"The internet is a place where absolutely nothing happens. You need to take advantage of that." ~ Strong Bad

The first test of navigating in the snow around our new home was a tough one: the maximum depth I measured during the past week was 12.5 inches. That includes a lot of settling, since mid-week I measured 11 inches, and about 6 more inches fell after that.

It started falling Saturday evening, as we came back from taking a ferry to Port Townsend to visit one of Kerry’s aunts. The hill on our driveway was the biggest challenge, but we found if the snow was packed down and we hit it at 20 mph, we could just about coast to the top. Meanwhile, one of the neighbors found out 4-wheel drive and knobby tires aren’t a substitute for driving smartly. I don’t know how he unstuck himself, but there was ample evidence the next time I passed that he had stopped just short of sliding into the creek and had plenty of trouble getting back on the driveway.

The main roads were generally sufficiently plowed and sanded, however, and most of the other drivers I encountered seemed competent. That was a pleasant surprise compared to living in Lynnwood. Last year, in the first 5 minutes on the road the first time it snowed, I avoided being hit once due to luck and a second time by getting out of the way of an out of control truck. During the second snowfall, my normal route to work was impassable; Six lanes of traffic and a bus stop were all blocked by three buses and who knows how many cars that had all attempted the same hill without chains.

Interestingly, Tuesday, when the heaviest snowfall occurred, was the best commute I’ve ever had. Despite needing to drive a little slower, the lack of other drivers meant far fewer red lights and no boneheads to deal with. I think it was actually a couple minutes faster than normal, which really more than anything tells you how poorly programmed the traffic lights in Snohomish County are.

Meanwhile, our new fireplace proved its worth. Our power went out yesterday while we were at work, and although we had very little dry firewood, it warmed the downstairs up nicely in lieu of the heat pump. Power was restored after a little over a day.

Capping off a busy week, Kerry finally talked me into getting a dog. One of her clients found a family with a good litter of 8 week old yellow labs that had three females left. We named her Eliza Doolittle. That cat is dealing with it surprisingly well.

The conclusion to my previous post isn't quite as dramatic as the waiting suggests, but it had far more plot twists than I wanted.

Since the leak was slow, I didn't intend to remove anything until I had all the parts on hand to replace it. Gingerly scraping with my pick, I uncovered more of the pipe, being especially careful around the PVC upstream of the valve. Nonetheless, somehow the lightest of bumps cracked the PVC, which despite claiming to be rated for 160psi, was half as thick as normal schedule 40 pipe. The trivial leak was now more serious.

So Sunday afternoon, I shut off the water to the house. I hurried to uncover enough of the pipe to make a fix, cut out the bad section, and then rushed to Lowes to get replacement parts, only to find they closed two hours early on January 1. From there we rushed to Home Depot, arriving at 7:01, unsure what we would find – they were locking up. We dashed through an unlocked door while an employee's back was turned and hurried over to the plumbing aisle where someone caught up with us.

To my relief, instead of kicking us out, he asked if he could help us find anything quickly. Home Depot earned serious appreciation from me that night.

Which I wasted. When I arrived back home, I realized I'd bought everything I needed except a couple simple copper fittings.

Fortunately, following the Scout motto, I had several gallons of emergency drinking water bottled up - more than enough for a night without water.

Monday, I had to finish hauling trash to the dump so I could return Steve's truck to him. After completing that, I returned to my plumbing task, hooked everything up, and found myself rewarded with three leaks! My next move was uncertain because with the pipe full of water to absorb heat from the torch and impossible to drain since this was the lowest point in the whole plumbing system, re-soldering was impossible.

Disconnecting a threaded fitting, I was able to use my bicycle pump (after my lungs failed to do the job) to blow water backwards through the system and then attempted to repair my solder joints. It was after 1 AM when I gave up, but I left it hooked up and leaking so I could shower away the two days filth I'd accumulated hauling trash and laying in a muddy ditch.

Tuesday, I had to work. Returning home, I cut the faulty section out and soldered it again, only to be baffled as it leaked once more. Repeating my bicycle pump tactic, I carefully desoldered everything to inspect it. To my surprise, every joint that I had soldered in the comfort of the garage had wicked a perfect joint. Every joint I soldered in the rain and the confines of the trench had wicked almost no solder.

Wednesday, I emailed work to excuse myself and started over with new pipe and fittings. I spent over an hour deburring and cleaning the joints, which I then fitted and soldered with the utmost care one at a time instead of the easier method of aligning everything at once, protected by a makeshift rain cover and after bailing out the remaining water from the trench by hand.

By this time, the last thing I wanted to do was turn the water back on. It was obvious I couldn't win. I had already accepted I must have angered some demon with the evil power to prevent capillary flow such as of solder in a pipe joint at will, and henceforth he was determined to make my life miserable.

So when it finally worked on the 4th try, I didn't actually feel excitement. At first it was just numb sense of disbelief (or maybe that was just cold, wet hands and feet).

Whether it was overcoming prior sloppiness or a demonstration of the power of prayer, after three days of fumbling our water was back on.

Because I've been so delinquent, this will be a long post. You might as well grab a glass of brandy or bourbon to sip while you read.

Since I wrote my long list of renovation work, we've completed a decent amount more. Given the pitch of our roof and some complications with the existing brickwork, I swallowed my pride and paid to have the fireplace insert installed, although first I had to install a combustion make-up air vent. The insert took two experienced men working together about 4 hours to install. We then hosted Kerry's family for Thanksgiving dinner, which turned out to be an unwise time to try out the new fireplace. Fumes from the heat-curing paint set off the smoke detectors, but otherwise dinner went well.

Kerry took initiative on getting the bathroom painted, while I rebuilt the drain under the kitchen sink. Our friend Steve spent the better part of a day helping me blow more insulation into the attic. Then we took a break for Christmas, which started with a small party at our house with a group of Kerry's college friends. We spent Christmas Eve with Kerry's family at her sister's house.

Christmas Day was with my extended family at my uncle's place, where despite very deliberately holding my speed on the driveway to 7 mph, his neighbor once again bellowed angrily at us to slow down as we left. Then most of my immediate family spent two nights at our house. The maximum count was eleven people, who accepted patiently the piles of boxes they had squeeze in around.

During my time off work for the holidays, I hauled three tons of renovation debris and ½ ton of wood waste to the transfer station and then tried to find and fix the water leak under our deck.

That turned out to be one of the larger mistakes I've ever made. Any sensible person would have lied to their lender about such a small leak so they could wait until summer to take care of it, especially if they had any foreshadowing of how much effort it would take.

Tearing apart a section of deck was the first challenge. The deck had been painted, filling in the screw heads so that removing them first meant painstakingly picking the paint out of each and every board I removed. Trying to trench between joists on 16" centers was even less fun, but ultimately it led to finding a brass valve that for unknown reasons, someone had buried. Unsurprisingly, several decades of direct contact with the soil had caused enough corrosion and rot for a pinhole leak to form.

This is where the story gets exciting, but although the post isn't yet as long as I expected when I started, a few days wait before I tell the rest will heighten the dramatic tension...

Since I've been continually distracted from writing, here's where things stand officially with our renovation:

Work completed (* = by contractor):

• Installed new water heater
  
• Installed new kitchen stove
  
• Replaced garage vehicle door *
  
• Replaced garage entry door *
  
• Replaced all windows in garage *
  
• Replaced all windows in house *
  
• Replaced crawlspace vapor barrier *
  
• Repaired crawlspace vents *
  
• Added handrail to deck *
  
• Covered attic insulation with sheetrock *
  
• Extended bathroom and kitchen ducts to terminate outside instead of in attic *
  
• Added proper sheething to exterior walls *
  
• Replaced vinyl siding with Hardiplank *
  
• Rewired garage and brought general electrical up to code *
  
• Wired for outdoor lights over deck *
  
• Installed heat pump *
  
• Rerouted dryer vent and replaced flex duct with rigid duct
  
• Replaced broken (and hideous) over-range microwave with range hood
  
• Demolished interior workroom walls in garage (now Kerry's car fits)
  
• Heroic amounts of lawn mowing due to the late spring

Work in-progress/remaining:

• Add insulation to attic peak to minimum R-30
  
• Install wood-burning fireplace insert *
  
• Repair slow leak in water service line
  
• Caulk sinks and tubs (30% complete)
  
• Refinish deck
  
• Finish painting exterior walls (75% complete)
  
• Finish painting interior walls (75% complete)
  
• Replace front porch steps *
  
• Seal and re-insulate HVAC ducts to R-8
  
• Improve kitchen drains to code

That's what needs to be done to conclude the renovation to the bank's satisfaction and/or bring the house up to a suitable condition for the winter. After all that is done, we have list of long-term items to work on, including fencing the yard, wiring the house for ethernet, planting trees, replacing the interior trim, and hopefully eventually replacing the kitchen cabinets. Pictures of the work so far will be forthcoming, but I can't promise when.

Meanwhile, there's been plenty going on to keep us from getting the renovation done. In particular, we spent two weekends in a row at out-of-town weddings. One was in Portland for a friend from home. The other was in Spokane for a college friend of Kerry's. She was the maid of honor, while I helped out by lectoring and then MC'ing the reception. Since it was just one week short, we made it our 1st anniversary celebration and stayed in the historic and very fancy Davenport Hotel.

And last on the great long list of things that have happened since I last wrote, my parents have nearly finished their move to Arizona, after roughly 28 years in the house where I grew up.

This morning, when leaving for Mass, we strolled out the door, walked 30 feet, and got into our car.

It was that easy. I didn't have to puzzle over where I'd been forced to park the car the night before because there are almost no unassigned spots near our apartment. I didn't have to walk 200 yards (I've paced it out) to get to it, and I wasn't even particularly worried about someone breaking my window to steal $2 worth of change from the ashtray overnight.

That's just one of a long list of reasons I'm really glad to be moving out of the apartment and into our house.

The renovation work is continuing, but the biggest parts are mostly done. The windows have been replaced, the siding is nearly finished, the furnace has been replaced with a heat pump, we've installed a water heater and a kitchen stove, and the disaster that was electrical wiring in the garage has been completely replaced.

So while there's still a fair amount of work left to do, we're to the point that this weekend we moved in.

We spent most of the week painting, including staying up until 2 AM Friday to finish the master bedroom, then got up at 6:30 to finish packing boxes before our help arrived. Two friends from work helped cut the moving time from all day to being finished before the heat of the day.

Kerry and I are now officially moved in.

I got building permits today for the renovations to our house. I've always thought of building permits as a grey area: Their purpose is to ensure building codes are upheld, for the mutual safety of occupants and neighbors, so if a homeowner can achieve that on their own, especially on smaller projects, a permit is just a formality.

However, we have a bank involved, and banks like rules. They're loaning money for the renovation, so they get to refuse to release a single dime until we show them the permits.

The Snohomish County permitting website is unfortunately a disaster. It's loaded with information, or at least text, so I started there. That only created myriad new questions like, "Do I really need a scale drawing of the entire property showing all existing and proposed structures and easements and before and after detail of a water heater being installed exactly like the old one?"

So ultimately I concluded the sentence, "Permit applications must be submitted in person by appointment only" took precedence over "Apply online here" written a couple lines below that and called to schedule an appointment. The clerk who took the call couldn't answer any of my questions, but said that I did not need an appointment. After taking time off work to go to the courthouse during the 6 hours per day, 4 days per week that they're open and waiting 15 minutes, it took about 3 minutes to find out I actually could do everything I needed to from the website.

Don't think it ends there, though. They require not only the applicants, but also involved contractors to register before a permit will be issued. Why? I have no idea. Every contractor is already registered with the state, and the county can verify their records automatically.

After that was taken care of, I finally got the permits. It turns out you need a permit for just about anything more complicated than changing a lightbulb. I don't need to replace a toilet, but that was one of many examples that surprised me.

• Basic toilet from Home Depot: $78
• Plumbing Permit Issuance Fee: $80
• Plumbing Technology Upgrade Fee: $2.61
• Toilet Replacement Permit:$7
• Using "code enforcement" to earn money on routine household maintenance: Priceless

There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's probably an administrative fee involved.

Although Kerry and I had a great time in Ireland, I'm going to save that for a future post. I've got more to write about than energy to type with at the moment. I'm just about recovered from working 55 hour weeks for a month straight, while trying to get a mortgage application processed from 4000 miles away, and taking a European vacation with Kerry all at the same time. Not that I'm complaining or would do anything different if I had the choice except maybe spend even more effort sightseeing, but it was exhausting.

However, it was really satisfying to arrive back home just in time to close the sale on our first house. The house was a short sale, but scheduled to foreclose on a Thursday and be auctioned off for cash on Friday, while we were anxiously waiting for the final loan approval. We had genuine concerns that Wells Fargo might drop the ball and we'd lose out on the sale, but fortunately our real estate agent was on top of it and knew the right people to talk to for making sure they didn't delay. Our sale closed the day before foreclosure.

So now we are the proud owners of a 3 bedroom, 1.75 bath home on 1.7 acres outside of town but within reasonable driving distance of work.

We're almost caught up on the backlog of yardwork that had accumulated while it was for sale, and we'll be doing a moderate amount of renovation work on it including replacing siding, windows, and a few missing appliances, adding a heat pump, and doing some miscellaneous repairs. We hope to move in by the end of July.

Which means in August there's going to be an awesome house-warming party.

I've been too busy to make any real updates, but I just thought I'd make a quick post. I've been working long days during the week, but last weekend Kerry and I did have a chance to explore a little bit.

I worked really late tonight so I could take this weekend off and explore some more. Tomorrow we hope to find the location of the real Lynch Castle, and continue on to Galway to see the other Lynch Castle.

Two things that have been a long time coming are finally fast approaching.

First of all, I've been waiting for a firm date on when my employer is sending me to a customer site in Ireland for over a year. I finally got that date last week, and I leave tomorrow. I'll probably be there before almost anyone reads this. I'll spend three, possibly four weeks over there working, and Kerry will join me for weeks two and three. Hopefully we'll have some time to spend exploring. Most of my time is already spoken for.

The second event has been an even longer time coming. I first seriously contemplated buying a house back in early 2007, having been out of school and working for over a year. However, I didn't have much savings at the time, and despite all the assurances of the experts that the housing market was the strongest it had ever been, I was nervous about prices. While I had no clue about the subprime bubble and other issues lurking, I didn't see how prices could climb the way they had without at least leveling off for a while, if not dropping somewhat. I wasn't about to argue with the experts, however, so I sat quietly on the sidelines.

However, that's the past. The current news is that Kerry and I have put an offer on a house just outside of town, and it has been accepted. The timing is working out beautifully, and we should reach closing shortly after returning from Ireland, as long as the loan goes through. It needs some moderate fixing, so we'll be using a purchase and renovate loan to cover all the essentials, and a few things that will improve the overall condition for years to come, like replacing the vinyl siding with Hardiplank.

I absolutely can't wait to get out of our apartment and have a place of our own.

To catch up on some past activities, I've now passed the one year mark at Electroimpact. A couple weeks ago I lost a $5 wager against my project manager. We were in the thick of manufacturing and everyone was rushing to get things completed and shipped on schedule. I told him I wasn't confident all of mine could be completed by the weekend to be ready to ship the following week. He said he didn't believe me and bet $5 that I actually could finish by the end of Saturday.

Saturday afternoon, I nailed the lid on the last crate ready for shipping. To be fair, I thought the bet was whether I could finish the whole set so all of my parts could go in the first of four shipments and be done with. In reality, he was only betting on the quantity that actually needed to be in the first shipment. I split the difference and he was perfectly happy seeing half of them on the first shipment. I still owe him the $5.

A couple weeks before that I went skiing at Mt. Baker for the first time. I had been waiting for a weekend with good weather, and the forecast called for snow overnight, light snow during the day to keep the runs fresh, and moderate winds (10-20 mph). On the way up, the snow was falling relatively heavily and I passed several accidents.

On the slopes, the error of the forecast was clear. The snow was falling sideways as graupel (a sort of low-density hail). I could see gusts of wind before they hit by the curtains of snow they carried uphill. At one point I was following not more than 50' behind several other skiers when a gust blew up so much snow they completely vanished from view.

It wasn't quite the worst weather I've seen, but it was definitely the worst forecast I've ever been subjected to. Instead of halfway decent weather as expected, a ski patrol volunteer told me it was the worst storm he had seen this year. I heard over his radio a report that one of the lifts that had been closed for safety measured an 86 mph gust. On the drive back, there were more accidents, including an SUV that had been saved from rolling down an embankment by a tree, and while waiting about 10 miles past that for a fallen tree to be cleared from the road, I watched a large falling branch miss a shiny Mustang a couple cars up by just a few feet.