New walls and a new home

Two things to report this time. First, the basement walls are in. You can see in the image below that the beginning of the frame has been put in as well. In the center of the image you can see the egress window in the corner of the basement. Off the picture to the right, or front of the house, is where the basement bathroom will be, eventually.

Also, we officially moved out of the apartment and into our friend's house. We have a nice room, it's cozy but we've got all we need to survive, that is to say we have our TiVo in the room. As of right now, everything we own is in two 10x10 rooms. It will be nice to save the 3-4 months worth of rent for moving into the house and buying appliances and the like.

On that note, we recently helped our friends move into their new house in Milan, built by the same builder. Seeing them put in new light fixtures, paint their rooms, and start to get settled has gotten us pretty fired up for our place. We'll use the next couple months to slowly buy the items we need (towel racks, light fixtures, speaker wire, flat panel monitors, etc.) That will help lessen the blow come end of Jan.

Couple random notes: Third Day's new album comes out tomorrow. If you haven't heard them, check them out (www.thirdday.com). They're a great Christian band, somewhat akin to Black Crowes, I guess. Southern rock sound. I think they have a preview of the album on the site. I'm pretty anxious to see "Jarhead" when it comes out. Amy's busy most of this week so I might try to catch it Saturday night.

The first guy that did this died...

I have to take time out from the house news (more to come on that shortly, we have basement walls!) to brag about my wife for a day.

On Sunday Amy and my brother-in-law Al ran and finished the Detroit Free Press Marathon in downtown Detroit. For those of you that don't know, that's 26.2 miles (or as we found out on our way down there, the distance from our apartment in Ann Arbor to Melvindale). And for a bit of history, the first guy to run that distance was named Pheidippides. He ran from the plain of Marathon to Athens to tell of the Greek army's victory over the Persian army. Then he died.

So armed with that knowledge we headed to the Ren Cen Saturday night to meet with the other people running for Team in Training. Team in Training is a group that supports the Lukemia and Lymphoma Society and Amy was able to raise more than $1,300 prior to the marathon. In all, 191 runners raised $350,000 for the society. See her blog for more on who she was running for and his story.

There was a pasta dinner that night at the hotel and we headed to bed early. Ok, so we watched the Pistons first, but still asleep by 11, we were after all getting up at 5:40 a.m.

The alarm came early, but Amy was really fired up when we got up. She had been training for this for months, and faced lots of setbacks (couple of illnesses, a broken foot, etc.) that limited her in how much she could train. She had never ran more than 13 miles prior to Sunday. Heading into the day, she wasn't even sure she how much she could run. She was determined to finish, however.

Fast forward a bit to 7:30 a.m. outside of Comerica Park. The horn sounded and 13,000 people ran past me as I waited to see Al and Amy run by. About 12 minutes after the official "start" here they came (the MC of the race was kind enough to note that by the time Amy and Al went by the start line, the lead pack was already at mile 2).

For those of you who have watched cross country races before, being a spectator for a distance race is somewhat of a challenge. But I was amazed how much fun I had wandering around downtown trying to find Amy and Al. I was able to see them four times in the first 14 miles. The course took them away from downtown to Old Tiger Stadium and Corktown, over the Ambassador Bridge into Windsor, through the tunnel back into the US (the only underwater marathon in the world), back up toward Ford Field, then away from downtown again to Belle Isle, around Belle Isle and back to the finish through the tunnel and onto the turf at Ford Field.

Amy finished in just over five hours and was able to run the entire 26.2 miles. Al came in about 20 minutes later. Both of them were running in their first marathons and both finished, an amazing accomplishment. Special thanks from Amy to my sister and her kids Matt and Jacob who staked out the Belle Isle bridge to watch from. They made a flag with a pig and a cross on it (see her blog for more race photos and some random pics of Jennifer Garner running). They got to see their dad and Amy at miles 17 and 20, and Amy has remarked that seeing them twice made it possible for her to finish.

She was amazingly sore, still is. But I couldn't be more proud of her. She's taking the soreness like a trooper, with a little help from me. For all those who called with encouragement, prayed, donated, thought of her on Sunday, or helped in any way, I want to say thank you. Amy is so thankful to have friends and family like you around her. Al especially, having someone to train with, complain about soreness with, and run with made this such a more rewarding experience for her. You guys are the best.



Amy on Woodward at mile 13.5 with Compuware in the background.

The future home theater

We have a basement. As you can see in the image below, our basement has been dug. We're really fired up to see things moving along. As you can see, the footings for the outer walls are in, the pads for the support beams are in, and the general shape of the house is taking form.

What might be harder to see in this picture is the eventual state-of-the-art home theatre that will grace our basement (please note the fancy, "re" spelling of theatre, no it's not because I'm Canadian). Movie night in Milan, baby! We're talking 100-inch screen, projecter in the ceiling, totally wired together. Donations will be accepted in return for free screenings. I'm working on a deal with Lucasfilm as we speak.

Anyhow, next up should be basement walls. The forms for the concrete walls were sitting right next to the hole, so I'm guessing that's coming pretty soon.

By the way, for any State fans reading this, your football team is now 4-2 instead of 6-0 strictly because of coacing. The players on that team are 6-0. Stupid game...

It has begun...

A hole, we have a hole! Well, a small one right now, the've only dug for sewage, but it's something. Anyhow, tomorrow we're supposed to have a bigger hole. That's right, the building of the house has begun. Our basement is scheduled to be dug tomorrow, and the basement floor and walls poured on Monday. Footings to follow shortly thereafter.

Today we met with the construction manager to go over site plan, floor plan and make final choices on cable outlets, etc. It's really starting to happen. Last week we got the official letter from our lender telling us we had indeed been approved (confirming what the pre-approval told us). We'll meet with the construction manager again in later Nov., when the house should be framed. He also hopes to have the driveway and sidewalks poured before winter really hits, so let's hope we have a tame early winter season.

Due to the building taking place in winter, it's hard to pinpoint a exact finish date, but we're still hoping for mid-Jan. Poor weather could push that in early Feb.

We'll be going by the site later tonight so I'll post some pics then.

It's Official

We went by our homesite after church today (excellent sermon/worship time BTW) and the picture below tells the whole story.

That's right, it's a big ol' SOLD sign on our homesite. Still haven't dug any holes yet on our site, but across the street there was a bulldozer that looked like it had moved some earth this past week. I guess that's progress. The pic below shows our curb and the cutout where our driveway will be. As our garage is on the right, the house will sit to the left outside the edge of this picture. The lot also goes back 144 feet. While I've never owned a home before, I do know that is nearly 50 yards, and that seems like a pretty big yard to me. It's also 60-some feet wide. I think that means cutting the lawn will be a good workout. Maybe homeowners in Arizona have it right, 15 square feet of lawn and then rocks for a yard. Of course the 100 degree heat may be more of a reason for that than laziness. At least it's a dry heat.

But I digress. Anyhow, Amy's got a post on her blog as well with a different pic. Oh by the way, new address will be 1017 Prairie Lane, Milan, MI 48160.

Which leads me to this: why can't I ever live someplace with a nice, easy address? Check out some of these previous novels disguised as addresses:

• 5537 Cambridge Club Cir #xxx
• 10960 Lighthouse Drive # 535
• And my personal favorite - 48571 South I-94 Service Dr #307 (which led most people to believe I lived in a box on the side of I-94 in Belleville. I mean really, couldn't the apartment complex come up with something better than I-94 Service Drive?)

And now its 1017 Prairie Lane. Why the Lane? Couldn't it just be Prairie? Or for that matter, would it be asking too much to live at 123 Green? That's short, sweet and too the point. Does the fact that I live on a "Lane" mean anything for my home value? Is a potential buyer in the future going to have this conversation with himself?

"I'm not sure I want a ranch, and I don't like hardwood floors, but man, they live on Prairie Lane. It's a LANE. I've gotta have that house."

*Editor's Note - This 400-word piece is an example of what happens when someone with a blog is bored at 11:30 on a Sunday night and the only thing on TV is Arizona-SF from Mexico City. Was the location of this game supposed to make us forget it was Arizona-SF?