moving (and going dark...)

Whelp, we started to move in! There are loose ends to tie, one of which is the cable, which is why we may be dark on the blog for a bit.

The cable is going to be a bucking bull.

The builder was reluctant to run cable from the house to the garage because he said the cable folks will do what they want to do regardless of what you do. He knows this from personal experience when they refused to connect into his underground line and instead ran their own underground line (barely two inches deep!). Several months ago I attempted to figure out how TimeWarner dealt with brand new connections and was bounced around about a dozen times before I gave up. I asked the builder to go ahead and run cable underground to the garage the same time they ran the electrical underground. However, they didn't run it.

Yesterday I stopped by TimeWarner's offices to get cable hooked up. When the cable teller looked up our address, he said that it was not possible to run cable to our house because the computer said our property was "unserviceable". That can't be, I replied. "Are you in a neighborhood?" Yes. "Is the neighborhood new?" No. "How long has the neighborhood been there?" More than 50 years. Hmmmm...

I pointed out that the neighbors all had cable running to their houses from the same lines that ran behind our house. "Are you sure?" Yes. One of the lines actually runs over our property.

The long and short of it is that we had to wait "24 to 48 hours" for someone to stop by and determine whether or not our house was serviceable (tried to save 'em the time and money...). We got the call at 47 hours that (shock of all shocks!) we're serviceable. We're now scheduled to get connected back into the Borg next Wednesday where we'll get to have fun discussions on how exactly they will connect us (No, you may not drop a line straight to the house.). I do not expect a(n early) happy ending...

The other curveball is that the floors seem rather unsmooth with little stalagmites every six inches or so. I sent a note to the builder about this ("Are you sure they're done?"). The builder and floor sub checked it out yesterday and decided that, nope, they aren't done. Something had gone wrong. So late this afternoon they were back out there sanding and adding another layer. Good news: It's getting fixed. Bad news: We're moving in tomorrow, and this epoxy stuff stinks like all Hell No for several days. Maybe it's best we won't (necessarily) be posting tomorrow...

The ovens are coming tomorrow, and the gas will get connected (hot water! [we hope...]). We also have a sense of doom over the cooktop. The installers seem to poopoo the metric connection to the cooktop ("Yeah, yeah."). We shall see...