OH BABY!

The gag order is off and the public announcement has gone out - - - we are having another baby!! We waited to find out the results of the early risk assessment and an amnio and everything looks good.

We had already made a fairly good guess at the gender based on ultrasound scans (Joni is a professional - do not try this at home) and the amnio confirmed . . . Henry will have a brother!

Joni has not had the "name" dream yet, so we are accepting suggestions.

Kitchen and Living Room

Some photos taken earlier in March. The first set is Henry horsing around in the kitchen. He takes the camera from me and snaps a good pic of me. The last couple he is sitting on my stomach, demanding I return the camera.

The second set was taken in the living room with H watching TV. Even Dad with camera rates below Elmo on the H-interest scale.

We have been working on Henry's bedroom. Pictures will be posted soon of the Before and After. The painting is almost complete. The walls are red and blue with a white band half way up the wall. The room theme will be a nautical look. We just picked up replacement closet doors. The old ones were hollow-core sliders that block half the closet when open. We are replacing them with half-louvered bi-fold doors that will look more like a ship's door. The trim in the room was already a medium stain with varnish, so the doors will be finished to match. I also have a paddle fan light that will be installed in the ceiling.

We now have cable, Internet, and phone connections. I set up the Vonage service for phone - the cost is so low compared to traditional phone service. I upgraded the Vonage standard phone device to a wireless network router + phone, so it also runs the home computer network. The phone part of the device plugs into a phone jack in the basement, making all the other phone jacks in the house "live" so we can continue to use our regular phone sets.

Vonage has some useful features compared to regular phone service. Phone messages can be emailed to you; you can also play them from the Vonage website. You can set up a fail-over number (cell phone) in case the Vonage service or Internet goes down so you never miss a call. You can go to the website and set a forwarding number if you are going to be away from home for some time. AND if you want to take your home phone with you, you can. Just take the Vonage phone device along and plug it into the local Internet service.










Ah, the octagonal stained-glass window between the kitchen and dining room is visible here:




TV Time:

SOLD - Part I

We had the closing (!) for the condo today and it went pretty smoothly until the end when the buyer's attorney (who was named by the Condo Association as "The Attorney From Hell" ) announced that he would not furnish copies of the payoff statement to either broker. Both brokers immediately started protesting as this is the documentation that they present to their offices to verify the commission and get their payments.

Since the HUD-1 form has our SSN's on it, he said he could not disclose the forms to them. They started telling him that he would be getting calls from their office attorneys. Joni and I agreed that we would release copies of our form after our SSN's had been redacted. Problem solved. I actually used the word "redacted" as I felt it fit the legal proceedings better than the phrase "black out the numbers". Just another incident of the buyer's attorney putting up a roadblock without offering any solution or compromise.

We often have to remove personal information when we respond to requests for public information at the Town Hall. We have had a couple requests for phone transactions, and we have to remove all dialed and received calls from the Police tip line, Detective's Bureau, and Narcotics. We also have to block address information for certain town officials as covered under the Patriot Act.

Anyway, the deed was supposed to be filed early this afternoon and Joni can stop by our attorney's office after 4:00 to pick up the big check. We also got another check for the remainder of the deposit after all fees were deducted.

Tonight we have contractor friend of Stephen stopping by to go over our renovation plans and help us understand what we can and cannot do based on structural, electrical, and plumbing restrictions. He should also be able to give us a time and $$ estimate.

We dropped Henry off with Jim on our way to the closing. Ellie is enjoying her Hawaiian Islands cruise. Joni is going to do some more of the painting in Henry's room this afternoon before picking up H. I am working a half day.