Nothing is ordered from Home Depot from us by God!!! Everything is custom here in this house! Our new bathroom is very small but has a BIG presence, aka the tub. I should name the tub something.... hmmmm I'll think about that. Well the pic above is our custom vanity, with no door pulls (they are NOT called knobs!) and no stain yet. That's another process you know, picking the bloody color stain! The vanity is made from Quarter sawn white oak. Can you imagine the price of that wood! I don't have to imagine it! btw, the door pulls take 4 weeks to come in because each order (a big order of 2) is custom cast. you know what that means right! Big bucks!

This is our first picture for the last few weeks. We have been at a stalemate waiting for the window to get in (because of course, its custom), the plumbing to be finished, our contractor to get back from vacation, etc. etc. etc. The picture is the tub, set in permanently, (Dawn secretly hopes nothing leaks and the bloody Airbath thing works!) and the new step that will be tiled in the $100 per sq foot tile Dena picked out!

First blog -- remodel update

Well, here's my first blog!
This page is dedicated to my scary thoughts on life, our remodel, my/our travels, things that piss me off and whatever else I feel like talking about. Welcome, read at your own risk.

This first post is about our remodel. Talk about a frustrating experience this process has been. We are adding a bathroom and fixing the leaks in another (shower). Sounds easy, right? No way! The original bathroom is 1924 tile imported from England and is wainscotted all over the entire room. So, we looked and looked and settled on a color match tile place called Mission Tile West. We went over to mission tile west today to haggle about the color match samples we received. We ordered these on 6/30 and today is 9/24 -- we'll never shower again. Can you smell us? Well I went in looking for a fight. The blue does NOT match the original blue by any stretch of the imagination. After much talking I managed to come up with a solution I think I can live with. This will only cost about $4,000.00. Hey, we'll just pick some more money off the tree.

Below I've posted a few pictures of the recent progress, or lack thereof: