Now the SHOUTcast server (running out on the Internet somewhere with a big fat pipe) will be able to make a single connection to the stream created by the Amarok Shouter script. To use the SHOUTcast server as a relay, simply set the "RelayServer" and "RelayPort" to the appropriate values (e.g. the WAN IP address at home and the port the Amarok Shouter script is using). If applicable, be sure to configure the home firewall/nat router to forward port 8000 traffic to the appropriate LAN IP address. Easy cheesy.

After all that, a stream of the music playing on my home computer is available to anyone who would like to listen in.

Listening to my desktop computer stream on iTunes. Go to the "Advanced" menu. Click on "Open Stream..." and type the following URL into the text entry box.

http://shoutcast.berrett.org:8000/listen.pls

Listening to my desktop computer stream on Winamp. Go to the "File" menu. Click on "Play URL..." and type the following URL into the text entry box.

http://shoutcast.berrett.org:8000/listen.pls

Listening to my desktop computer stream on Windows Media Player. Go to the "File" menu. Click on "Play URL..." and type the following URL into the text entry box.

http://rus.berrett.org/blogmedia/audio/desktop_stream.asx

Have a look at what is currently playing before tuning in... I typically play a lot of classical music, Dead Can Dance, Sigur Rós, and albums I've purchased from Magnatune. My latest purchase is the Once Motion Picture Soundtrack, so that should be in the queue somewhere. E-mail me your request. Heh.

(Update Fri Jan 4 22:51:11 PST 2008 // added Windows Media Player instructions)

Product Review: Preval Spray Gun
We have been working hard (and late into the night) deep cleaning rooms on the second floor before we move furniture back into our home: cleaning carpets, wiping walls, installing closet shelving, etc. We have also been doing paint touch-ups here and there. Wall touch ups are easy enough with latex paint, but trim touch ups on the oil-based enamel are a bit tricky... at least, if a smooth brush-stroke-free finish is desired. Fortunately, I stumbled upon the Preval Spray Gun at Home Depot. The Preval spray gun comes with a canister of some kind of aerosol and a screw-top glass jar to use for any paint. I bought two of these and loaded up one jar with Eliana's red trim color and the other jar with the off-white trim color we use throughout the rest of our home. I'm very pleased with the results - a nice smooth even finish with no brush marks. I'm going to buy another one of these and dedicate it for use with black trim touch-ups around my kitchen.

Also, these units are priced less than $5 (the cartridge refills are priced less than $4) - so they are a great value.

Summary: A handy little spray gun that produces fabulous results. A must-have!

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Beam Façade and Roof Started
We are are wrapping our less-than-attractive glue-lam beams with an ash façade. The façade will feature a "hand-hewn" look and include two mock mortise and tenon joints (each with six 2" dowel pins). The finish carpenters started today to assemble the 32" wide sides of the ridge beam façade by joining together ash planking material. They assembled a 16 foot long table for the task. See below:

Also, the 1-man roofing crew (Jerry) started installing the fake slate roof today. Here is a picture of the small section of roof on the back side of the house... just below the dormers.

"Hello?! Hello?!"
We say grace on our food at every meal and at every meal - and I mean every meal - just as soon as we bow our heads, close our eyes, and start to pray Olivia starts yelling:

"Hello?! Hello?! Hello?!"

She takes it up a decibel level if you try and shush her.

Christmas Morning
Here are the pictures... in the order that they were taken. The order of events (generally speaking) on Christmas morning is: open stockings, then get dressed and eat breakfast, open Santa gifts, and finally open the family gifts.

Eliana's favorite gift was the mailbox and home-made packages, parcels, and letters that we made for her. Berkeley loved his legos (we spent the afternoon building the house pictured on the box). Olivia liked the candy in her stocking the best.

Getting Ready for Christmas
Kristy and the kids spent the day making the final preparations for Christmas. Our neighbor Scott came over to play with Berkeley and Eliana. While he was here, the four kids made some cookies for Santa.

The cookies were placed next to the tree before the kids went to bed. Kristy added the presents after they were asleep. We couldn't keep any presents under the tree this year (because of Olivia's happy hands), so all of the gifts - not just the Santa gifts - came out for the first time tonight. It should be fun tomorrow!

Roast Pork with Blackberry Mustard Sauce and Gingered Apples
This meal got high marks from our party guests this evening. I improvised pretty much all of it after reading a few recipes in books by Williams-Sonoma, the ex-con Martha Stewart, as well as on-line. Here it is - to the best of my recollection:

For the pork roast:

one 3-4 lb pork rib roast
about 1 tbs thyme
about 1 tsp ground ginger
about 1 tsp ground mustard
about 1 tsp ground sea salt
about 1 tsp ground pepper
about 1 tsp garlic powder
about ½ tsp cumin
about ¼ tsp cardamon
olive oil

Pre-heat oven to 350°. Combine spices. Rub spice mixture on rib roast (reserve about 1 tbs of the mixture for the blackberry mustard sauce - see below). Heat olive oil in a non-stick frying pan. Brown pork roast in frying pan. Place roast in oven and cook until meat thermometer reads 160°, or approximately 2-2½ hours. Baste pork roast with blackberry mustard sauce (see below) in oven as roast nears the end of the roasting time and once again after the roast has been removed from the oven. Let roast stand for 15 minutes before serving.

The blackberry mustard sauce:

about 1½ cups blackberries
about 3 tbs stone ground mustard
about ½ cup fruit juice (I used the Kirkland/Hansen "Berry Blaze" - available at Costco)
about ½ cup white wine (I used Ariel Chardonnay - available at Trader Joe's)
about 1 tbs spice mixture (see above)
about 1-2 tsp cornstarch

Combine all ingredients except cornstarch in a 1-quart saucepan. Bring to boil, stirring occasionally to break up blackberries. Strain mixture to remove seeds (optional). Combine cornstarch with about one or two tablespoons of the hot liquid and mix thoroughly to remove clumps. Add cornstarch mixture to sauce and bring to boil stirring constantly. Baste roast with thickened sauce (see above). Serve remaining sauce on table as a condiment (yum yum!).

For the gingered apples:

2-3 gala or fuji apples, sliced (about 1 pound)
4 tbs unsalted butter
2 tbs brown sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tbs blackberry mustard sauce (see above)
1 tbs water

In a 12-inch skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Add apple slices and sauté, stirring and tossing, for about 3-4 minutes. Add brown sugar and ginger and continue to sauté for another 5 minutes. Reduce heat, add blackberry mustard sauce and water. Simmer until apples are almost tender and translucent around the edges - about 5-10 more minutes.

Slice roast. Serve with blackberry mustard sauce, gingered apples, and Biff's Roasted Vegetables (omit the rosemary).

(Note: many ingredient amounts are approximated until I can replicate the recipe with exact measurements).

Sorenson Christmas Party
We hosted a Sorenson get-together at our house this evening for dinner, games, and a gift exchange. It has been quite some time since we have hosted any sort of party at our home... dating back to Berkeley and Olivia's Birthday Hoedown in July (just over 5 months ago). It was nice to have the extended family back in the home for an event.

Here are a handful of pictures:

Learning Ajax
A couple of days ago, I inserted "Now Playing" information on my blog. As I noted, it's not extremely useful (you cannot "listen in") - it's just geeky. I added a bit of pizazz to the feature by adding a pop-up "tooltip" that displays a list of detailed information about the track currently playing. The information includes the track title, the artist, the album, track number, track length, and a jpeg image of the cover art as well. Again... not extremely useful, just geeky. Go ahead and move your mouse over the "Now Playing" graphic in the upper right corner of this blog - then wait for half a second for the information to display.

The information in the pop-up window is populated via an asynchronous javascript call to a CGI script that just dumps the contents of a text file. There is nothing really novel about the system (it was extremely easy to accomplish), but this is my first experience using Ajax programming. Learning Ajax is one of those items on my long "To Do" list of stuff I should learn to keep my technical skills "fresh" (just in case I never need to start "fresh" at a new company). So I'm very pleased I got off to a successful start after only a couple of hours reading some on-line tutorials.

If interested in the code that accomplishes the effect, then you can view source... here are the relevant parts of the HTML:

<div id="nowplayingtooltip"></div>
<div class="nowplaying">What I'm listening to:<br/>
<a onMouseOver="getNewContent(); ddrivetip('loading... please wait')"
  onMouseOut="hideddrivetip()" onClick="openWindow(this.href, 420, 180); return false"
  href="http://rus.berrett.org/now_playing/"><img id="nowplayingimg" border="0"
  src="http://rus.berrett.org/now_playing/nowplaying.png"></a>
</div>


My blog's javascript code is here. The relevant section is labeled "ajax stuff".

Note: the pop-up includes a jpeg image of the cover art. But for whatever reason the image is not displayed in MS Internet Explorer (5, 6, or 7). Not sure why. It works great in Firefox though. *shrug*

(Update Fri Dec 28 10:05:32 PST 2007 // my -> by)

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Progress Update
The finish carpenters roughed installed the cabinets today and have now finished up pretty much everything except for wrapping the beams (in ash). Here are a couple of pictures:

The roof material was delivered today and staged on the roof. The installation will likely start after Christmas.

Our chimney was completed a couple of weeks ago, but I did not post any pictures of it. So here are a couple of pictures to enjoy.

Now Playing on Amarok
I have been having a lot of fun playing around with amarok these past few days, specifically the custom script support (open source software kicks arse!). I found a handy little amarok script called "amarokNowPlaying" that will build a PNG image of the currently playing song. Furthermore, it will scp (of ftp) the image to any valid network destination, e.g. a remote web server. At the top right of my blog you can now review the currently playing track I'm listening to on my desktop computer. Is that useful information? Probably not.

I'll work on streaming a podcast sometime in the future. That would be cool.

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Progress Update
The stair guy and the finish carpentry crew continue to plug away at the seemingly endless amount of work that still needs to be done. The new stair rail looks great from top to bottom. I snapped a few pictures (shown below, click to enlarge) of a few of the stair elements. The finish carpenters have now pretty much completed all of the batten work on the walls and will start on the cabinetry tomorrow.

(Update Thu Dec 27 16:32:37 PST 2007 // look -> looks)

Building Polaroid Thumbnails with ImageMagick
My brother Brent recently (re-)started publishing to his blog. He made a comment to me a few days ago about how much time it was taking him to create a blosxom entry that includes images; building the thumbnails, creating the html for the entry, etc. He uses blosxom - the same blog engine that I use. I told him about a perl script I wrote and have been using ("thumbs") that will take a set of images and create small 100 pixel high thumbnails and build a blosxom-ready text file with the html all nicely built automagically.

Well, that was all well and good, but Brent had something better in mind. He thought that it would be cool to have "polaroid-like" looking thumbnails... like the ones shown in ImageMagick documentation (see here). So over the past few evenings I set to the task of reading the ImageMagick documentation and then converting my plain 'old thumbnail generating script, "thumbs", into one that would build cool polaroid-like thumbnails... complete with a caption, the slight rotation, and the drop shadow. I'm happy to report it is done... and I have rebuilt all of the previously published entries in December (that included family pictures) to use the new polaroid-like thumbnails. See here, here, here, here, and here. (Pretty cool eh?)

The script does little more than issue a handful of ImageMagick commands in series. But hat tip to my brother Brent for bringing this capability of ImageMagick to my attention. The script is yours to download if you like, it is simply called: "polaroids". There should be enough documentation in the script itself, but feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions.

Oh... the caption for each polaroid... what text is used for the caption itself? The caption text is globbed from the "Comment" field embedded within the jpeg image. There are probably several programs on Microsoft Windows or Mac OSX that you can use to set the Comment field. I don't know what those programs might be because I use Linux on my desktop and FreeBSD on my web server... so I use a command line tool called "jhead".

To install jhead on the Ubuntu desktop, type this:

sudo apt-get install jhead

To install jhead on a FreeBSD server, then do this:

cd /usr/ports/graphics/jhead
sudo make install

To use jhead to set a Comment for a jpeg image, then type something like this:

jhead -ce image.jpg

or for multiple images:

jhead -ce *.jpg

jhead will even preserve the file modification date when writing the comment to an image. This is a nice bonus since I use a script, "touchjpgs", to set the image file modification date to match that of when the photo was taken. The file modification date is used by my "polaroids" script to build a file name for the blosxom text file.

Happy photo blogging!

Movie Review: Bewitched

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Hardwood Finish
The hardwood flooring crew has been busy applying the first coat of finish on the floor today. The smell is pretty strong and also hard on the eyes. I holed up in my office all day and kept the door closed (and used a towel at the bottom of the door to keep my office air tight). After I finished up at work, I drove over here to the Thurmond's house. We are spending the night here to avoid the fumes. By the time we return, the finish should be dry and the floor will have been papered so that the finish carpenters and Paul the stair guy can return and continue work. So we won't even get to see the floor until after the finish carpentry is done... which appears will not be done until after the first of the year.

Christmas Newsletter 2007
Kristy and I stayed up late and hammered out the labels for the 160 or so Christmas cards we are sending out this year. We are using the Costco on-line photo service to build an informal card using this picture (taken in Colorado at Grandma Kiser's 90th birthday party). Compared to our card last year (which included a copy of our 2006 family portrait), this year's card is pretty weak by comparison. That's a shame.

We also built our annual on-line newsletter, check it out:

Christmas Newsletter 2007

Whew! I'm glad that's done.

(Update Thu Dec 27 10:25:17 PST 2007 // fixed html for 2006 portrait pop-up)

Beverage Review: Egg Nog: Organic Valley
I have previously published high praise for the Wilcox Farms Egg Nog - going so far to say that it was my favorite egg nog. It is very good nog, but the egg nog I tried today from Organic Valley set a new bar. It is delightfully light and maintains a perfect balance between the nutmeg and the vanilla. Even better, it is not too sweet and the viscosity (the one deficit of the Wilcox Farms brand) is perfect - not too thick, not too thin. This is a seasonal item, so be sure to run out and get some before you have to wait until next year. It's worth it.

Summary: Santa's favorite egg nog.

Christmas Family Pictures
We took a few pictures of ourselves today sitting around the newly decorated Christmas Tree. Our goal was to take something that we could use for our Christmas card mailer this year... but then I remembered that I don't have a remote for the 30D, and I can't find the old Powershot G2. Oh well.

Trimming the Christmas Tree
Berkeley and I bought a tree last night on our way home from a boy's night out bowling. We trimmed it today. Here are a couple of pictures. One with the tree on it's own and the other that includes the adjacent smaller tree and Playmobil nativity set.

(Update Tue Dec 18 07:24:49 PST 2007 // replaced pictures with better ones)

Software Review: Amarok
I have been an Ubuntu convert for almost 7 months now. I really like the OS. But before today, I had been using the same XMMS software to play audio files on my FreeBSD/Enlightenment setup. XMMS is an OK app; it plays audio and doesn't get in the way while doing so - nothing fancy. I've been trying to find a substitute that is a bit more feature rich, but have not found anything that isn't clunky. A friend of mine has recently been talking up Amarok on a mailing list I subscribe to - so I decided to download it and give it a whirl today.

I have only been playing with it for about an hour, but my first impressions are very good. The selling point for me is a built-in integration with the Magnatune store ("we are not evil"). Since I discovered Magnatune a little over two years ago, it has become one of my favorite haunting grounds. I can browse and listen to the Magnatune collection quickly since the entire collection is displayed as if it were a collection of albums on my own computer. This is a very nice surprise.

Another thing I love about Amarok is that it does not force me to flatten my music heirarchy into a unmanageable view showing all of my music on a single page (like iTunes does). Amarok instead "does the right thing" and builds a "tree-like" view of my music with each artist and album represented as collapsible branches. Since I have my music CDs ripped and stored by album this approach is perfectly suited to how I store my music. When I built an Amarok "collection" out of my "albums" music directory, Amarok quickly indexed my collection (using the built-in SQLite) and displayed it sorted by album using an obvious collapsible tree/branch view. Amarok also downloaded the album covers off of amazon (the ones it could find anyway) with just the click of a button (yes, I know iTunes does this too). In just a matter of about a half an hour, I had the remaining covers located (using wikipedia) and saved. Nice.

My one grievance right now is the single-click-to-open behavior in the file manager. Everything in a GNOME file manager is double-click-to-open... so there is an adjustment I'll need to make here (do all KDE-based apps behave this way?).

I have not explored the script extensions and media device support in Amarok just yet. But I'm out of time for tonight. More later I'm sure.

Summary: Fantastic stuff. I'm very pleased with Amarok.

(Update Mon Dec 24 20:13:10 PST 2007 // select -> click)

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Stain
The hardwood flooring crew applied the stain today. I've been carefully watching them work. I don't want a repeat of our previous experience with hardwood flooring. I can't say I'm overwhelmed by the results so far. There are lots of swirl marks showing up after the stain has been applied up in the attic. After I expressed my concerns, the crew tried to "buff" the stain into the wood in the kid's study. The swirl marks are gone, but the buffing locked the grain and as a result the wood did not get very dark at all. It almost seems like we will have to live with some scratches if we want our light ash to get as dark as we would like it. The crew will be back tomorrow and try to get better results.

Olivia's New Bed
When we moved back into our home on December 1st, Olivia moved into her new pink room. We did not set up the crib (it is buried behind loads of other furniture in Berkeley's room), instead she has been sleeping on an air mattress. Today Olivia's new "big girl" mattress was delivered. She seems to have taken to it quite well.

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Floors Sanded and Filled
The hardwood floors were sanded and filled today. The hardwood flooring crew are the only workers here... the rest of the workers have vacated in front of the staining and finishing process that will start tomorrow and continue through next week. I took the opportunity of a relatively "clean" working environment to take a few pictures to show the progress that had been made over the past week.

Lost Gum
While driving the kids around today doing this and that, Eliana expressed concern over a lost item.

"Daddy, can you help me?"

"Yes, of course."

"I can't find my gum."

Not exactly something that a parent would like to hear. I asked her if she swallowed it. She said she didn't. I hope I find the gum before it gets ground into the car carpet or something.

(Update Mon Dec 24 15:36:03 PST 2007 //someone -> something)

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Hardwood Floor Installation Started
The hardwood floor installation started today. It should take a couple of days to get them all installed. The entire attic is getting hardwood floor with the exception of the bathroom (tile), the kids playhouse (carpet), and a small area in front of the wet bar (tile). We are also having hardwoods installed in the new kids study on the second floor.

Secret Sheep
For FHE tonight Kristy came up with an activity we called "Secret Sheep" (or as Eliana pronounced it "Secret Seep") based on the concept of service to others. Kristy gave us each a sheet of six sheep to color. Then we cut the paper into six cards (one sheep per card) and set about the house to try and find things to do for someone else in "secret". After the task was completed, we were instructed to leave one of the "secret sheep" at the scene of the service. The kids loved it - it was a fun (and meaningful) activity.

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Stair Rails and Newell Posts Installed
The stair guy (Paul) has now installed all of the new stair rails and newell posts. They look great. I'm a bit concerned about our reluctant decision to go with red oak material for the rails (and the treads). The thinking here was that rails and treads made from red oak are in stock and have a similar grain to ash. The dark stain will make the minor differences in grain seem inconsequential, especially since there is no areas where the treads and the rail are exactly side by side against the ash flooring. Furthermore, the ash rails and treads are a custom job that would require 1) more money to manufacture, and 2) more time to manufacture. I think because we were pressed for time that we decided to go with the oak. I hope we don't regret that decision.

And of course, I'll always know the material is different regardless of how well it looks. But I'm crazy (obsessive) about such things.

December Trip to Utah 2007: Day 3: Back at Home
We concluded our short trip to Utah today. We attended Church and had dinner with the folks and then hopped a flight back to Seattle in the evening. Olivia did not travel very well on the way back. She does not really watch movies/TV yet - and she refused to sleep - so we did our best to keep her busy and occupied in our seats.

We returned home to find that our house project better off than we left it (what a relief!). The brick façade that was installed on both the end gable walls looks fantastic! I'll snap some pictures later and post them here.

December Trip to Utah 2007: Day 2: Snow Play
It snowed last night and for much of the day today as well. The kids spent most of the morning outside playing in the snow:

We spent lunch at Robert and Jessica's place and watched Princess Bride. It was fun to see them. In the evening we attended the Christmas party and my Mom and Dad's church. At the party, the kids were able to see Santa again.

(Update Thu Dec 20 07:24:26 PST 2007 // wrapped the a table around the images for the benefit of getting a background color behind the gif thumbnails in the rss feed)

December Trip to Utah 2007: Day 1: Visit from Santa
We traveled to Utah after school let out; we arrived at my folks place this evening just in time for the annual Berrett Christmas party. Santa was the special guest at the party and brought some gifts for all of the kids/cousins. Berkeley and Eliana are entering the peak years of belief in the Santa mythos, so they were very excited about the prospect of sharing their short wish list with the man in red.

Here are some pictures:

Since this party is something my folks host every year, I have set up a "Santa Gallery" link to isolate the pictures that are taken at each "Santa Party". The gallery includes years that span back to 2005.

(Update Mon Dec 17 07:37:15 PST 2007 // converted thumbnails from png images to gif images)
(Update Wed Dec 19 07:22:28 PST 2007 // added captions to thumbnails)

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Progress Update
Here are some quick pictures detailing the progress of the attic. We are off to Utah tonight, so I snapped these with the intent to share with family over the weekend.

	Paul the stair guy continues to quietly make progress on the new stair rail system that will span from the first floor all the way up to the attic. He has set all of the newell posts in the attic and has started to install the rail. The cast iron pickets will not be installed until after the floor has been sanded, stained, and finished. The large newell posts match the existing design.
	Dave the mason and his one-man crew (Jason) have started placing the brick on the interior of the north gable wall. The corner pieces are placed around the window to frame the four windows. With the brick treatment, the north gable wall will definitely be the focal point of the new room. It is the first wall that is seen as one enters the attic from the stairwell. The brick really makes this wall look great.
	This is a picture of the detail the finish carpenters are putting on the attic walls and on the walls in the rear dormers in particular. The thicker pieces of particle board around the base are where our custom window seat cabinets will be installed. The battens will be trimmed to fit into the spaces between the particle board and the upper rail. The window seat cabinets will double as twin beds (with a twin bed trundle) and are being manufactured by Kenis Loven Construction, the same outfit that did the murphy bed and other custom cabinetry in Kristy's office.

Symphony Review: Holiday Pops
We attended the second concert in our Pops series at the symphony tonight. We decided to buy some extra tickets for the Thurmonds to thank them for putting up with us for the past 3 months and took them out to dinner too (at nearby Wild Ginger). After we took our seats at Benaroya, I glanced down to the stage from our seats about 40 rows back. Between our seats and the stage was a sea of white! I couldn't believe it. By the end of the night I realized that if we had not invited the Thurmonds along, we would have likely been the youngest couple in attendance. Maybe "Pops" classical music is code for "old people" classical music. Or it could have been the Thursday evening earlier start time.

In any case, the program (conducted by Jeff Tyzik) was hit and miss. There were some wonderful pieces, among which the most notable were "Do You Hear What I Hear" (with vocals by Doug LaBrecque) and "Wexford Carol/Christmas Reel". But some of the other stuff, many that were arranged or written by Tyzik himself were difficult to sit through (specifically the awful "12 Gifts of Christmas" which Mr. LaBrecque assured us would be a "rare treat").

There were quite a few folks that walked out early. Given the composition of the audience, I wondered to myself as each one left if they were leaving because they didn't care for the music or if a certain bedtime hour had been reached. It was a vexing question and I kept pondering on the answer as we exited Benaroya Hall and shuffled past the half-dozen or so large chartered buses that were parked on 3rd Avenue waiting for concert-goers to return. It was a bit of a surreal night.

Next year we will skip the Holiday Pops and hit the Ninth instead. Actually, we may still go to the Ninth. I better check on ticket availability.

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: 10 Trucks
I counted 10 trucks parked out in front of my house today. That is the new high water mark. It's encouraging to see so many people on the job. Lots of work is getting done.

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Cost per Square Foot
I received our bill for the work done last month... it was substantial. I had budgeted about $200/sf for our 1200 sq ft expansion. It looks like it will cost about $250/sf... which is going rate for real estate in our area (or in other words, $250/sf is what we would pay were we to buy a bigger house instead of adding on). We aren't really doing this project to add value to our home in order to sell it, but I would still like to keep the budget within a reasonable limit. So how much are we spending on this project? Do the math: $250/sf * 1200sf = $300k ... which is $60k more than I had planned on spending (or roughly the equivalent of a new Mercedes GL320CDI).

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Stairs and Masonry Started
The stair guy started working on the new stair rail system. We had two companies bid on the job... we decided to go with the cheaper one that came in at $13k(!). I will say this, the stair guy is methodical. He is very careful to measure everything about 3 times before making a cut. I watched him for several minutes throughout the day. His name is Paul. He speaks really quietly (almost in a whisper) and keeps to himself. He just keeps his head down and does his job. Fine by me. He installed the skirt board and set three newell posts today.

The mason started today also... and he is the complete opposite of the stair guy. The mason (Dave Bartlett of Bartlett Masonry) is very talkative (if you get him going) and has a loud booming voice. He has a father of young kids (like me) and loves to talk about his family. Very nice guy. He prepped both of the end gable walls today and will start placing the thin brick façade tomorrow. Cool.

Here is a picture snapped today of the attic interior today. The new newell posts are shown in the foreground and the thin layer of mortar placed on the gable wall interior.

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Chimney Demolition
Due to the discovery of wet rot on the chimney, we have to replace the rock on the entire span and part of the framing. Baxton came out to do the demolition today... he'll finish it up tomorrow and we'll have the mason put new rock on it next week. Bob Niemann of Specialized Homes (the original builder) and I came to an agreement on how to split the cost. He's going to cover the framing costs and we are going to pay for the masonry. I guess I could have tried to get him to pay for some of the masonry, but I'm just happy to get anything out of the builder without going through a messy court process. So that's that.

Here are a couple pictures I snapped of the base of the chimney on the deteriorated corner.

Note the earthworm having some of our chimney exterior wall for lunch. Uh... yuck.

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Hardwoods Installed
The hardwood crew showed up yesterday and started to install the hardwoods in the kids study and in the attic. They finished up the job today.

Note: The stair material arrived today... we staged it in the kids study for now.

Home Renovation Project: Attic Conversion: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
It rained last night and continued this morning. After both Kristy and I took the kids to school (something I had been doing exclusively for the last few months), we came back home to see our contractor fiddling up on the roof. Not a good sign. It turns out there has been a leak, and the ceilings in Eliana's newly restored room are ruined (again). Needless to say, we were completely outraged. We have now abandoned Eliana's room... yet again... for the foreseeable future.

First Day Home
Today was the first time we attended Church together as a family for quite some time. The kids are all finally healthy again. We had a nice relaxing day and the kids are are having fun being home again and playing with their own toys. I put in a pot roast before Church and we came home to a wonderful aroma of simmering meat, onions, and potatoes.

Back at Home... Snow!
We moved back home today... it's good to be back. It snowed in the morning. Here are some pictures of the kids playing in the back yard:

(Update Mon Dec 17 07:37:15 PST 2007 // converted thumbnails from png images to gif images)