Dedicated to the Birthday Girl, Miss Lizzie.

Happy Seventh Birthday, Lizzie!

It's official: we are no longer the Coolest, Biggest Project on the Docket. Today, Jonathan stopped by for a wee little bit in the morning, and then he was gone, baby, gone. No Steve. No John. Sob. Now, to be fair, there's some stuff we're waiting for from subcontractors: we're waiting for Concrete Guy to come around and do a second coat of stain on the 'sun space' floor -this will enable Jonathan to put up a couple of pieces of trim and the baseboard. And we're waiting for Alan to come tile the bathroom. And we're waiting for the plumbers to finish the plumbing in the bathroom. And we're waiting for Persons Unknown to finish making the posts for the banister, so that Steve can install it.

But we have an annoying dilemma: we can't really move in yet. We don't want to move the mattress up to the bedroom, because certain people (um, that would be me) don't really feel like navigating to the downstairs bathroom for the Noctural Visitations. And we can't move into the new office, because there's all this junk (er, equipment, sorry) in it.

But we can play in the closet, yes we can.

Before... ...After

And, truth be told, SOME people still love us and visit us faithfully.

Michael and Gary are nearly done with the framing for the railing, I believe.

But, to move on from whining, we got a visit from Other Gary - Gary the Solar Dude - today. He installed a timer, and gave us a lesson on How It All Works. We learned how to read the various sensors, and how to program the timer. Here's the basic idea: remember that huge water tank?

This one?

Well, the general idea is that the solar panels heat the water in the lower half of the tank, via coils of tubing filled with antifreeze. And the propane-fired Budaris boiler, which is that white wall-mounted thing to the right of the tank, heats the water at the top of the tank. You will recall from Science that hot stuff rises...so the boiler will only kick in if the solar-heated water isn't hot enough to heat the whole tank.

The function of the new timer is to establish key times of day that the Budaris will kick in, no matter what, to ensure that we have a whole bunch of hot water when we need it. Morning showers, evening cooking, that sort of thing. The boiler ALSO deals with the baseboard heating, but that's another matter.

So Gary told us what to pay attention to, and what warning signs merit calling him - puddles of antifreeze on the floor from the pressure relief valve venting, etc. etc. He assured us that no, the system will not explode. The whole thing really satisfied my inner geek.

In the middle of all this fun, one of the plumbers came by and installed baseboard heating in the two remaining locations: the batcave, and the 'sun space'.

The batcave. Note the baseboard in the back. This carpet, incidentally, is on Death Row.

At the very end of the day, Son of Concrete Guy showed up to apply the second, and as it turns out, third as well, coat of stain to the concrete floor. To remind us to leave it alone for 24 hours, and that includes you, Charlie and Maggie, he put up caution tape.

(Please notice the baseboard at the far end, while you're here). (And remember, that ugly paneling stuff is just lying there...it used to cover the as-yet-unfilled gap between the concrete and the living room floor, but there's really no need for it...OK, Kevin just tossed it out onto the deck. Hooray!)

This stuff needs to dry for 24 hours. If it looks OK, then we wait an additional 72 hours, and he comes back (yes, even if it's the weekend) and applies sealer. Then, and only then, is it OK to walk on it. Tomorrow: Jonathan will clean out the junk-er-equipment so that we can move desks in. And maybe he'll figure out the boards for the wall-o'-books and we can get moving on that.