Prepping for Power

So did y’all miss me?

This is what my work looks like these days. That’s me in the top left…

Sorry I haven’t been posting. With the “new normal” and COVID-19 changing the way we work, I have been busier than ever. In the past month I’ve been training groups of 25-55 via Zoom in 4 hour blocks. The groups have participants from all over the US and Canada, as well as from Jamaica, Brazil, South Africa, Norway, Israel, Malaysia, and New Zealand. It’s quite the wild ride to train such diverse groups in 4 hour increments (with only two ten minute breaks) and it’s been very popular with more than 115 people joining the “Live Online” offering.

In the meantime, we’ve been prepping to get electrical power to the house. Yep, so far the entire house has been built using power from a generator. Of the entire house building process, this part has been the most frustrating, taxing, and downright unpleasant. After 4 months of back and forth, paying a neighbor $500 to sign the flipping paperwork to allow us to tie into a power pole on their property, we can finally move forward.

The power poles are now marked and will stop on the hill on the other side of the large oak in the photo below. From there it will be trenched underground up the hill so that tree can stay.

Hooray – you get to stay, big post oak in the pathway!

Once the power company comes out (which I hope will be very soon), it will still take 3 weeks until everything is done. Unfortunately, this is adding to delays on the project. Some work cannot be done until we have power, including installing the wood floors, which requires that the air conditioning be turned on to acclimate the wood to the environment prior to installation. When we signed our building contract last October, it was estimated that we would be in the house by May 1st. Now in mid-May, we are looking at 2 more months of construction and moving in mid-July. 🙁

But in the grand scheme of things, we are doing OK and are going to start packing up our rental house in anticipation of moving relatively soon. We’ve also had the chance to see our friends Betsy and Aldy on Mother’s Day and they brought us a beautiful “vase” of flowers from their garden, which we are still enjoying. We hope you are all doing well, and thanks again for stopping by!

Hugs, Libby