Wake up! Wake up! It's MOVING day! The plow is here! Run for your lives! MOVING DAY IS HERE!

The above is a reference to this cartoon movie I loved as a kid, "The Secret of Nimh." It's about a bunch of mice/rats who live in the farmer's field. Mrs. Brisby is the heroine whose son Timmy is ill and cannot be moved from the cement block they call home, even though it's plowing season. Her husband's Auntie Shrew runs through the field alerting the mice, hedgehogs, bunnies and who knows what else when she hears the plow start up at the end of the field. General panic ensues, of course, and it's really bedlam.

Kinda like our condo. That sense of panic was pretty strong last night. We'll see how it goes ...

FIVE DAYS AND COUNTING

We move into this joint in FIVE days. Monday we've hired Del's Movers to come out and move out all our stuff. Currently, Jason and his crew (which invariably includes Scotty, but also thus far Scott and Mark, as well) are busy busting their assess hanging drywall while I pack up the condo.

I need more boxes. And more hours. And more sleep. And more speed. I want to be BLURRY with speed.

Yet here I sit.

Check out the gallery. WTF?! I gotta go pack!

Also, BTW, my band, bad nurse, played its first show this weekend: www.badnurseband.com. We are soo cool.

Rough Inspection #2

Insulation inspection this morning. Although the inspector was an hour late, he was very apologetic and was at Humphrey House all of 5 minutes. "Looks good. You just need to put some insulation up in the joist bays along the outside walls." So, PASS!

Now Menards is dropping off 60 sheets of drywall later today. Hopefully we'll have walls by Monday!

Rough Inspection #1

The last inspection we had was in mid-March, when the inspector and the structural engineer for the village came out to ensure that our new post footings were dug to the proper depth of 18". During that visit they freaked out when they noticed other things that were not being done properly at the time. Such as glass block windows installed without a header (even though we just put inside an existing opening).

We barely ended up passing, but ever since we have been very concerned that any other inspection would be very scrutinizing and they would be looking for every little detail to fail us. So before the rough inspections, Jay took Jen through on a mock role-play pointing out and asking questions about every possible thing that they might have a problem with so she would be thoroughly prepared.

The first inspector to show up was the electrical guy. Fortunately, he is on the board of directors at Jen's former employer so they immediately had a good rapport. He took his time going through the place, but was encouraging in general and had offered some advice. His main concern was the high placement of outlets along the outside wall (due to concrete). He said if there was a problem he would call Jay later that day. And, the phone never rang. So, PASS.

The second inspector was the same guy who came out before on the footing inspection. Jen was tense, but this guy clearly had a much busier schedule in the middle of building season. His arrival and departure both included cell phone conversations. His total time present looking at everything from post installation to window headers to wall framing and everything took about three minutes. His only comments were "You'll have to have me back for an insulation inspection before you drywall" Okay. And, "You're not going to use any of these rooms as a bedroom, right?" No. Of course not! PASS.

Now we breath a collective sigh of relief. 72 hours of last minute cramming to desperately earn a passing grade... reminded us a little of college. And now, we can begin preparing for the final examination.

Today's deadline

We worked like mad the last five days... spending Independance Day weekend putting the finishing touches on our place in preparation for the building inpection today (Wednesday). Of course we had great help as usual from our family - Jen's dad Ken, Scott, and Jay's grandpa all came by to help us get things finalized.

Now everything will go under the magnifying glass as Jen leads the inspectors through our basement to check out the HVAC, framing, and electrical roughing. Keep your fingers crossed until 1:30... Will we clear this hurdle?