New travels coming!

In our cloud of renovating, we have a silver lining. We've booked two cruises (one this year, one in the spring next year). Talk about something to look forward to. I'm calling our December vacation a re-do of our summer, seeing as we haven't had one.

I have to share. Here's the itineraries that we have for the 7-day Western Caribbean cruise that we got a smokin' deal on:
And here's the itinerary for the 14-day (14 day!?!?! woo hoo!!!) Mediterranean cruise in May:

Can I start the countdown now?

Insulation, the final frontier

This pretty much sums up our insulation experience. We were up past midnight last night to get the walls insulated for the inspection we have booked for today. So both of us are tired (I'm cranky). This inspector better approve our work or I may end up holding him hostage in the basement until he does -- I'm in that sort of mood.

If all goes well, we're getting drywall delivered either tomorrow or Saturday (haven't been told which yet). Monday should be when all the fun starts here with the drywall installation and taping. Joy! We get to sit back and relax for a week and a half. We're very excited about that.

And on to day 3 in the new "office"

It still feels very odd working from the house. Maybe it will take until I have a proper office downstairs to go to until it feels right. I'm missing my organization -- BADLY. I used to have an Ikea filing cabinet that I used all the time, and now I have a banker's box to replace it (and nowhere handy to put it). The kitchen table (whoops 'desk') has an extension of a computer box so I can have a little more room to put things like pens and papers on. Not ideal.

But the work doesn't disappear just because I'm at home. Even though I'm in the same room as the tv and fridge, they haven't really been distractions. (But I'm looking outside at a plant that desperately needs water right now and will have to go out and water it after this...guilt!)

The basement is still going. We've got a bit of a rush on at the moment as we need to have an insulation inspection booked for tomorrow (and the insulation still needs to be finished!). It's going relatively quickly though, and the pink stuff is nowhere NEAR as itchy as the fire stop stuff (blegh). Then the drywall is being delivered either Friday or Saturday, and will be put up on Monday, and taped the rest of the week. Hurrah! We're looking at having almost a week and a half off from working in the basement! That's when I'll take some time to pick out paint colours (and hopefully score a paint sale at Home Depot around the long weekend).

First day in the new "office"

I am now officially working from the kitchen table, which I suppose is a bit of an improvement for a few reasons: 1) I've cleared off the table, so there's room on it -- no more crap!; 2) I have a view of the garden, flowers, etc. instead of a parking lot and stinky cars; 3) I have a fridge that works here; 4) It's CLEAN. No more fine layers of black dust settling on things.

One thing that is a bit of a pain is the fact that the kitchen table is round, so my arms hurt a bit after working all day today. Not exactly ergonomic! I have a lot of things in boxes and a printer that I need to hook up some how, so we'll see how that all goes.

We did have two inspections happen today - framing and plumbing. Both APPROVED! So on to the horrible task of putting up insulation. I can feel my face getting itchy already. And the Telus guy was here and hooked up the office line. Haven't figured out how that all works yet, but it's just another thing on the list to do.

Just another weekend

Or at least I wish it were. Friday was spent working in the office packing and repairing things until late, and then Trevor was on damage control for a while with some work stuff that came up. Long story short...long night.

Saturday was filled with moving and planning. We had some help (via the in-laws) moving out the air hockey table from the basement and transporting it to my sister-in-law's much larger house for storage (until we get more room in a new house ourselves). The dining room set was also moved out (well, I moved part of it out the night before, just to get some space...ahhhh....space). Good riddance to that I say! I did not care for the style of it at all (think dated bamboo and glass look). Blegh. So now there's a blank space of carpet just waiting to be filled with a makeshift office for a month. Hope I don't have any run-ins with the lowered light fixture there...I've managed to just avoid it on quite a few occasions. I think it might be out to get me good one day.

We also hit the Home Depot AGAIN yesterday. But we bought taps and bath fixtures, which was kind of fun. Or at least different. But of course, another $400 hit in the wallet for plumbing and whatnot.

And today...well today I'm sitting in the office waiting to get motivated to pack up my computer and sand some walls where we've done some patching. Then cram it all in my car and hope there's a spot out front of the house to bring it all in!

Tomorrow is the first day working at home. There's also a framing inspection, plumbing inspection and Telus guy coming to hook things up. It won't be a dull day, that's for sure.

But there is one silver lining coming our way -- we've decided on a Mediterranean cruise that we want to take in May. There's a sale on next weekend and we're going to put our deposit down on it. *Excitement!*

Oh electrical...

Good news for us! As of 15 minutes ago our electrical inspection is done and over! APPROVED!!!!!

This is a step in the right direction for sure. It's our first thumbs up from an inspector, which means we've only got a framing inspection, plumbing and insulation inspections to go until we can get the drywall in! All of those inspections are going to take place on Monday, which is my first official day of working at home (if you can call it a house right now, more like storage locker), and the very first day for the new name of the company to kick in.

Here's the new logo!

I spent almost a year dabbling here and there trying to figure out where to go and what to do with this logo. It started as something very different from what it is now. Isn't it always the case that you're the pickiest and most critical when it comes to your own things? I finally knew that this logo was the one when I designed it on a Thursday and slept on it over the weekend and came back and still liked it. So far, so good!

Things continue to be very busy around here. Trevor and I did a large vinyl decal installation yesterday (well, maybe more Trevor than me, he's pretty good at the more 'delicate' parts of installing) on the back of a compressor on wheels. Kind of like a box on a trailer. But it was hot out and the sun would hit us right in the eyes while we were trying to get this thing finished. But we did it, and glad that it's over. Now to invoice that puppy out! LOL Today I'm out downtown for an 11am meeting with a potential new client (amazing how things like that come around at a time like this!). Hopefully things will go well, but it will sure make for a busy start to the fall.

And it's more moving as usual. I'd like to have everything out of here by the end of day tomorrow, but we'll see about that. I also have the weekend if needed. The challenge is figuring out where to PUT everything that I take home. But we're moving the air hockey table out of the basement (via popping the window out) and getting rid of our (crappy) dining room set to make way for my desk to be there.

If this is you, you might have a problem...

It's that time of year again, when those big spikey weeds pop out little berries that stain everything from your hands to bird's poop. Yes, it's blackberry season, also the time of year where you will see people who are a few slices short of a loaf throw themselves into these big, thorny clumps of berry-wielding weeds either for sport or for ...? Well, I don't quite know, nor do I understand.

Case in point: We were driving through Abbotsford yesterday afternoon and there on a busy road was a car pulled over to the shoulder (although not a big shoulder, cars had to weave around them a bit), while a man and a woman picked blackberries. And not just standing there taking the ones they could reach either -- the man had thrown an aluminum ladder into the bush and was balancing on it...all for a little berry.*
* Side note here: Trevor gave these people a little 'toot toot!' with the horn while driving by. A sort of 'hello, crazy people!'. It was pretty funny. :)

This just seems to drive me nuts every year. It's not so much the ones that just pick them here and there while on their way to another destination. It's the ones who make these bushes their destination. Are they just cheap? In it for the thrill? Looking for something to do?

Maybe I'm just bitter. LOL