The Re-Building Begins

Early this morning I signed the first contract for the re-building and remodeling of my home. This contract was for the design and implementation of a new irrigation system for the yard. I had already commited to this effort with the company before, but this was now final as I signed the contract and gave them the down payment. Given the size and complexity of the yard, the design is not easy nor is the cost cheap, but it is starting point! Over the last week I have worked with the designer from the irrigation company to lay out a preliminary plan of the system. The attached diagram shows the high-level plan that we have discussed and worked through. This plan will be driven into lower levels of detail to specify all the different kinds of watering heads, specific placement of the zones, definition of the capacity for my stub zones, etc.

I can’t tell you what it means to me to begin this work. I am casting off the pall of the last 3 years of my life and beginning new. Though mentally I have felt renewed and capable of moving forward since late 2008 this is the tangible implementation of renewal. There were so many projects and plans that came to screeching halt in February of 2006. Though the plans have changed they are restarting and the future feels as bright as it has ever been. The work on the sprinkler system won’t start until April 27th. That is provided that this week’s expected blizzard won’t put the company way behind its spring schedule. Where I live the weather forecasters are predicting upwards of 22 inches of snow. That will be cool. We really need the moisture something fierce. The grass is one thing but you can easily re-plant grass if it dies. Trees on the other hand are very hard to replace and I am certain the 50 foot+ Cottonwoods that I have lining my yard are under some serious stress. Any and all moisture at this point will be good. Apparently all the factors are correctly lining up to give us a good dumping of snow. When a storm system stalls or creates a set of “up sloping winds” it means that we are in for a dumping. I am very glad that we are getting the moisture. So in general I am happy about the situation. The only things that I don’t like about spring blizzards are the weight of the snow and the fact that we are getting the snow when it should be getting warmer outside. There is one additional downside for tomorrow’s storm. Depending upon when the snow starts my cleaning lady may not be able to show up. Normally my cleaning LADIES (two as opposed to one) come every other Wednesday. However, Kathy one of the cleaning ladies is on vacation this week. Because of that the schedule got shifted around and only Kelly was going to come on Thursday. If it is snowing too badly tomorrow morning, she won’t be able to make it. So, I’ll have to go 4 weeks without have the place cleaned. Living in Colorado you get used to seeing snow in just about every month of year. In my 14 years of living here, I have seen snow fall in every month of the year except for August. The snow that I experienced in July was in the mountains, but I have seen snow here in Denver itself every month but July and August. During my first fall in Colorado in 1995 we got 10 inches of snow during the second week of September. That was definitely unusual. Our day has been uneventful except for the fact that Zack had a bit of difficulty at Sylvan. Like yesterday Zack had school and I had work – the normal day-to-day stuff. Much of my day has been spent preparing for these presentations tomorrow and Friday. Zack’s difficulty at Sylvan began shortly after he arrived there. He was experiencing a stomach ache and just couldn’t get into his work. I talked to the “coordinator” and I indicated that he should give it a try. I got a call back 10 minutes later saying it just wasn’t working out. So – I went back to pick him up early. His stomach ache was caused by the fact that we forgot to have him take his Lexapro this morning. I can’t tell you how glad I am going to be when is off that drug for good!

I am starting to get everything ready for our trip. I have a ton of laundry to do and then I want to start getting stuff packed as I do not want to be doing it late at night on Friday. I am still debating if I am going to update the blog while I am away. Right now I am leaning towards doing updates while we are gone. I have to take my laptop with me as I have a number of conference calls that I need to lead and some weekly reports and deliverables that I will need to e-mail out. So if I have my laptop with me, I might as well update the blog. I’ll probably keep the updates short and laced with lots of pictures, but I think it will be fun to do. I took the lazy route for us for dinner tonight and just went out and got Subway. I always like Subway for fast food as it is normal more nutritious and tastes better than McDonalds or something like that. For the evening there is a lot of work to be done as I need to finish up a few things for work. After that I have just a ton of work to do around here in preparation for our trip. So – I better get to it. Hope everyone has a great evening! Thanks and peace to all!