I had a party a couple weeks back. To add some excitement, I ran a flatwater kayaking trip before hand. I think all the guests enjoyed it, but it made logistics hard for me. I also need to convince more non-work people to come to my parties.

Since then, I’ve been swamped with house stuff. Last week we met up with two contractors. The first one has built passive solar houses before. His really rough estimate gave both Tyson and I sticker shock. I got a cartoon image in my head of a bunch of people standing around in the yard for the house warming party and me pointing at our brand new doll house sitting on the ground. So I spent the next day and a half squeezing the house on all axes. The second guy we met with has done a bunch of energy efficient houses. He sounded like he might be willing to make a slightly cheaper house. I’ve got a week and a half to wait, now, until I get their more accurate estimates. During this whole process it is still very unclear to us which parts of a house drive its cost. We keep getting conflicting answers.

Meanwhile we went and talked to the guy who is developing the neighborhood. In light of the fact that he (and the rest of the neighborhood) would like us as neighbors, we’ve got first dibs on a property for the next couple of weeks. So in those couple of weeks we now need to figure out what the financing options look like.

Despite all that, we did make it out for a hike this weekend.