so much to do, so many months where it isn't happening

It's been a slow winter -- there are virtually no outward signs of progress on the home building front.  We are fairly resigned to living in our overpriced rental forever (well, another 12 months).

We did select a builder, and we have come close to closing on our construction-to-perm loan.   There are myriad financial acrobatics involved in building your house, so if you haven't done this before -- educate yourself as much as possible ahead of time.  

At any rate, demolition could potentially happen in the next 3 weeks, and then we would start the building process.  The first thing to happen would be drilling of geothermal wells.  Among the many things which hold virtually no interest to us, this is a cool exception!  We will (hopefully) be heating and cooling our home with the help of good ol' earth, who's temperature just 10 meters below is a relatively constant 55 degrees!

Here's how it works:

A nice review of the process is available online...wikipedia has an overly technical explanation that made me pine for conventional gas-burning technology.

This is not one of the deer we saw.  But it does appear to be a deer, possibly with mange.

As an aside, Benjamin and I went out to the property this weekend to collect some firewood to use in aforementioned overpriced rental.  We found a nice hiking trail in the back woods and walked back within the nature preserve for about an hour.  On our way back home we crossed paths with several young deer!