He's Baaa-aack

Steve returns to the project from Mongolia today- not sure what he'll be doing yet as he begins the ramp-down back to the daily grind. In my experience, I find many people returning from a long international trip get some type of illness immediately upon their return. Seems to be some combination of fatigue, jet lag, and exposure to who knows what types of organisms somewhere along the journey's path. I contracted lepto-spirosis on a 10 day trip to Hawaii in 1978 and came close to biting the big one (aka buying the farm) while in the hospital as they were trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with me. Let's hope Steve is just fine; he's certainly in fantastic shape.

I finally made it to Ikea to get the cabinet order squared away- it looks like everything is on the shelf there ready for pickup and assembly- there's just one glitsch. The wall where the wall-oven and pantry will go is an inch too short of being wide enough. Unfortunately Ikea's cabinet dimensions are a little less flexible, and I can't get a pull-out pantry any thinner than 15 inches. So I've asked Pete to see what he might come up with. It seems adding an inch of drywall to the end wall would be okay, and maybe we do it with a step in the wall so it doesn't mess up the switch plates. I'll let you know.

I'm on a train to Portland now, the project team from work is heading down to Oregon Health Sciences University to see the installation of a wastewater membrane bio-reactor, because we're considering it seriously for our project in Seattle. It takes the raw sewage from the building and through a series of filters and biological chambers, converts it to Class A potable water. Sort of like a large scale version of the Fremen's stillsuit. Only we're not going to make people drink it. Maybe.

What a great way to travel though- relaxed, spacious, scenic, and cheap. It's not that much slower than flying to Portland when you factor arrival time, security check, etc.

I sure hope the flooring guys don't puncture any of the hydronic heat lines today! Talk with ya'll later.