24 April 2014

So I ordered a snatch block and some felling wedges from amazon.com before I left Virginia, for delivery to our Leicester address.  Supposed to arrive on Monday or Tuesday this week.  Need the snatch block urgently in order to take down a large cherry tree and a big oak that are leaning right over the walkway and the sauna building site.  Got the UPS tracking number from Chree last night and found out this morning that UPS had given the parcels to the U.S. Postal Service for delivery. Since we haven’t yet established a mailing address at Fern Lake (who wants all that junk mail, anyway????), the Post Office sent the packages back to amazon marked “undeliverable”.  Grrrrr!!!!!  Spent the later part of the morning and early afternoon building a portable post on which to mount a mailbox…  Sean arrived at 3:30. We took out our sharp pencils and went methodically through the construction budget, finding ways to trim another $75K.  One of the first casualties was the surround sound system for the Living Room.  Fingers crossed that the remaining $25K delta somehow shows up as the construction moves forward.  Either that or Santa has to be REALLY good to us this year.  Jimmy Ploof (excavation subcontractor) and Larry Kaufmann (concrete foundation subcontractor) arrived at 6 to review their respective job assignments.  Very positive vibes from both of them… obviously they have a wealth of knowledge and experience.  Jimmy said to plan the ground breaking ceremony for 0730 on 5 May.  Can’t wait!  Sean, Jimmy, and Larry all left at 8.  Good thing Dolores has a microwave!