Man on fire, or at least hair on fire

In the ruins above the garage, Portsmouth RI, 1 July 2005

Next two weeks will be very iffy for me. Don't expect much.

After great time at Oak Ridge National Lab, where we expect a relationship to bloom, I fly onto Indy Wed night to walk semi-cleared lot with builder Kent Thurs morning and pick the exact location. His first scheme had house parallel to front walk, but views not right given other locations of houses. I was prepared to talk to him on that, but--as befitting his status as top builder--Kent already had alternative not only mapped out on paper, but marked out on lot. It was exactly what I was going to suggest: rotating the house back from the front line a bit so it was more orientated to back line of our pie-wedge lot.

After that, we go over new drawings laid out on my realtor's car and make a few additional decisions. Then to closing on lot and construction perm loan. Then to airport for flights home. Get back last night around 10pm at TF Green airport in Warwick RI--my last time through.

No nostalgia, though. Too busy.

Have read and edited through page 250 in book, and have abandoned idea of new section to be inserted in Chapter 2. Just too repetitive. Realize I covered the points elsewhere and could easily insert the material I wanted in current chapter formats. So feeling very good about that. Book reads as I want, and I am stunned at how much closer we got it this time to final look on first try, so effort from here on out much lighter than anticipated. It reads as I had hoped for, so a lot of relief on my part.

I take today off from book to work house/packing issues. No choice. House just too scary after week of kids and wife packing in my absence. They do great job, but macro packing triggered by all this, so I have hands full today.

Will finish rest of text tomorrow and then spend Sunday working footnotes. Expect to be on phone with Mark at some point to review all this at length. He delivers our full report on changes to Putnam Tuesday morning, last I checked.

Everyone have a nice holiday weekend!