one of the reasons this site has gone quiet are the extensive renovations we've been doing to a house. with opened walls revealing a giant mess worse than we (or the home inspection) anticipated, it's been a slowly receding nightmare. things are fixed and now it is the long haul of closing it back up and making it livable.

friends have asked if i would do it again, and i reply that i would if i wasn't working full time and commuting. i don't mind the work in the least, but i do mind the absence of many other creative projects in my life. i have written quite a lot during my daily commute, but you can't really paint or edit film on the train.

some highlights of the reno include finding cat5 wiring in an electrical socket as a jumper, the 4" cast-iron broken elbow that fell out of the ceiling and almost brained me while i brought the ceiling down (disconnected long ago and left floating in the ceiling above the drywall), and the discovery of severe rot due to water running down beside and behind the front concrete staircase. not to mention multiple points of hot electrical wiring buried in the walls without marretts, and an old cast-iron bathtub that was ready to make a quick migration from the main floor to the basement.

and the home inspection didn't catch this because it was all hidden away behind the walls. we knew the place had problems and would require a serious overhaul that we hoped to accomplish over a few years. it was a little worse than anticipated, to understate.

the fantastic part is that i managed to give myself a hernia somewhere along the line.