8 January 2016

Sean and Tom Morrissey (a man of many talents who subcontracts to Goose Creek) arrived at 9.  Tom will be leading the house electrical wiring gymkhana, ably (?) assisted by yours truly.  We spent a couple of hours touring the premises and then going over the electrical plan.  Only two minor changes (so far) from that review.  Sean has become enamored with some LED lights manufactured by WAC Lighting (DISC light, part number FM-306-930-WT), which he just installed in another house Goose Creek is building.  So enamored, in fact, that he dragged me (not screaming too loudly) up to Vergennes after lunch to see them up close and personal.  Sean is right, those lights have some significant advantages over the traditional recessed lights we had planned to install.  So, since I was already halfway there, I then went up to Lowe’s in Burlington to procure 1,350 more feet of electrical wire, a whole passel of junction boxes, plus many other goodies.  That’ll make VISA sit up and take notice!  Stopped by to see Alverta on my way back south, good son that I am.

 

7 January 2016

Tom and Logan were here just before 7 and left at 3… headed for an emergency furnace replacement job; pity the poor soul whose house is without heat with the temperature just touching 32° today.  They spent the day installing more pieces of the air conditioning and house ventilation duct work.  So far their workmanship looks just fine… and you’ll be happy to know that they are NOT using duct tape on the duct work.  I spent the day once again finalizing (yeah, right!) the house electrical plan.  Just too exciting for words!

 

6 January 2016

Andy Tracy arrived just before 8 with two of his workers, Tom Hobbs and Logan Marsano.  We spent an hour reviewing where all the ductwork will be installed, then I left for an appointment in Middlebury.  Andy had departed by the time I returned to Fern Lake at 11:30.  Logan left mid-afternoon to build air boxes in the Boot Hill Metal Bending shop while Tom continued cutting holes in the main level floor through which the air conditioning ducts will run.  Somehow it seems a bit strange to be installing the air conditioning before installing the heating when the temperature is well below freezing outside.  As Tom was leaving just before sunset, he discovered that The Granite Group’s truck had visited sometime this afternoon and left $3,800 worth of plumbing and heating commodities on the ground outside the garage.  Needless to say, we moved the lot inside before Tom left.

5 January 2016

Woke up to ice starting to form on the lake.  Chree left for Virginia just after 7.  Cause and effect????  Hard to say…  By noon, the lake had completely frozen over.  That was FAST!!!!  Mid-morning went into Brandon and Middlebury to do errands.  Spent the afternoon updating the electrical plan based on Glen Peck’s lighting recommendations.

4 January 2016

Chree and I schlepped down to the Rutland DMV office first thing, arriving in time to be first in line.  An hour later we both had a (temporary) Vermont enhanced driver’s license (EDL), a (temporary) registration, and plates (GPM 986) for the Forester.  (Note: an EDL can be used, in lieu of a passport, to drive across the border to/from Canada and Mexico, but supposedly can’t be used to board an airplane.  So, with the EDL, you can drive to Montreal… but can’t fly there.  Our government at work!!!!)  After a quick pit stop back at Kate’s place, we drove into town to meet with a National Bank of Middlebury officer about obtaining a construction loan.  Sean met us there (briefly) to sign on the dotted line as the General Contractor.  Returned to Fern Lake (where the wind chill was – 9°F (yes, that’s a minus sign; Chree was sooooo not thrilled).  At precisely 11:58, when the azimuth of the sun was exactly 180° east of north (i.e., due south), I aligned the weather station so that it reads the wind direction accurately in degrees True… as opposed to degrees Perkins, which it had been doing since installation.  Glen Peck arrived right after lunch and spent a couple of hours helping us to design the lighting scheme for the house.  While in the midst of that discussion, Dennis Senesac from Ryans and Andy Tracy, owner of Boot Hill Metal Benders in Monkton (who Ryans uses for duct work installation), arrived unexpectedly (they were on the schedule for tomorrow morning).  So we quickly finished up thinking about electrical matters and then transitioned to thinking about air conditioning and ventilation matters.  In the afternoon mail, we finally got a bill from Spafford’s for installation of the well pump and associated piping, a job that was done in early July last year.

3 January 2016

Snow flurries all day.  Chree and I assembled the Davis Instruments Vantage Vue^® professional-quality weather station that Santa brought me for Christmas.  The data that sensor suite provides is accurate enough that NOAA will accept it for forecasting purposes.  The sensor package eventually will be mounted on the sun room roof, but, as the roof was slick with snow today, we elected to set it up temporarily over top of the septic tank on the west side of the house.  Merry (super generous person that she is) gave Chree the 1968 edition of Julia Child’s The French Chef Cookbook for Christmas.  So, in what I hope will become a long-running tradition, Chree made salpicon de volaille (diced chicken in white wine sauce, for those of you whose French is a little rusty) for the four of us to have for dinner.  The Lapidii, just back from 10 days in Jamaica, were looking decidedly tanned.  The dinner, as always when Chree does the cooking, was delicious… and fun.

 

2 January 2016

After New Year’s festivities with Frank, Fran, and Anne in Connecticut (which included a foray into New York City to see Kate starring in Shear Madness) followed by an overnight visit with Katy, Alex, and Devin in Massachusetts, Chree and I drove up to Manchester, NH in the Tacoma to take possession of her new 2016 Subaru Forester 2.5i Premium, red in color.  (And, yes, the car does have heated seats!)  We then convoyed to Fern Lake, arriving mid-afternoon, to find that Kate (kind soul that she is) had left the heat on for us in her house.  Only an inch or two of white stuff, mostly ice, left on our driveway (Kate’s had been plowed).  No problem for two 4WD / AWD vehicles, even without studded snow tires.  Snow on the house roof had about half slid off.  The inside of our house was a water pipe-friendly 40°, just as expected.  The lake, indicating 35°F two feet below the surface (which was 18″ below the top of the dock), had nary an ice crystal.