Santa Likes Me

Tried out my new toy tonight. We got 10 inches of snow on Christmas, so I decided finally to buy a snow blower. I bought a 12 HP 33 inch w X 23 inch h beast. 6 forward gears and 2 reverse. It's way overkill for the current drive, but will come in handy for the new house.

It was delivered today. Some minor prep setup required. Just in time, I got it ready. We got another 8-10 inches today.



It took a little effort getting used to the controls, and how to avoid getting a facefull of snow when I turned into the wind. Once I got used to it, things went pretty quick The snow gets thrown up to 40 feet. I took it out to the street to try some heavy compact stuff. Didn't slow down at all.

We had a nice dinner for Christmas. Missed the folks back in Chicago. Mom and Dad had a houseful, sounds like. Lori likes her new warm-up suit. It matches the one she's wearing, but the new one is better. Thanks Mom.



New House Update: Texturing has started, and in fact the upper level is already done. Haven't been there to see. They will start placing the "sleeper" boards on the floor, and place the heating tubes between. The floor boards get nailed to the sleepers.

Drywall

The drywall is up. The next step is texturing, basically covering up the screw holes and heads, taping the spaces between the drywall boards, and smearing plaster over everything. I went through the house today to find outlets that were mistakenly covered. I had gone through the house already and took about 150 pictures of all the wiring, vents, pipes, etc so when these mistakes got made it wouldn't take too much figuring to locate the covered item. However, the house looks a lot different now that everything is covered and it took some 3 dimensional thinking to remember what wall every picture was of. I found several covered outlets. No covered vents as far as I know.
On top is the great room as viewd from the entry foyer.





Vew into the kitchen from the hall/formal dining



View of the kitchen area from the great room.


More pictures at Flickr. Click on the pictures for more info.

Christmas Potluck at the Office

The office had the Holiday decorations in place for the interclinic contest. Word is pending on the final judging. Great job!
We had a potluck with a gift exchange. Alcohol seemed to be the gift of choice, giving and receiving. I think the gin, tequila, and Baily's all were traded 3 times.



Click the link for a slideshow at Flickr.