Had company at the new house this weekend (and the week before). Big Saturday dinner: pecan-crusted catfish, shittake risotto, a million bottles of wine, etc.. Ended up being a long night.

9:30AM something electronic comes beeping across my sleep: the hot water heater control in our bathroom is beeping and its display is flashing an "11". WTF? I find the manual and look up the code : "No ignition. Check your gas supply." Instead I check the thermostat: it's set to 70, but the inside temp is 65. Right. The hot water heater started complaining when one of our guests tried taking a shower and there wasn't any propane to burn to heat their water.

Turns out, being all new to this country life thing, we neglected to learn anything about our heating gas supply. We never checked the level, and never got an account set up with the gas company. We've been running off the little taste the builder put in the tank in order to get everything running for us, assuming there was some magical propane fairy who would come around and top things off on a schedule, or there was a sensor somewhere would gently prod us when things got low. Nope!

Took the guy till 5:30 to show up and fill the tank (t'was a busy day for him). And we had to pay an extra $90 to get our tank filled on a Sunday. Crap!

But, now we know!

Our water is starting to smell like chlorine. It's well water. That's a little freaky. The water was tested by the county when the well was dug, and it passed all the tests. But that was then. Time to re-test, I think.

I re-caulked all the crown molding on the first floor last month, but it's starting to separate again. The heat is really wreaking havoc on all the fresh wood.

The toilets are these fancy dual-flush things. But only one of them works correctly. There is nothing to adjust. The plumber is stumped. The plumbing supply company won't deal with us.

The grout in the shower tile is cracking. The cold weather has exposed some poorly-insulated exterior doors.

I've planted juniper in the front of the house, trying to reduce the amount I need to mow. We'll be planting trees when the weather warms a little. There's a curly willow cutting, which we took from a tree at our old house (which we grew from a cutting from a friend's tree), growing in our kitchen. The thing is sprouting leaves! In January!

The real estate lawyer called us last week and said "there's a check waiting for you here, come get it!" It was a check for $$,$$$ and we don't know what it's from. But hey, free money!? I think it's because we took out too big of a mortgage - the builder overestimated his costs and when he figured out his final number it was under what we had borrowed. But I don't know for sure. Either way, it's buying a lot of area rugs, shrubs, caulk and wine for the steady stream of house guests we've been having. I make weekly trips to the recycling place downtown to carry away the endless cardboard boxes UPS brings us.

I put up a bird feeder with a mix of seeds to see what kind of flying critters we have out there. After a week of sitting idle, it started attracting attention: a lot of attention. Our feeder is now beset by white-breasted nuthatches. Pretty things. They only want the corn, and they fling everything else on the ground. I know there are bluebirds in the trees, but they haven't come to the feeder yet. The dozens of robins in the woods are only interested in eating the berries on the holly trees. The squirrels haven't dared to come close to the house yet. The seed mix is called "No Waste" because there's something in it for all likely birds. It's about 90% waste, right now.

Still no cable or internet access. So we're chugging through the Sopranos box set. Moving at a pretty good clip. Once that's done, we might have to buy the BSG box set.

Sullivan marvels at a video of a toilet demonstration: hot dogs, chicken nuggets, kitty litter, flush into oblivion; "oddly meditative" Sully says. I am reminded of a recent adventure.

A few weeks back, while we were moving out of the old house, I got stuck with the task of emptying the refrigerator, alone. The plan was to bring a cooler along, throw everything worth saving into the cooler and haul it to the new house, but I forgot to bring the cooler. All I had were some large plastic garbage bags. So I started putting jars and bottles of condiments and sauces into a bag. I soon realized, however, that it was going to be far too heavy to carry. And I didn't want multiple bags, because fuck that. So, I decided to throw some of it out. But, all of the glass was recyclable, and guilt about the goddamn Earth got the best of me. So, I had to empty them. But I didn't want to just dump the contents of those jars and bottles into the trash because five bottles-worth of salad dressing would make for one stinky garbage can! I had to find some other method of disposal ... The Toilet!

And so, I started dumping sauces, syrups, dressings, marinades, capers, relishes, mustards, broke-down dips, and all the other stinky, sticky, liquid crap I didn't want to save ... into the downstairs toilet. This quickly became a pungent, chunky, red, white, green and gray slurry. It looked and smelled pretty much like the collected vomit of a dozen "I dare you to drink this!" contestants. Then I found a jar of pickles! I figured a toilet should be able to handle a half-dozen pickle spears without trouble; a pickle's size and shape being similar to what a toilet is designed to handle... ipso facto, ex post partum, reesees mentos, QED... no problem! (See, Mrs, I do too think about things before I just go and do them!) So in they went. They sank and, except for the tips of a couple spears, disappeared.

And then time came to send the horrific bubbling (tonic water!) mess to the sea. So I flushed and ... the pickles wouldn't go. Though they were old, they still didn't have the flexibility to get through the twist at the bottom of the bowl - damn your eternally crunchy pickles, Vlasic! Then, the relish and the rest of the chunky goop hooked up with the pickles and formed a seal at the bottom, plugging the drain. And the water kept flowing in. Higher and higher, the roiling pink brew climbed towards the top of the bowl.

There was no plunger in reach. Nothing in sight with which to pry or push or pull the obstruction. Panic was rising along with the slurry. An overflow of that mess would be a disaster. But, being a veteran of many toilet repairs, I remembered how toilets work... So I smartly reached down and turned off the water supply. Water stopped pouring in, the goop stopped rising. Crisis delayed!

I searched the garage and eventually found an old paint stir-stick. With that, I chopped the submerged pickles into flushable chunks. After a bit of this, success: the toilet belched in vinegary relief and swallowed the whole bowl full of evil in one wretched gulp. A couple more flushes took care of all the clinging and smeared remnants. And, except for the smell, there was no sign the event had ever happened.

Success.

Wife to cabinet guy: hey a piece of molding popped off the top of one of the cabinets. Come fix it.

Cabinet guy to wife: OK. We have you on the schedule for 8 AM, December 26^th. See you then!

WTF?

Our new gas fireplace wasn't working right, so we called the people who installed it. They gave us a three hour appointment window, of course. When they arrived, they discovered that they set up the fireplace for natural gas, but we have LP gas at the house. This is the fireplace company our builder required us to use. Presumably they've done other houses in the development and know that the builder always goes with LP, not natural gas.

So, it's another day of workmen in the house. Another day of cats locked in an upstairs bedroom. Another day where Mrs is stuck there while they work. Monday was the same thing - workmen, all day.

She sends a picture.

Unrelated rhetorical question: if clothes dryers have their vents on their back and not on their side or their bottom, why would you put a dryer vent anywhere but on the back wall?

Was the builder the source of these unending problems? Do other builders know how to make this stuff work without endless corrections?

Update:
After a while, they got to the point where Mrs asked about the non-functioning fan in the fireplace. Guy looks around and discovers that there is no fan installed. Says we never ordered one. Mrs is sure she ordered one; I wasn't there when she did, but I know it was always our intention that we have one, and she says she did. But, no: No fan was ordered, and so none was installed.

I honestly can't think of a single aspect of this house that didn't have some screw up. Either the builder didn't tell someone what to do, or he told them incorrectly, or he didn't ask us, or someone ordered the wrong item, or they half-assed something. The list is long, and seems to keep growing.

One thing we realized last night: if we didn't have cell phones, we would still have no phone at the house. Because, the builder, just like he never got the cable company to put in lines, never got the telephone company to put in lines.

What did we do wrong?

Businesses rely on data published by the US Postal Service to validate the addresses customers give them. The data is used to correct misspelled or mistyped addresses, update changed addresses, to locate addresses for deliveries, etc.. But, that data isn't published in real time, it's published monthly. And much of the data has a legal shelf life of many months. So, if you move to a brand new street, your address is going to be flagged as invalid by pretty much everybody who does electronic address verification, for a long time. Deliveries will be delayed, people will have to call for directions, some companies will simply refuse to accept your address, etc.. And who knows how long it will take before we show up on any of the online map apps... Good times.

And why didn't the developer start working on getting a street sign until we moved in? It's probably for the same reason we still don't have cable access despite starting the building process 9 months ago. As an interim fix, Mrs wrote our street name on a big piece of posterboard and I've got it propped up against a hay bail at the start of the road. I bet the neighbors hate it. But they have nobody but the developer to blame for that.

Also, the garbage man has skipped us for the third week in a row. Last week, we called and complained, twice, and they sent a special truck out just for us. This week, they missed us again. It's a shame the one company has a monopoly on garbage pickup.

No, no cable or internet yet. The developer is still dragging his feet about getting the easement signed over to the cable company so the cable company can lay their lines. Mrs. is about to exceed the monthly data limit on her cell phone's 'personal hotspot' feature. On the bright side, I have a nice new house-wide gigabit network all set up and waiting. It's doing a fine job getting MP3s from the NAS to my iTunes laptop, and my stereo sounds really good in the new house. Actually, everything sounds good in the new house - it has the acoustics of a hi-tech theater; you can hear everything that happens anywhere in the house perfectly clearly. Strange.

I had to re-caulk all of the crown molding on the first floor this past weekend. The dry air from the furnace is affecting the wood in the molding, as it will, and the original caulk just wasn't able to handle the change. I just cannot tolerate those ever-growing gaps between the molding and the ceiling.

We got our first mortgage bill for the new house yesterday. So this will be our first month paying two mortgages. Old house has an interested couple who are wary of committing to buying our house until they sell their current house. They're also wary of making a contingent offer for some reason. Luckily, Mrs. also got a new job yesterday, so that will lessen the financial pain considerably.

I don't remember the last move we did being such an agonizing, never-ending series of problems. This one is dragging and dragging and dragging. I long for a day when I will not have a long list of urgent house-related tasks to get through. Mrs. has a list far bigger than mine.

Bitch. Moan. Whine.

Monday, our realtor called and said we would probably be getting an offer on the old house. Tuesday, our realtor and their realtor were talking. Wednesday, waiting. Thursday, no news.

Rats.

And speaking of rats... apparently there's a mouse in the crawlspace of our new house. Rats!

The garbage company skipped us on Wednesday, which would've been our first pickup at the new house. And because of the holiday weekend, we weren't able to contact them until this AM. And Thanksgiving trash, on top of ten days of other trash, is stinky trash. Thankfully, there's a county recycling place up the road a bit, so I've been able to haul loads of empty cardboard boxes up there.

We rented a U-Haul on Saturday, to grab the last bunch of stuff out of the old house and to get everything out of our storage space. Another afternoon spent moving shit around. I am so done with carrying boxes.

The plumber initially installed the sink in the downstairs half-bath right up against the side wall. Stupid. So, we had him move it a couple of inches out. The electrician had centered the light fixture on the sink's initial spot, so that had to be moved. The electrician came out and moved the electrical box that the light attaches to, no problem. But, he doesn't do drywall repairs, so he left everythign else for whoever does do drywall stuff: the light is on the floor, wires are sticking out, and there's a big circular hole in the wall where the box used to sit. The holiday week made it impossible to get anyone to fix the wall. We have our first house guest coming tomorrow, got to get the place reasonable.

No internet/cable yet. Computers are all set up. But without internet access, they're kindof pointless. And the more I learn to do on my iPhone, the more pointless a room full of desktop stuff becomes. I may be on my last PC.

Well water. Sounds like fun? It's a lot of fun until the first shower... well water is hard water. Shampoo doesn't work very well.

There were a dozen deer in the front lawn this AM. So much for the grass! One little deer hung out right by the house, so the cats got a good look at it. All the others stayed far away.

The driveway is exactly 200 feet long. Measured by finding that the leaf blower, with two 100' extension cords attached, can just reach the mailbox at the end of the driveway. I can't even keep the driveway leaf-free for a second, though. By the time I reach the far end, leaves have already started to cover the near end. I do what I can.

The neighboring house is still in early stages of construction, so they don't have a proper driveway yet. Instead, they dropped a load of gravel on the driveway, which has migrated out into the cul de sac. So now the last 50' of the road is gravel and mud and dust. Joy.

Still trying to get the house in shape. Started drilling holes in the wall to hang things, yesterday. Very sad to wreck those nice fresh walls with ugly drywall anchors.

Nice day for yard work.

iPhone

Yesterday afternoon, while I was out in our new yard, wondering what to do with two acres of oak leaves, I heard a sound I hadn't heard in along time. Someone was shooting at something, a ways off through the woods. It was a sound I hadn't heard in many years. My grandparents lived in rural upstate NY where, in the cold months, those long-echoing rifle shots were as frequent as the cars on the gravel road past the house - and nearly as deadly to their dogs. A brown lab running through the woods in the winter is certain to attract the psychopathic liars who will later claim they couldn't tell the difference between a deer and a dog. Their black and yellow labs were liable to pass for deer sometimes, too.

Luckily, we don't have any dogs.

iPhone

For the leaves, I got my 50' extension cord and my leaf blower, and blew the first 50' of leaves into a low cardioid berm all surrounding the house. I'm sure it's all filled in with new leaves today. But it was nice to be out in the woods anyway. It beats staring at the maze of unpacked boxes that we have inside.