recipe for disaster

- 103 degree weather

- 8% humidity

- 4:30 pm

- mostly sunny

- me driving my car

- open windows

- 1 Nestles Crunch ice cream bar

Can you picture it??? it was messy... my shorts and T-shirt are soaking in the wash right now! (update- most of it came out; there's still a tiny spot on the bottom hem of the t-shirt- and it was new, darn it! I've definitely learned my lesson!)

I drove to Maricopa right after work, to check on the house- couldn't contain myself and wait till this weekend... After talking to Tom for a while on the phone at the house, I headed back home... but, I decided to stop at the local CVS store to get a bottle of water, since it was hot out! And, the ice cream freezer was right next to the cooler... so, there you go. It was tasty, the part I got to eat- when it all started to go to heck and drip all over me, I tossed the rest of it out the window. (...now I need to clean off a big ice cream smear on the side of my car, too!)

So, back to the house, and other stuff. Tom headed to Philadelphia yesterday for an emergency repair (the site had electrical damage from a lightning strike). He got everything fixed today, and will be flying back tomorrow evening. He was not figuring so much would get done so quickly on the house, so he was pleasantly surprised when I told him about the progress.

Progress such as: the electrical is all finished, the roof tiles are stacked on the roof, all the windows are in, and the exterior is clad in the styrofoam and chicken wire, ready to be stuccoed. And, if the frame inspection hasn't already happened, it should be soon, 'cause there were notations and cryptic messages written all over the floor, along with a barely legible (at least to me) list of things to do written on a scrap of corrugated cardboard tacked up in the garage. It's so exciting, and so trying to our patience, because we so badly want to move out of the apartment, but have to wait for it to be finished. Finishing it too fast might imply shoddy workmanship, but delays would be disappointing, too, so there's no happy medium.

Next comes drywall, after the roof tile settles the house. Apparently, this roof tile is so heavy that the tile needs to "settle" the house for a period of time before drywalling, otherwise the weight of the tile could crack the drywall.

in other news... I'm going in to work for a few hours tomorrow, and we'll probably watch the NASCAR race on TV later. The daytime high temperature is still above 100 F; there was a tiny chance of rain earlier this week, but we didn't get any of it. It's amazing how storms progress down here; it rained when we were at the local Wal-Mart (just enough to get the windshield dirty), but two blocks away, at home, it was sunny as it could be!

And of course, we'll probably drive to Maricopa so Tom can check out the house for himself... we'll take the camera, too, so look out for pictures soon!