This weekend was a weekend of promise. The promise of a completion of our sweet abode. The weekend where everything remaining on the new homestead punch list was going to be checked off with a satisfying finality. Alas, when homeowners make plans, the Contractor Gods laugh.
There wasn’t much left, really. We needed speakers installed, walls painted, and a gas line put in for our stove.
We finally had an electrician come and install speakers throughout the lower level (which, of course, took longer than promised and involved much more damage to our walls than described). But, by Thursday evening, we had the television and speakers up on the wall, a speaker installed in the kitchen ceiling and an outdoor speaker. It was, despite the holes in our walls, a very beautiful thing. Because it meant we could paint the lower level and be done.
The world’s cutest non-professional contractor XFE spent the next couple of days patching the holes in the walls and prepping for paint. In the meantime, I went and ran a race. The Clarendon 10k, which is a very nice race, mostly downhill. Really, it’s downhill and they give you a metro pass to get back up the hill to the start line. Brilliant.
The amazingly awesome pacer that I am, I started off way too fast and almost died. So I ended up walking way more than I wanted to. Particularly the last two miles. It was truly pathetic. Especially since I had run 6.25 miles earlier that week without stopping at all and felt great.
Here are my splits, which really tell the story:
- Mile 1: 9:24
- Mile 2: 9:08
- Mile 3: 10:03
- Mile 4: 10:54
- Mile 5: 11:36
- Mile 6: 11:56
I really pulled it out for the last quarter mile at 11:48. My total pace of 10:34. Not horrible, but not what I had been hoping for. Luckily, there was beer. Lots and lots of beer.
(You can’t tell, but I have blue tape over the Nike swoosh as I continue my one woman protest against the company that hired back Michael Vick. I couldn’t bear to throw out my UT shirt, which is literally, the last Nike item I now own.)
I moseyed home at around 3 pm and saw this going on outside my house.
That’s right! After 2 months of living here, we were finally getting our gas line for our stove. We applied for the line right after we moved in, but the gas department around here is slower than Sunday’s Emmy’s broadcast, so they were just getting around to putting it in.
But, of course, after tearing up the road and trampling my flowers, they realized they didn’t have a welder on duty and could not complete the task (XFE saved most of the flowers and replanted them, for which I’m very grateful. But my geraniums look pretty trod upon).
On Sunday, we needed to get out of the house so our real-non-XFE contractor could come in and paint our walls. XFE really, really wanted to paint the place himself, but I convinced that we didn’t want to leave such an important task to our inexperienced paint rollers and it was worth the money to get it done right. So we bought two cans of paint, moved the furniture to the center of the room, and headed out to our favorite winery for lunch and some wine shopping.
We returned home about 8 hours later and our contractor told us that things had gone just so doggone well that he hadn’t even needed to get into the second can of paint. This caused our collective eyebrows to rise in disbelief. Sure enough, a few hours later, after everything had dried, we started noticing spots that weren’t quite completely covered. The morning sunlight revealed even more uneven coverage areas.
So let’s go through the items we expected to be done with by this point:
- Speakers – Check. Done and check.
- Painted walls – Nope. Need to be redone.
- Gas for stove – Nope. Still waiting.
We did, however, find a use for all that heavy-duty construction gear parked outside our house. This is what happens when you leave your large moving equipment unattended.
(BTW, there are no pictures of the walls nor the speakers because XFE wants to save some surprises for the big unveil at Porktober. Yes, you read right: Porktober is happening again.)
Congrats on finishing the race and the beer part. The splits can go to heck. Before I started really doing races, I heard about “hitting the wall” and had no idea what they were talking about. Now I know. Not cool.
The house stuff, while hectic, sounds very exciting. It means progress is being made, albeit slowly. When it is all done, you’ll wonder what to do with yourself.
It really was not my best showing at all, but what are you gonna do? I’d like to say I learned something, but I’ve relearned that pacing lesson so many times now….I look forward to the day where I (a) don’t have to cook chili on the grill (last night’s dinner), and (b) wonder what to do with myself.