I stopped by our property on the way home from work today. We have had so much rain I wanted to see just how much of it was under water. The answer: most. The driveway was soft and squishy and was starting to wash out in spots. Our new footers were almost totally under water. Luckily they have been there for a few weeks so I don't think it will hurt them. I took some pictures with my phone so I could show Jen the state of things.       We are thinking of going back to the first mortgage lender that we were working with over a year ago. We didn't have any problems with him, but none of the banks that he works with would lend any money at the time. We tried the credit union and were moving along when the appraisals come back so poor.      The plan was to pay for everything in stages with the money we had saved. That plan was working, but we might have to move a little quicker so that all of our dirt doesn't wash away in our Florida downpours. 

      OK, here we go again. Got out of the habit of writing and lost motivation for a while. Recently I've been really busy with school and work. Going to school and working full time eats up most of my days. Seems I'm always worrying about the next assignment and don't seem to do much else but study or put off studying. I've been thinking about this for a while though and I think I need to try a little harder to post at least occasionally.        As you can see by the new addition to the side bar I have been doing some posting on Twitter. It has sort of got me back into everything. There are so many interesting people on there to meet if you just give it some time. A lot of my followers, and those that I follow, are 'space' related. There are more people out there that are interested in the space industry than I thought. It's not just space related though. There is an ever expanding universe of things related to Twitter. It takes a little effort to weed thr...

Our builder came over this evening so that we could re-re-revise our building cost estimate. I think we might have just about got it. Finally. We had to cut out some things and figure out what we really needed to do right away and what could wait and be done over time. It will also mean that we will have to do a little more work ourselves than we planned to. My shop is down to to just drywall on the ceiling. Actually that is what I wanted from the beginning. I have seen a lot of really interesting ways to finish the inside. It will take a little longer but this will really let me set up the shop the way I want. We are so ready to get started. Keep your fingers crossed that in a couple of weeks we will finally start moving some dirt around.

OUR BUILDING PERMIT IS FINALLY OUT OF THE COUNTIES GRUBBY PAWS!!! WOO HOO!!!

Our building permit was supposed to be ready to pick up today. We haven't gotten a call from our builder saying that he picked it up yet though. I'm not sure if that is good, bad or otherwise. Until we get confirmation that he has it in his hands we're not going to celebrate. We have been disappointed so many times before. Money is still an issue though. The economy really sucks. All of the mortgage lenders lost their ass so bad lending money to people who had no business getting a loan, that now people with great credit can barely get any money. Once again, tards ruined it for the rest of us. I should be used to it by now. Anyway, keep your fingers crossed that our permit is out of the county's hands. I'll let you all know how it goes.

It's official, we got a call from our builder on Thursday, the septic permit is finally ours. Of course in order to pick up the permit and take it to the county office we had to sign yet another authorization to let our builder act on our behalf. They are only good for six months so the first one expired since this whole ordeal has taken so long. The next one hasn't expired yet but, wouldn't you know, they can't find it. Tards. So we had to fill out another one and fax it to our builder so that he can go and et the house permit ball rolling on Wednesday. Hopefully everyones not to hung over from their new years celebration and is still able to function. Those people are so slow anyway I can't imaging what a two day old champagne headache would do to their productivity.

Okay, I promised some pictures and here they are. I'll start with the kitchen. The finished product might not be exactly like this but it will probably be close. I knew cabinets were expensive but holy cow. We have already found some creative ways to cut the cost and still get what we want. Now I'll throw up some gory pictures of my knee. I have no idea what I did or really when I did it. The second picture really doesn't do it justice. It is much more bruised than it looks here. It is stiff most of the time and starts to ache if I have been on it for a while. This morning we went shopping a few places and stopped at Lowe's to look around. By the time we got home I needed to sit on the couch with my leg up for a while. Once it starts to ache it takes quite a while to feel better. Medication helps, I'm taking Ibuprofen by the handful sometimes. Ok, not really by the handful but quite a few. I hope it gets better, I'm getting sick of hobbling around.

A lot has happened since the last time I posted on here. I won't get into it all now because I want to go into detail on some of it. I am still working in one of the striking shops. Everything is going really well. I don't think I would want to stay permanently but the work isn't bad and it is a nice change of pace for a while and a great way to make friends and contacts that might be useful later on. Things are still moving along on the house. I am going to the county commission meeting again on Tuesday. This should be the final time. The actual agreement that will let us build on our land will go before the board in the 'consent agenda'. That is the part where they pass a whole bunch of stuff that everyone agrees on all at once. Our issue shouldn't even get mentioned unless a commissioner wants to pull it for further discussion. After what happened at the last meeting I don't think it is likely. Nonetheless, I am going anyway, just in case. In other house ...

We had a meeting today with our lawyer about the legal strategy we are going to use at the county commission meeting. There is not much to it really. Our lawyer will speak and outline the whole issue and why the board should grant the waiver. Next, someone from the engineering firm that engineered the road originally will give a short speech on why the road was designed the way it was and how other options are simply not feasible. Then, the guy that helped us get all of the environmental permits will stand up and explain why the project is impossible because of all of the wetland issues that will arise. Our future house builder will also be there and will say something if he feels it is necessary. I doubt that we will say anything. The board didn't listen to us last time, so we're not going to bother this time. Besides, be this time our response is 'You had your chance, now talk to our lawyer'. I think our chances are good. At least I keep telling myself that. We are on...

I just wanted to direct everyone to the Tortoise Hollow site. If you haven't read it in a while there have been some new developments.

OK. We had our meeting with the commissioner and the county attorney and some assorted other reps. It started out like many other meetings that we have had. They say we can't have what we want, we say why not, they come up with some lame reason, we tell them why it won't work. And round and round we go. After the obligatory county "beating of the dead horse" that has happened at all of our meetings so far, we finally started to get some where. Aparently we have been on some great quest where everyone knows the rules but you. The county board will not approve the waiver because it might set a precedent in some alternate reality. The thing is that the denial of the waiver request was also part of the process. Now that we have crossed the great void that is the county commission we finally know the last clue that will lead us to the holy grail. The final part of our journey is to hire an attorney and have him argue that we have exhausted all of our options and now the c...

We got a big fat denial to our request. It is not quite the end of the world. Yet. There are still some things that we can try. We are going to be meeting with our commissioner again along with the county attorney and some others to try and convince them of the uniqueness of our situation. I must say that our county government could be run better by a bunch of high school kids. A great deal of time is spent on recognizing individuals and groups at the beginning of the meeting. That is all fine but when they came to the part where actual laws were passed or money was allocated they breezed through those without much discussion at all. Our issue is fairly complicated and this is how it went and we spend a great deal of time writing out what actually went on in the past year(one post down). We are reasonably certain that some of the commissioners did not read it even though it was made part of the official meeting agenda. Two of the commissioners didn't ask any questions, ours asked...

Here is the full transcript of our much revised argument to the county commissioners for why they should grant our waiver request. To the Brevard County Board of Commissioners: In February of 2006, we purchased a 7.59 acre piece of property on north Merritt Island . Since then we have been working within the county and state regulations with the intent to build our dream house on that property. We have spent over a year and $17,322.28 toward that goal. We are requesting a waiver to the Brevard County Code of Ordinances Section 62-102 (b), which states that in order to obtain a building permit, the property must abut a county maintained road. Our first priority was to determine how best to use the property due to the existence of wetlands over the majority of it. We have been working with an environmental company for the past year to get a wetland permit to allow us to build on the property. This was finally accomplished at the end of Ma...

It has finally come down to us standing in front of the Brevard County Board of County Commissioners and asking them to do the right thing. I think our reasons are valid and have hope that it will go our way. We only need to convince three people to see things our way. Over the last week or so Jen and I have been killing ourselves preparing the documents we will be submitting to the county board. I don't think I ever went over a writing assignment for school even close to this much. Not to long, not to short, not to wordy but just right. We are probably stressing a little to much over some of the finer details but the stakes don't get much higher than this. House or no house, we will know on May 8 2007.

The meeting with our county commissioner didn’t go as well as we had hoped. To be fair though I think our expectations were a little high. He did know and understand many of the county ordinances we are having trouble with. That made things a little easier. It would have been that much harder to explain what our problem was and also have to explain the all of the specific ordinances to him. He seemed to look at everything very objectively and didn’t make any promises that he might not be able to keep. On Monday he has a meeting with most of the department heads to go over next weeks county board meeting agenda. At that time he will bring up our problem and see if anyone can come up with some sort of solution. I sure hope so. I’m not ready to give up on this, but it is getting harder and harder to be optimistic.

This morning we are going to meet with our county commissioner about our problems with our building permit. Our hope is that once he hears everything that we have been through he will be inclined to vote for giving us a waiver for the road dilemma. So far no one else in the county government has been so inclined. The difference between him and all of the others that we have talked to is that he is in an elected position. He should be more inclined to help us out, especially since we have tried all of the other possible options. Jen made a good presentation last night and we have all kinds of documentation and pictures to support our position. Even if he is on our side we will still need at least three commissioners to vote our way, but one will be a good start. Keep your fingers crossed that he is a reasonable person.

Our builder came by yesterday with some papers that we had to sign and get notarized so that our building permit package would be complete. He also showed us the completed set of plans that were to be turned to the county. It's very exciting. The whole package was turned in today and eventually accepted. There are still some big things that we need to get worked out, but it is nice to see something moving in the right direction. It actually seems like we might be able to build after all.

It looks like the road we have been trying to build might not happen. It is a setback for sure, but it might also be a blessing in disguise. The next course of action is to petition the county to vacate the right of way. This would probably cost a whole lot less than improving the road to the county standards. I really think that this might happen. There are only 5 properties that abut the right of way and I think there is only one property that is an total unknown. Hopefully it will be easy to get his approval as long as he is guaranteed access to his property. Keep your fingers crossed. For in depth updates go to the "Tortoise Hollow" link in my Blog Roll. Here is a picture from Google Earth of our new property.

We got the first draft of our house plans last week. Our builder was going on vacation for Thanksgiving and wanted us to have them to look at over the long weekend. Today we finally sat down and made a bunch of revisions. When we got done it looked like some of the tests that I've taken, red ink everywhere. There were a total of 37 things that needed to be changed. The last thing on the list required an elaborate drawing to hopefully explain what we want. I think we are probably a little more thorough than most people. Be sure to take a look at "Tortoise Hollow" on the blogroll to see all of the updates on our project.