Weather and Styrofoam

For some many months we have been waiting to get a slab. Actually we've been waiting a couple of years for a house but the slab is the next step in that process. And has been for the last three months. I know I've mentioned it over and over in previous posts but things have been going so slow ... not slow, just not going at all ... that we no longer get a warm feeling of excitement when progress finally occurs. Because when it does occur, it's always late and it's usually not complete. The slab was supposed to happen all at once.

• Excavation: 1 Day
• Drill piers: 1 Day
• Let piers set: 2 Days
• Weekend or something
• Plumbing: 1 Day
• Lay the wafflepods and prepare formwork: 1 Day
• Pour the slab: 1 Day

It was supposed to take less then TWO WEEKS. As it has happened each of these steps has taken it's originally quoted time, plus two weeks to get them back and fix it, plus the originally quoted time to get it right. I am the avatar of frustration.
So forgive me if I don't get giddy with excitement when little parts of the job that I'm waiting to have done get completed months late.
We still don't have a slab yet. What we do have is this:
Waffles.

Oh and for the curious, this was the message from the plumber to the builder discussing the appropriate method for filling in the trenches.

Waiting

It's nice to give people the benefit of the doubt. It's nice to not check up on people and let them have their space.
It's not nice to come back after a break in observation and see that nothing has happened.
Can't say I was surprised. I did actually predict that nothing would happen. It's just that, well, it's just that my room is messy. My room, well, my brother's old room that Felicity and I live in, in my parents' house is messy. The washing machine died and with all the work Christmas do's over the weekend we didn't get any ironing done. So our room has clothes in baskets waiting to iron and clothes overflowing from the hamper waiting to be washed and shoes here and there. There is no floor. Kids room + queen sized bed + wardrobe + clothes hamper + shoe basket + ironing + chest of drawers + bedside table = not quite enough room to walk around to my side of the bed anyway. But when it's messy...
And we've been living in it for two years waiting for Rossdale to build our house.
Our house that they never start.
Our house that has should have had a slab in September.

Note: This photo was taken a week later than the other one that looks the same.

Tuesday

Today is Tuesday. Well, late Tuesday night. (I'm up waiting for our phone - from Japan, which we use as an alarm - to recharge enough to last the night) We didn't visit the block tonight, so it might just be that today Rossdale came and fixed the plumbing, set out the wafflepods (big styrofoam block about a foot thick), laid out the reo-bar, set up the formwork for the slab and poured the concrete under the supervision of the site manager and assessing engineer.
It's possible, but I doubt it.
In fact, I doubt that anyone has visited the site at all.
They were supposed to be preparing to over the weekend so they could pour concrete on Monday.
But...
Monday night = squat. nada. zip.
(I think they have to go in that order)
At least the message the plumber left hadn't been washed away.

Everything Will Stay and Stick Without Progress.

In the last post I mentioned that we had some blocks delivered Friday and that they will pour (the concrete for the slab) on Monday.
Scratch that.
The wafflepods were delivered Wednesday and the laying of the reobars over the weekend wasn't done over the weekend.
So, the earliest it looks like we can have a slab is Tuesday.
Or Wednesday.
Or...

Well, we'll see.

Set!

Hokay.
I've got this all set up now. There's my blog, for weirdness and strangendipity. It's RocketSamurai.blogspot.com. I'm now logging in as RacketSamurai (the username 'RocketSamurai' was taken by someone who obviously has good taste) and I post as, well, me. Glen Pearce. Felcity now takes over LuckMonkey and posts as Felicity Pearce.
Except, the posts before this one are credited to Felicity Pearce even though I wrote them. Weird, I know.

Anyway, this pic here is the styrofoam wafflepods on the block. That was Friday and they hope to pour on Monday. We'll see.

Audience

Today we met with Esther from Rossdale. She gave us audience for our woes. We talked to her for an hour and a half. That's less than an hour per year of delays!
After the deluge of complaints we still hadn't got riled enough to win the marble benchtops. I think we failed to provide the level of shouting needed to have executives on the next floor embarrassedly excuse themselves from their meeting and come quiet us down with lollies and trips to the Bahamas. Tears would have been good.
Sometime it sucks being a nice guy. Next time I'm going to start the meeting by puching the first person I meet in the face. Then they'll need to take me seriously. Mind you, they may take me serious in the 'call the police to take me away' kind of seriousness.
Man, now I've gone and brought back all my frustrastion that I thought I'd unloaded in the meeting. We've been given a chance to discuss all the problems in the process and the only result is that they can improve the process for the next person stupid enough to build with them. That tickles my altruistic sense of community but I don't get my house any quicker, cheaper or nicer and I get to wait and see if anything else goes wrong. Maybe I'm being negative.

Yay. I think a letter to the CEO is in order.

Steve!

Steve it the awsomest dude. Especially as seen here, dancing forever.
You've got to hand it to guys that can do things for non-real values of time.

Apart from the massive starbucks logo, this is a terrible photo of (from left to right) Junichiro (I make that up! ha!), me, Yoko (Oh noes! I made that up too!), Felicity, line of people, Miho, standing coat and Jerry. The people outside were me, Felicity, Miho and Jerry. And they got married.

Okay, you can't parse that either. At least I'm not bad grammar. Ore speling. Or typun g.

By the Gods!

Okay, really.
I know I shouldn't be that excited. But hey, it's been a while since anything appeared on the net thanks to me. (intentionally unparsable)

Consider this post a test.