There Were Never Such Unhealthy Sisters

Today is the start of the 2011 Sisters Convention... the Sisters Basque are arriving early afternoon and Sister Sweeney will be showing up sometime between late afternoon and midnight depending on whether or not she can change her flight.   Tomorrow night we'll all be going to see Bill Cosby at the Chicago Theater and are planning to make pudding pops and wear multicolored sweaters to celebrate.

The bad news is that just about everyone is currently or recently sick:

• Alan - was sick all last weekend and most of this week, feeling better
• Emily - was sick at the beginning of this week, just starting to feel better (although she's still very pregnant)
• Colleen - still very sick
• Amy - still very sick
• Lisa - 100% healthy!?

All signs point to Lisa being the Patient Zero of this outbreak.  Lisa, I'm sorry but once you arrive in Chicago you will have to be quarantined and studied to find a cure.

House on Stilts

Overall the original house foundation is in great shape, especially considering it's over 100 years old and is constructed out of bricks stacked on top of giant base stones.  But the north side of the house was starting to sag slightly so in order to straighten out the house and hook it up with the new and perfectly level addition in the back we had to do a little extra work on that part of the old foundation.

Framed

Finally I'm almost caught up on posting older house pictures - some of these pics are as recent as last week!  The basement part of the back of the house is starting to feel like a real room now... the foundation is done, the framing for the walls on top of the foundation is done, and as of last Friday the support trusses are installed and part of the subfloor is done for the kitchen.

Blogger 101

In case some people reading this aren't familiar with Blogger, I wanted to point out a few things about how the blog works:

• Anytime you see a link labeled "Read more »" at the bottom of a post you should click it to open the full post.  I've been putting most of the pictures and text after that "jump" lately to help keep the main screen from getting dominated by one single picture-heavy post.  So keep an eye out for that link and don't assume that the little bit you see on the main page is all there is to the post.
• You can click on any of the pictures to view a larger version
  
• If you have a Google/Gmail account you can "follow" the blog, which means you'll get notified whenever a new post is put up.  To follow it, sign into your Google account (using the Sign In link in the top right corner) and then click the "Follow" link in the top left of the main blog page.
  
• Logging in using a Google account will also let you add comments to any post.  When viewing the full post (by clicking either the post title, the "Read More" link, or the link that says the number of comments for that post) you will see the "Post a Comment" section at the bottom of the page.
  

Second Foundation

So far I've only posted pictures of things being torn down or dug out... finally I can start posting some pictures of the house being built back up!

Big Dig in Chicago

In which Contractor Larry and his Steam Shovel dig a giant pit in our backyard.

Truss-worthy

The trusses to support the new kitchen floor were delivered today: