Golden Brown Treats

My mum's yellow lab, Jag, tucking himself under my desk. What a cutie!
My dad decided to make bagels for the first time. They were horrible. I volunteer to dispose of them in a safe and sanitary way. ;)

Post Christmas Breather

Needless to say, I've been a bit busy lately.

As usual, work is challenging. Here's a photo of a column that was poured too tall and needed to be jackhammered down to the proper height. Time consuming and expensive? Yes.

One thing you may not know, however, is that I decided to learn to SCUBA dive. I had to do some book studying and some swimming and treading water prep, then a couple of pool dives for my confined water portion of the certification. Next weekend, when I go to Key West (for a wedding and a birthday party), I'll do the open water part of the certification. It's fun and a little scary. I'll make sure to give a good description of how it goes.

Then there's the usual holiday preparations: decorations, presents, etc. Christmas went great. Everyone loved their presents. The food was good. The house isn't as clean as I would have liked it, considering I have house guests, but hey - I'm working on it.

All in all it's been a busy busy month and I'm very happy with where I am and what I'm doing.

PS: Oh, yeah, and I've been seeing someone very nice for about the last 6 weeks. Thanks for trying to out me at the beginning of December, guys!

Another Picture and a Fun Quote

This is the coolest picture I could find from last week's site visit. It shows that we are working on the "3rd lift" of the elevator and stair core, which is made of concrete. There should be approximately 32 "lifts". 10% done, w00t!


And I saw this on a friend's email:

"A positive attitude may not solve all your
problems, but it will annoy enough people
to make it worth the effort" - Herm Albright

Quote for Me

"At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived."
- Rose Macaulay

My dear sister sent me the above quote. I think it's both lovely and true.

Damn big tank

I know some of you are really broken up about the dearth of construction photos lately, so here's a progress post.
A detention tank is where the storm water goes before being dumped into the storm drain system. It regulates the flow of water so that if we have a big storm, the system doesn't get overloaded with water.
The picture above shows them covering over the building's detention tank with gravel. The gravel is a slightly different color than the dirt, so you can see the extent of the tank. I'll see if I can find the volumetric size, but the description in the documents says 2 tanks, 66" diameter, 78 linear feet each.
You can get a feel for the scale of the project by the munchkins working on the job.