Catching up again...

So I've been pretty busy. I was also a bit sick for a while. Had some sort of ear infection and rosacea thing going on that needed a shot in the butt, a course of steroids, and a course of antibiotics. But I'm right as rain, now. So let's get caught up.

Laurie came up Labor Day weekend. She and Rachel got all dolled up to go see Kathy Griffin. And that's just the sort of thing you couldn't pay me to see, but they had a blast.


Laurie is probably a bigger coffee junkie than me now. And so I made her a new drink I created- Behold! The Almond Roca White Chocolate Mocha(TM).


Last weekend, while Rachel and Lauren went to a wedding shower, Jeff and I had Paul come up for dinner. So I was grilling for three. Then Jake showed up and I was grilling for him too, and two of his friends. And then Rachel called and they were on their way home, and it became dinner for 8. No problem, just kept making the salad bigger and throwing more stuff on the grill.


It was fun hanging out and watching football and eating.

OK, so the big thing going on around here is some construction. We are geting two things fixed. First, that great cement deck, while a major feature of our home that affords fantastic views, especially of the 4th of July fireworks, has been a problem for some time. It leaks. It leaks down in to the former sun room (now the gym). Another problem was that the gym was an outside patio that was turned in to an inside room. But it is not counted in the overall square footage because it is "unfinished." It becomes unbearable in there because the sun beats in, and the dryer vents in to the room. We are tackling both of those problems.

Mike Salmina, of Salmina Construction, won the bid. He is using a product called Dex-Tec to seal the top deck. It's like having a giant kitchen floor outside.

Really comfortable. And it is getting the water away from the house. He's also installing some gutters and recaulking the windows properly as opposed to the way it was originally done.

And in the gym, he and his crew built a chute/step that vents the dryer outside.

I really hate spending money to just fix things - like adding the Trex Deck was fine, and building the fence was fine - both add to the enjoyment of our home, and in theory, the property value. But having to fix things that were done poorly just sucks. It's weird, because some things were done exceptionally well - like the framing of the upstairs deck. And others, well, not so much. But we really had to do this or risk having the thing rot away and fall apart. And I think the way we are doing it is smart in that we are not just fixing a leak, we are making a room useable and that will add to the square footage of our house. Plus the new material upstairs looks much nicer than the red painted cement we had before.

And I think that gets us all caught up.