Good news and busy times...

It's been a busy few days since Jim got home from NY.  He started working on the basement tile repair project...quite the chain gang all week.  But things are all ready to be installed again, so the big part of that battle is at least in good shape.  I was working scraping the backsides of the slate trying to get all the old mortar off - that's all done now too.

Sunday evening, Jim went to Bryan's and picked up the completed new chimney caps that he designed and Bryan fabricated and had powder coated.  They're going to look so nice on top of the chimney!  He also took over a part for the gate Bryan is making and he's really excited about how it's coming together.  Jim designed part of the latching mechanism to include our address - Bryan is going to make that out of stainless steel. 

New roof chimney cap

Today Jim decided to start tackling the 4Runner issues.  He wants to run the gas tank dry before he explores that issue but he was kind of afraid to drive it too much if it was a water pump problem.  But some good news...it appears to be the compressor of the air conditioner.  So he's exploring whether or not he can fix it without taking the compressor off or not.  If he can, it would be a relatively easy fix.  If not, he'll probably disconnect it and wait until he has more time to worry about it.  We aren't big air conditioning people but sometimes it's nice and it helps with defrosting.  So at least it's not the water pump that would involve taking apart lots more of the engine.  Whew!

Working on the engine...

We are debating about going to New York this weekend.  We need to do the big ugly storage unit switcharoo...moving some things to Mike's barn, others to the closer storage facility in Corinth, and basically reorganizing things so that they are more easily accessible.  But we have to make sure it's worth the time to make the trip.  With so much going on, we really need to focus on the house stuff too.

We got a little bit of disturbing news last night.  The landlord of the apartment called me and said that she has put the building on the market.  She wanted to let us know that the real estate agent was bringing someone through today who wanted to look at the apartment.  Kind of hate that when we aren't there, but I trust Tom and I'm sure that the guy just wants to get a quick look at each of the areas.  What we are worried about is someone coming in and changing our lease agreement and terms.  Right now we are month to month, have free heat - works perfectly for us.  Scary to think that before we even move in, things could change.  The landlord said this person is just looking - so it could be awhile before they find a buyer, you just don't know.  We'll just have to wait and see.