Lost European Day

So I’m my front yard on a nice Monday afternoon … cell phone in one ear, cordless phone in the other.

Suzan and I were talking to Mr. Wages, our soon-to-be house builder, when ny cell phone rang. My friend John was calling for advice on how to handle his dead Handsprig PDA (pay the flat $125 repair fee or buy a new unit for $50 more). I step away from the conversation regarding the merits of retaining walls to discuss the new Palm Tungsten with John.

The cordless phone clipped to my left hip rings shortly after John calls. It’s Emily from Earthlink tech support, telling me that Bell South finally got that their act together and my DSL should be working again. My service went down on Friday just before I left town to go to Clemson’s Homecoming festivities (boy that was a goodfootball game). After spending Sunday night and Monday morning bouncing between tech support drones that don’t want to deal with a Linux user, I finally got a tech bright enough to realize that my lack of service might have something to do with the fact that Earthlink realigned some server connections over the weekend … Bell South dropped their end of the work and left me in telcom limbo for a few days.

I manage to dispatch both calls and return to the work at hand … reviewing plans and contracts. Suzan’s a state employee, so she gets Columbus Day (“Lost European Day”) as a holiday. I took a vacation day so we could clean up around the existing house and finalize plans to start building the next house (codenamed “HouseXP” due to it’s ability to slip off schedule like a software project … but it will be done before Longhorn, dammit).

Mr. Wages leaves us with a small stack of paperwork. My Tuesday morning involves a trip to the bank to set the financial matters into motion … construction loans, earnest money, and a checking account used just for paying the builder. Suzan and I still have a few choices to make, like countertop materials and carpet colors.

Our latest decorating deadlock is appliances: Suzan wants to use the “standard package” and get a new double-oven & cooktop, I want to keep the existing stove and apply the remainder of the “appliance allowance” to a countertop upgrade (Corian instead of laminate countertops). They’re small discussions, not anywhere near the divorce-generating battles many builders experience when a married couple builds a new home. In the end, what matters is that Suzan and I get our new home …

… unless she wants pink in the bedroom, then it’s on.