Nov 16 - another, yawn, shuttle launch

I only spotted this on CNN in the morning, with the launch due at 2:28 p.m. We walked over, Abby (or us) in tow. There were some people on the beach, but not nearly as many as when Angelika was here. Of course we didn't go on the beach because Abby isn't allowed. Being a mid-afternoon launch there was no "light up the sky" drama and the vapor trail also disappeared quickly. We were able to discern separation, but barely. It was quite windy with big surf, so even the roar was muted. All in all this was probably our least dramatic launch.

I guess that we've seen four now -- this one, the middle of the night launch with Jason, the dusk launch with Angelika and the clear sky night launch. The launch with Jason lost a lot of its drama because the shuttle entered the clouds shortly after liftoff. The clear sky dusk and night launches vie for most "ooohh aaahhh" honors.

What else happened during the day ? Not much. Ritchie was here and in the course of the entire day did the following:

1) cut three 2x4's, laid them on top of one another and tap-conned them to the floor to form the shower curb.

2) partly built a bench out of a half-dozen pieces of 2x4.

I'm not sure if it would have taken me an hour to do that work.

We did fuss around vis-a-vis tiles. He showed up and then left, returning shortly thereafter with the tiles. He brought some in, we opened the boxes, discovered that the wall tiles for the shower were the wrong color, wrong "movement" as Sandy put it. She struggled with that for a while, considering three options -- going ahead with the mis-matched floor and wall tiles; using the wall tiles on the floor of the bathroom as well; using the floor tiles on the wall. ps -- the floor tiles are the same tiles that we have in the Great Room / Kitchen / Guest Bath.

She eventually settled on the floor-everywhere approach, Jeff having been talked to who checked and verified that there were no batches of the wall tile that matched the floor tile nor were there any smaller sizes of floor tile. Jeff is off with his crew on Jeckyl Island, so it took an hour or so before he checked in.

So ... additional tiles are on order and should be here in time to continue the work. If worst comes to worst, we'll set Ritchie about doing the floor first since we can then get Vic to do his thing with the cabinet and Stone Crazy with the granite and marble. Sandy delayed her trip to Stone Crazy by a day -- she'll go today and bring the sink, decide on where to cut the granite for the vanity etc.

I had already pulled out the old vanity, tiles under same etc. on Sunday and put those all out to the garbage yesterday. That, hopefully, is the end of the de-construction, which is always the dustiest part of the job. Well, I say that but I'm sure that the plumber Luke will add his share of dust this morning as he cuts and breaks concrete to move the drain.

Back to Ritchie -- not a fast worker by a long shot, he does care about his work. That is the most important thing. Today the plumber will do his thing and then Ritchie can set about putting up the cement board - dura-rock - and then tiling. At the speed that he works I don't know if he'll even start tiling before the end of Wednesday !

When I compare with Lorretto et al who did the work up north, from a speed standpoint it's night and day. Ritchie is all about "this is the way that I've always done it" ... Lorretto more consultative; Ritchie talks a lot and spends time on smoke breaks; Lorretto works in a frenzy; the quality of the work is equivalent ... well, Lorretto is actually better on that score; Ritchie is a whole lot cheaper ! Lorretto's brother (or cousin, or brother-in-law, not sure which) would do an entire shower floor, walls and ceiling in a one day period, including grouting. Mind you, Lorretto and brother had their nephew around as helper to both of them mixing mortar, cutting tiles ... they were really amazing when I think of it.

Ritchie reminds me in a way of Steve Roberts -- slow and painstakingly careful -- spending more time deciding how to do something than actually doing. The only good thing is that I'm not paying Ritchie by the hour; that drove me crazy with Steve. I too spend a lot of time deciding on how to do something but I have more patience with myself and of course my hourly rate is zero now :).

Among my other regrets about building the place up north it suddenly occurs to me that I should have discovered blogging before doing it. Of course that would have only extended my work-day ...

So ... today ... Luke comes and does the plumbing. I expect that Ritchie will be hovering too. Perhaps Ritchie will get going on the dura-rock, perhaps. Sandy's going to Orlando. I hope to get out for a ride.

Tomorrow -- Wednesday -- perhaps we'll be out in the boat. I don't think that I can simply hang around watching Ritchie -- although perhaps I could help and speed things up ? We'll see. The bathroom is a small space although it's large enough for him to have his materials all in there -- tiles & tools.

That's it, I think. Can you tell that I'm regretting that I didn't decide to do this myself ? It's a good thing that they didn't do this when we weren't here because I expect that the shower would have been the wrong size and the tiles would have been wrong. That would have been a disaster. Ritchie wanted to make the shower the same width as the tub ...

Onward ... slowly ...