Happy New Year

Best wishes to everyone out there from everyone in here! As you might have been able to tell from the increasingly short posts up to this point, we had a crazy December. The first half of the month was spent rushing around trying to make the condo livable to make a December 15 move-in date.

We made it. We made it in time to cobble together a Christmas tree complete with trimmings and that fresh pine scent (a welcome change from the Pine-Sol we used this fall to get rid of the cat smell!). We thoroughly enjoyed seeing family and friends over the past two weeks, and we even scraped together enough chairs to host a few minor gatherings for out-of-towners who might not be around for a late-January/early-February house-warming shindig.

It feels good. Really, really good, in fact.

We still have a few things on our list, though, before we're ready for an official unveil:

1. Finish the built-in bookcase in the living room
2. Face and finish the fireplace (it's a gaping hole right now)
3. Get a long-awaited plumber to pull a drain up to our condo for a washer, install drywall and tile in the washer-dryer nook, paint, finish etc., and put in the washer and dryer.
4. Figure out some solution for a couple of spots where kitchen and bathroom cabinets do not quite meet the wall — we're not crazy about the weird glimpses into the unpainted baseboard and support beams you get from these three gaps

Otherwise, there are the usual tidying-up tasks, including unearthing our office desk from the avalanche of books, old mail, old magazines, Christmas receipts, etc., that have taken over our second bedroom. We also probably need a little straightening up in the bedroom and kitchen, too. But again — it feels good to have a home again.

We're already looking ahead for 2008, though. We worked hard to make this place nice, but we always intended it to be a temporary spot. We're eying places to build, kicking around ideas, weighing the relative merits and demerits in the historic landmark districts around here (ARGH), and thinking about how to approach the year.

In the next few weeks, we'll fill you in on the bookcase process (we had to remove our front door to get the case into our living room...), the fireplace designs and the never-ending search for a plumber. Oh, and a special field trip this weekend that we expect to be entertaining more than fruitful.

Happy New Year to all of you, and thanks for sticking with us through this process. We hope to have lots of interesting stuff to post this year.