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Wow, it’s been a while since I posted anything. We’ve been really busy with house activities since the last post. We’re at that stage where everything is inside except for the stucco color coat and some doors and window stuff. So, let me bring y’all up to speed.

Since the last post, it’s been crazy. I’ll start the the fun stuff. We’ve had drywall and taping done, and the painters have painted the entire inside of the house the first coat. We have interior doors stained and finished along with the frames. They look amazing. We made an interesting choice for the hallway ceiling on a suggestion from our contractor. She thought a tongue and groove ceiling would be a statement – so we put in a tongue and groove ceiling, stained to match the woodwork. It looks incredible and is a design statement. We finally got the front door windows which allowed us to get the front door installed. The stucco guys have patched in the front door, garage door and base coated the kiva fireplace. We’re ready for the color coat. We also picked up the outdoor sconces from Southwest Lighting. They will be amazing.

We had picked out all the tile and flooring, but when we went to order the supplier was out of stock on most of the tile and the flooring had been discontinued. The supplier wasn’t in control of his stock and had no idea of what was available or not available. We changed to a supplier suggested by our contractor, and we’re really happy. Choices are slightly different, but much better, I think. We’re ordering flooring and tile on Monday next week with the goal to start in a couple of weeks.

We got cabinets delivered on Thursday, and our builder installed everything he could. The manufacturer shorted us two big cabinets which are critical path as they need to be installed before we can do flooring. Our supplier is working on getting them prioritized. Other than that issue, the cabinets are amazing and really beautiful. They will be a statement. The cool thing is that they come with a 100-year warranty. Each cabinet has a serial number, so if anything goes wrong, we call the company, give them the serial number and they replace whatever we need. Crazy good warranty.

We’ve picked out and ordered all out lighting. Now we’re getting all the switches, outlets and plates which are a bunch! We have power to the house now, so all we need is the switches and outlets along with the lightening. Once we done with that and the flooring, then the appliances get installed. The last thing will be the plumbing, which can’t wait for. I really want to get out washer and dryer put in place so we can at least do laundry over at the house and not my brother-in-laws house. Just easier and simpler. Once all that is done, the painters will return and put on one more coat of paint after the HVAC mini splits are installed and we’re ready to go.

Of course, we have a garage door and opener to install, but that will wait until we have the junction box populated. Interesting design flaws in our house. The architect put a Canale (water drain) right over where the meter and disconnects are located, so when it rains, water is all over the box. A short would take out the transformer – so we had to put in gutters to collect the water and drain it out away from the transformer. It takes away from the house design, but we’ll make the gutters match the stucco and they will blend into the wall. We also need to start working on the outdoor cabinets and cooking area so we can get those finished for the housewarming BBQ before it gets too cold. I need to have the workshop cleaned out so I have some room.

We’re getting close and I think we’ll have a certificate of occupancy sometime in the first few weeks of December. As I’m paying for finishing this with 401k monies, my taxes next year are going to be painful. And with a 30% tax deduction, 50k becomes 70k which depletes things pretty quickly. I think we’ll finish this so there’s no mortgage and we’ll take out a small HELOC to finish the pool and landscaping which will give us a tax deduction. All-in-all it’s not been a terrible experience, but it is organized chaos and I’m glad that we’re on site to manage the questions, progress and other things that come up daily.

One thing about our property is the mud. When it rains here, the soil is very slow to absorb the water so when the contractors come, it turns everything into a muddy mess. I’ve spread about 2″ of base coat dirt over the parking and driveway, which helps, but it’s still soft underneath and there’s huge tire tracks and some standing water. Once we’re done, I’m going to have someone come in a fix the soft mud areas and create a good driveway and parking areas. I’ve talked to my contractor and asked her to focus the spend on the items and work that we need to get a certificate of occupancy as soon as possible. Then we can spread the non-essential work into next year to reduce our tax burden and ease the spending. We still have some residual costs for furniture, bedding, blinds and household essentials. It’ll be a bit before we completely settled in, but it’s exciting now.

Jaret, our youngest, is done with fire season. We’re looking forward to him coming back here for a few months to help out with the move getting us settled into the house. He’s missing his dog, so that reunion will be worth filming. I think he’ll probably stay in the trailer when he’s here, but he’ll be welcome in the house. His help will be welcome in getting this stuff out of the workshop.

End of October, I’m heading to Seattle for a long weekend with my kids and grandkids. Looking forward to going out on Halloween with my grandkids and spending time with my kids too. I want to talk to Lucas about my diabetes and let him know that he’s not along in the family and grandpa has diabetes too. And I’ll help him understand the difference between my diabetes and his version.

Well, time to sign off for a while. Need to feed the dogs, get dinner ready and get in a walk. Take care everyone and I’ll post again after I get back from Seattle.

Clearly, I’m not one of those bloggers who can write about something every day, it’s just too much work for me…. I’m trying to blog about our journey in New Mexico about every 10 days or so and I’m terrible at that also. Anyway, let’s dive into what’s going on here in NM.

The house is coming along nicely as you can see from the above photo. This is the “brown coat” of stucco, which is the base coat for the house. Once this cures after about 10 days, then the color coat is applied. Inside the house, there is a lot of activity. The walls are taped and textured now. Our painter has started with the primer and painting of the house. He’s also staining the rest of the beams, internal and exterior. We had a delivery of tongue and groove ceiling for the patio yesterday, so that needs to be stained along with the doors and baseboard. We ordered the baseboards and discovered that because they do door framing differently now by using bullnose, so all the baseboard has to have a rounded baseboard piece to meet up with the door frame. These small pieces are $4.00 each and we need 40 of them!!!

We had the septic installed this week, so one more step closer to being able to take a shower! Cabinets will go in the week of October 13th and then flooring right after. We have ordered all the tile and Quartz for the countertops, so waiting on cabinets to get installed. All the electrical is ready, I just need PNM to make the connections to the house and install the meter at some point. Our plumbing will be one of the last things to happen. We’re still sorting out the landscaping concepts, but I think we have a pretty good idea of how we want things to finish out. I have a LOT OF DIRT left over from the septic, so I’m going to move it next week and start working on the landscaping and drainage. Our appliances are in storage with our supplier until we get cabinets and electrical installed.

I still have a few bills to pay. We’re still without a front door because of Pella. Never, never, never use Pella windows. While the reserve windows are good, the rest of their product line is crap. And they don’t make their own doors, so the doors don’t match the windows! For the money you pay, they don’t provide the quality of product. Our GC is hoping to get the windows for the front door next week, and we still need the one broken window in the master replaced. Pella shipped the wrong size initially. One point about fiberglass windows and stucco. When the stucco crew puts on the chicken wire base, they often beat up the corners of the windows. With the exterior being fiberglass, it exposes the fibers as in the picture below.

After the color coat is on, Pella is going to come out and clean up all the windows, install the screens and ensure all the windows are working properly. I have some acrylic paint pens the match the exterior color, which I’m going to use to cover up the white under coating. That should make my happy. She’s seriously annoyed and notices all the small details – which I’m thankful for. I think she’s going on the social media war path with Pella and all the issues we’ve had with them. Again, avoid using them if at all possible. There are so many other good providers that will give you a better product.

Other things going on in our journey. I believe I mentioned last time that Wendy has a new job at PNM as a sourcing manager, which is karma. Now she’s asking me all sorts of questions about electric utility things, and SHE’S INTERESTED!! We attended the NM wine festival last month. Kinda lame and clearly not the same caliber as what they do in Washington, but the quality of the wine and the grapes isn’t to our tastes either. NM wines don’t have the same character and body as Washington and California wines. They tend to be very fruit forward (i.e. sweeter) than what we’re used to. There are a couple of wineries that we’re going to try out that are near us, but it’s not like Walla Walla, Washington wine country.

The New Mexico ballon festival is starting next week for 10 days. It’s an amazing event with hundreds of balloons and people attending and beautiful balloons every day they can fly. With the mornings and evenings being much cooler, they have been flying balloons in the “ABQ box”. The “box” is a unique wind pattern that is a square wind flow at different altitudes. High altitude (1k ft or higher) takes you south, then around 400 ft, the wind drifts your north again, so you end up landing back where you started.

This balloon was drifting near our property yesterday. We see a lot of them this way during this time of year. Last year we had a couple land on our property. We were not here then, but my brother-in-law wasn’t happy about it. He needs to lighten up. We’d have served the coffee and champagne!!

Our monsoon season officially comes to and end this weekend, so rain and storms will become less frequent. It’s been a pretty light monsoon season, so water and plants are going to have a rough time. I was hoping for more consistent rain so I could get the dirt areas planted with grass, but that isn’t going to happen. We’ll landscape and gravel the areas that are muddy and build out a driveway in November, so the cars do get the sticky mud all over them that stains. I’m going to do a bunch of dirt work next week with my father-in-laws tractor to level out the bumps and move the excess dirt from the septic. With the cooler days, it’s a lot easier to yardwork done.

Well, for now I think that’s about everything. I need to get ready for the day and open the gate for the contractors. It’s cloudy today so it’ll be cooler – thinking I’ll take out the Can-Am this morning and explore the desert more. Maybe ride out the mountains.

Take care everyone and have a great day. Enjoy each moment because it’s the only time you’ll experience that moment.

More later.

Well, this has been an interesting week for the house build. Things never seem to go as planned. When we started picking out materials for our house build, Pella Windows were part of the build package. Generally, our architect recommends a certain line of Pella windows, which are very good windows. In New Mexico, the variation of humidity as much as 50% from day-to-day cause wood to shrink and expand over time. Really hard on musical instruments. We decided to go with fiberglass windows – basically indestructible, requires no maintenance or staining and very clean lines. We checked them out in the show room. They were super nice and easy to manipulate.

The windows (and front door) showed up on Monday. They didn’t fit in the window frames for the house. The front door came in pieces and wasn’t mulled together at the factory as normal. And the front door, once it’s put together is too big for the opening. As it turns out, Pella didn’t cross check the window sizes against the original windows that came with the package. And the fiberglass windows are more expensive. The framing crew made them fit after dismantling the window frames and reframing. BUT, once the windows were installed it became apparent that the windows were badly built. Scratches, poor miter joints, misaligned casings and generally terrible quality.

So, the architect is working with Pella to determine the resolution, and reduce our blood pressure and anxiety. We’ll see how this works out.

Yesterday we met with the lighting folks, which changed the entire lighting plan. We’re redoing the lighting plan completely, so our electrician does not have to work with a marked-up plan. Lighting is going to be very cool and transitional.

The architect discovered that we have a canale that drains right in front of the garage side door. He and our general contractor are working out a solution for the water drainage. We don’t really want water splashing on the house and door, so it needs to be redirected. Fun stuff.

Electrician is finishing outlets today, and the HVAC guy will be here to do one last vent for the master shower. The we finish up with the lighting rough-in and it’s time to start wall board. We still are waiting for the glass sliders from Pella which should be here end of the month. I’m sure that will require rebuilding the door frames, which is also an issue with our SIP panel maker. Overall, our architect isn’t happy with the panel people as this is rare for them to screw up dimensions. Overall, the windows generally work fine and are easy to use. We’ll have to see how things play out. The house is schedule to get wrapped next week, which will help weatherproof it for monsoon season.

Organized chaos. That’s what building a house is like. And overcoming all the obstacles and things that come up during the build. It’s definitely challenging and takes a lot of energy. We still need to pick out small stuff, but we’re getting close. We discovered one of Wendy’s old teachers does cabinets. Had we known, we’d have used him as I’m sure they would be cheaper. We’re going to ask him to build the outdoor kitchen and garage cabinets. They should be amazing. Wendy’s cousin had him build their cabinets and they are beautiful.

Alright, enough for this evening. My beautiful wife is home, so we need to go get some food. Take care and enjoy your evening.

Gary’s post: Yesterday was awful winds, typical of a New Mexico spring when front’s move through. 55.6 mph gusts that create this mess at our gate. This was the first tumbleweed blockage, there were two more after this. We just open the gate, let them blow through and they jumped our fences and went into the adjoining pastures. Today is going to be similar, with gusts in the 40’s. Thursday is predicted to have gusts in the 60’s. Then snow. Crazy, crazy weather.

Work on the house starts Wednesday, possibility of dirt showing up today, but we’ll see. I may just open the gate and leave it open all day, so the tumbleweeds just blow in and keep going. Worse part is the blowing dust – gets in everywhere in the RV. Welcome to climate change – wait we can’t say that now, it’s banned by our current deranged government. Ah, screw-it, it’s climate change! I’ll post some pictures of the dirt work as it progresses.

Lots of Itron work to do today, need to finish up the Distributech messaging document today then start on revising the Go-To-Market process and get that under control. I just need more time and stop working on RFP’s (which generate money) to get this stuff done. I’m supposed to be traveling next week, just not looking forward to it. I think I’m definitely going to cancel my Distributech participation. And I still NEED to get my April travel arrangements made so I can see my cardiologist one last time.

Jaret has been delaying his trip to Utah because of the crazy weather up north. Moab is getting wild winds and snow along with Filmore. He’s in a panic – which is normal for him – trying to find some of his winter camping stuff. While I love the kid, I can’t wait until he leaves, and my routine falls back to something relatively normal. I can’t get work done while he’s here because there’s always a conversation that he wants to have. I know it’s not intentional, it’s just him wanting to talk about everything.

He still has stuff in our “wherehouse” which is impossible to find anything. We need to pull everything out and redo the storage, but you can’t because of the wind and dust as it’ll cover everything. Until the weather settles down, we need to leave the garage door closed and keep stuff in to keep the layer of dust minimized. With warmer days, our insect population is starting to emerge, so it’s time to start with the insect killer around the entrances to the garage. And weeds, they are relentless…. You just gotta LOVE living in the country. Always work to do to keep things under control.

Well, I GOTTA get some work done this morning, it’s my most productive time. And the wind isn’t blowing yet, so I can get outside and clean up after the dogs.

Have a good day everyone. Take care and hug your loved ones.

Gary’s post: The last week in February. We’ve been here for almost a month now. We both have NM drivers’ licenses; our cars have NM plates, and our bodies are adjusting to the dryness and high desert climate. I’m finally getting settled in and working on focusing on the moment and not everything else. Once a Type A, always a Type A, but with some effort, you can learn to relax.

Moved our RV yesterday, tons of fun. Took a couple of tries to get it located exactly where we wanted it. Kept getting it slightly crooked, so that was a bit frustrating. Got water hooked up, power and just waiting on getting a holding tank installed later this week. Propane folks will move the big tank today so we’ll have heat and can cook!

Today I need to book work travel for the 12th of March. Not excited about it but it’s necessary. I also need to book my travel to Seattle in April to see my Cardiologist, going to do that today also. Time to focus on the little things and get them wrapped up.

Wendy and friends are planning on wine tasting tour to Walla Walla in May. Our job is to arrange a tasting tour. It’s not going to be cheap, but it’ll be fun. I’ll focus on taxes next weekend and get them done. We’ll use the refund to pay for it.

This week the dealership said the EV should be in, but car dealerships are notoriously bad at customer service. We’ll see how good this one is. The Volvo dealership in Bellevue was terrible, but the dealership in Seattle was awesome. It’s so hit and miss. We’ll see if Corley’s Volvo in Albuquerque is any better.

Going to sign off early today, not much more to say and not feeling great. Still have a really sore shoulder and joints. Need to sort this out as it’s impacting my activities and mood. My daughter, Lauren, hit me with the fact that my oldest, Matt will be 40 this Sunday. Wow! It’s really hard to fathom that as I still remember when he was a baby. Love that boy and miss him and his family. They are so busy that we just fit in between the time slots.

Have a great day everyone! Take care.

Gary’s Post: The day after the Superbowl. This should be a national holiday because everyone is hungover in one form or another. For me the Superbowl was largely a big nothing. It wasn’t a game at all, and all the hype was soooooo overblown. Waste of time and energy.

Monday starts a new week of fun and games. Yesterday was spent doing RV maintenance stuff and the no fun task of emptying the wastewater tanks. I’m laser focused on getting the wastewater tanks holding tank (or installing the house septic and using it). And I’ll get a plumber to install a sanitary water hydrant from the well next to the RV. That will make things a lot simpler, easier and quicker for maintenance. Also need to get the 420 propane tank refilled so we have heat and water. I’ll call our propane provider today too. Tuesday Harp goes to the groomers to get all the dirt washed out. Fortunately, he’s tan colored so he matches the dirt. Easy for us to lose sight of him when he’s on the far side of the property! Wednesday new fence posts for the new gate!! YEAH!!!!! We’ll recycle the old gate to the back pasture with Wendy’s cousins and replace that gate. I need to measure to make sure it’ll all fit.

Still need to do more work on the workshop storage, but it’s better. I think we can send a few more Jaret things down the road to paid storage and get a bit more space. I REALLY need to get rid of the shelves that are in the shop now – they suck bad – and get new ones. I think by next week we can have enough room for Overhead Door to install the garage door opener in the workshop. Then I can get the printer set up and start setting up some working space. Also going to get the EV outlet and charger set up for the new EV coming in a few weeks. Wendy is super excited to start using it for her commute. It’ll save miles and money on the XC40. The comparison on the cost to charge the EV versus the cost of gas, wear and tear on the XC40 will be an interesting comparison if an EV is more cost effective for around town than the XC40 ICE vehicle.

Finally got our passport pictures done yesterday at Walgrens. I’m going to see if they work on the online renewal site. I think they might be too close to the camera, but we’ll see. And then there’s Friday at the MVD again to register the truck in NM. I still am smarting a bit about registering it in Washington in December and having to re-register it here, but I don’t have a Washington address anymore.

It feels like things are starting to fall into place a bit more. Still, lots to do but at least I feel like the urgency is less pressing. I know a lot of that is my own sense of need to get things done. That comes from the pressure of know that I have limited time left and I want to get Wendy set up so she can function without me if necessary. I need to figure out how to live in the moment; not my strong suit and something I’ve NEVER been good at. It’s really hard to break lifetime habits. I make myself crazy half the time.

I’ll be curious as to what transpires at my companies Sales Kick-off in Greece this week. Going to tell my VP that I’m retiring in April, so I suspect he’ll want to keep me from traveling and spending monies on any upcoming travel I’m scheduled to take. I’m supposed to be a DTECH in Dallas next month and in Orlando for our Inspire planning meeting next month. He’ll probably be happy to have me retire and replace me with someone a lot younger and more engaged in the business. Frankly, I haven’t been challenged since I moved from product management to product marketing. And with the outcome of the “Itron complaint” against me, any advancement has been stymied. I think Itron will be happy to have me leave – as they have with all the other people involved in the “Itron complaint” event. Just my opinion – we’ll see what happens.

Well enough for today. Time to get ready for the day and eat some breakfast. To anyone reading this – have a wonderful week. I miss my kids, grandkids and the craziness and routine of our past chapter! Take care….

Gary’s post: Another morning post. We have to stop meeting like this. Yesterday was an interesting day emotionally. We closed on our house and are no longer homeowners. Funny thing is what the event does to you emotionally. Although Washington has a LOT of problems, socially and politically that don’t agree with us – we still have a lot of roots there. After living there for 8 years, our kids are there, grandkids are there and lots of good friends. And it has a lot of entertainment there. You don’t realize how much you miss that until it’s gone. For me, I was pretty depressed yesterday. It’s difficult you start to reevaluate your life decisions and wonder if you could have done things differently with a better result. Hard to know and a “rat-hole” that you can let yourself fall into. You only have one life – so you do the best you can with it. We’re in a good place, just different and it’ll take some time to adjust. Going from a large metropolis to a very small town – that will take some adjustment. Crazy thing is, I’ve lived here before.

Another topic, living in a trailer. I can’t see how people do this for long term. And to live in a van, that’s insane. Yesterday I emptied the waste tanks for the 4th time in two weeks. I need to figure out how to avoid this task – it’s stinky, smelly and no fun. I have to dump it into a smaller tank, transport it to a dump site and empty. Rinse and repeat 3 more time. GIANT PAIN IN THE ARSE! Then there’s the whole small space thing. While I LOVE MY WIFE, it’s still difficult to live in a super small space even though she’s gone most of the day. Then there’s working from the trailer. While I did work from home for 15 years, somehow, it’s different now. I think it’s knowing that I’m in a place with no friends, no immediate access to my kids, no ability to shop close by and nothing I can work on because my workshop is completely filled up with crap. It’s really the impact of knowing that you’re living in a limited space for a long time with no ability to maintain your regular routine. A new reality for sure.

Alright, enough complaining. Just interesting observations with this new reality. So today will be interesting. I’m going to try and get my New Mexico driver’s license. I’ve had one before, so we’ll see how this goes in our small town. I’m going to get the “real id” version since they don’t recognize Global Entry or any of the TSA issued id down here. Ridiculous. Then next week, we’ll attempt to register the truck. The I’m supposed to meet an electrician to estimate what it will cost to add another 50-amp outlet to charge our new EV. I’d really like to figure out how to split our current circuit, add a load monitoring device so that the EV charges at night while the RV isn’t using all the power. That would be optimal and save a lot of money.

To solve the RV wastewater problem, I’m meeting with our septic tank company on Monday and we’re going to sort out if it makes sense to install a 1000 gallon holding tank (which gets pumped) or go ahead and install our septic system for the house and use it. Either way it won’t be cheap.

The electric gate work starts next Monday, so that will be good. I just need to get money moved to pay for it. That’s a whole different story. I need to work with our investment people to make that process quicker or at least more convenient.

We’ll see if the foundation gets pinned today. Our general contractor has been sick for the last few days, so we need her to get well. Hopefully we can meet with here soon and sort out the budget. I still don’t have well water hydrant installed, so that project will be front and center next week along with getting the workshop more organized so I can get a garage door opener installed and some working space. The workshop is going to be a big project. I need to insulate it, wallboard and make it climate controlled so it’s usable all four seasons. That will keep me busy in retirement. And then there’s spreading gravel to keep the mud and dust down along with trying to restore the pasture to something reasonable. More work for after that house is built.

Enough for today. Need to get started and ready to deal with the local MVD people! Hopefully it goes smoothly. Should be a story in this somewhere!

Gary’s Post: Groundhogs Day – Hopefully this is not a repeat from the film…. Anyway, this is the first post of our joint blog. Some background. On January 18th, 2025, we climbed into our truck with our dog and headed south to New Mexico. A couple of days earlier we had the movers come and pack up the house with the belongs we had left selling or donating stuff and adding stuff from our youngest’s house – that’s another story for a different blog. One and a half trucks of “stuff”.

We spent two days driving from Renton Washington, through central Oregon, Utah and part of Colorado into northern New Mexico and finally into Los Lunas. Amazingly beautiful country. We now living in our 5th wheel on two acres that we bought a couple years ago from Wendy’s cousins.

The home in the background is my brothers-in-law manufactured home that he occupies which is another story……

Anyway, after two years of planning, paying for infrastructure and getting my brother-in-law set up, we’re finally in New Mexico. We got our building permit from the county, so I’m planning on documenting how our new house is built (it’s a SIP construction home). Should be interesting. We’re getting Wendy an EV for her commute to work to avoid the gas price rise due to President Trump’s tariffs. Of course, that means another call to the electrician to add a charging circuit to the workshop.

Well, that’s it for now, more after breakfast and some awesome New Mexican food.