Now - about our group. There is a forum very similar to the Garden Web forums; Cruise Critic is a forum for folks who cruise or want to cruise. It has several categories, but the most popular one is the Message Boards. That is where you can find out about or ask questions about ports of call, information about specific cruise lines, reviews, and the most popular one - Roll Calls. A roll call is where folks "gather" to meet each other prior to a specific cruise. Each cruise line and each ship has its spot. When someone wants to meet others, you look for your sailing; or if not there, then create a roll call. There is a lot of chatting about where you are from, whether you have been on that itinerary, what plans there might be in each port, etc. I have been a member there since December, 2003. I don't post a lot, for I have posted less than 2,000 times through the years. However, there are some posters who are posting almost daily and have tens of thousands of posts. For this 42-day cruise, we had a lot of messages. Counting traveling companions, there were more than 100 people involved on our Roll Call. We had never been to Europe and Africa and wanted to take advantage of our time there, Karen got online and lined up at least 10 shore excursions. Then she posted all the important bits of information and asked if anyone on the roll call wanted to join us. On a couple of them, the response was huge and the original plan of one small bus, became one very large bus. After many months of planning, we still needed to put names and faces together. A meet and greet was planned for the first full sea day. We met in The Crow's Nest, and since we were such a large group, beverages and breakfast treats were supplied by Holland America. (Holland America also hosted their own Facebook meeting.) This group was wonderful, since we would be travel companions for a long trip and we would go ashore with several of the group many times, it was the perfect opportunity to make friends. It was great! No one person was in charge, there was one person who had contacted Holland America prior to sailing to ask for a reserved time and place. Not everyone who was on the roll call came to this meeting, but there was a decent size group. We had been on other cruises when fewer than 10 people were on the roll call and the connections were not as good. If you want to look at some of what Cruise Critic is, there is a link. Here is a link that might be useful: Cruise Critic

It's not normal for a builder to spend 100% of his time soley on your house unless you are a luxury build that is making it worth his time in compensation to do so. It's 100% normal for a builder to be running many other projects at the same time as yours. He won't be on your site everyday, but a building crew of some sort or another should be on site on average at least 4-5 out of the 7 days. Building a house is like setting up a row of dominos. YOu can't install the drywall without having the windows and siding up, and if those subs are working elsewhere, then you have some delays until they are ready for you. A good builder will attempt to work on a number of projects at once to be able to keep "his subs busy and beholden to him for their work. That does mean that they aren't always available when you want them to be, but it's better to have the delay and have quality work from subs he's worked with before rather than attempt to find someone else that he's not worked with to "fill in" just to keep you happy about the progress on your job. It's NOT normal to have a one man operation, if that's what you're implying by stating that "he" installed your windows & did porch railings, etc. A 4 month build is completely unrealistic expectation unless you're talking about a tract home builder building the same simple plan over and over again in a large subdivision. 4 months to being dried in is a pretty good pace, actually, so if he begins your siding soon, you're on a realistic time table. 9-12 for a build is a good pace for most builders. 14-18 months is more on target for a custom build with a busy builder. You don't have anything out of the ordinary here, except maybe a lack of adequate communication between you and your builder. Taking over the build yourself or having another GC do so is to be avoided if at all possible. It introduces many more troubles to your situation than you think you have now. It takes a really special person to want to jump right in the middle of something half built by someone else and take over, and those people are pretty hard to find, and don't come cheap. Work this out with your bulder if at all possible. Adjust your expectations, and maybe he gives you a weekly summary of the work planned to happen that week at the first of the week so you understand the scheduling issues better. Don't get in a huff that you aren't getting attention paid to you. This isn't high school. It's a business transaction. Keep the emotions out of it. That's hard to do, because it's your home, but you've got to take a more dispassionate approach. If you use language with him like you did in this post, it will get you exactly no where but emotionally exhausted.

Tiger is right. Take the free money and get the better system. $1500 is just the from the Feds. Your state and/or local utility also will give you rebates, but you'll need to meet a minimum efficiency which your quotes do not achieve. If your cost delta goes from $2300 down to $400 that is a big difference. Your contractor is not being very helpful. I interviewed 8 contractors for my home and went with the the one that: a. did the load calcs b. worked with me and all my crazy thoughts on various system configurations c. was professional and responsive when it came to answering questions. d. made me and my wife feel comfortable with what they proposed. I did not go with the cheapest bid or the most expensive (although it was quite expensive). My costs were much higher due to a lot of duct work. Either way I can promise you that you will get what you pay for. Tigerdunes is steering you in the right direction. In the end it is up to you. I spent a month researching and interviewing contractors before making a decision. BTW I took an option for 12months 0% so I could actually get all my rebates and returns and spread out the cost at the same time. In my case I get the $1500+ 1200 more from my utility. There are also a lot of rebates for new systems. I know Carrier and Lennox have major rebates at this time for sure, but in general they are larger with the nicer systems. It never hurts to get a variety of quotes to weigh your system options (I had multiple quotes from the same contractors)

We renewed our vows on our 20th anniversary. My DH surprised me with it. I had always teased him that he never proposed to me. He didn't. We just always talked about getting married and then we did. Never the down on one knee thing. So on our 20th, it was a Wed. Kids home after school. Had a band concert that night.... I am mopping the kitchen floor, he comes in and in front of the kids asks me to marry him, again. I laughed and said of course. He said, great! Can you be ready in an hour? I said.... what????? I had ONE dress I could still squeeze into, put on that. Had no time to do nails or other such stuff. The kids scrambled into nice clothes and we went off to Tahoe. We live 30 minutes from there. He had it all set up with a cute little chapel there. My son, who was 15 at the time, just kept shaking his head and saying this is so lame. I have a concert tonight.... He really was put out about it. My DD was so excited. Well, we get to the chapel and we go in. They have us pick out some music. My husband says, wait! he goes out to the car, has a bouquet for me and one for DD. He has boutineers for him and son. My son is shaking his head this is so lame....... We are all laughing. So son walks me down the aisle and DD is waiting there and DH. We say a few words from our hearts and we are all teary eyed, I look over DH's shoulder at my son and he is weepy too..... I laugh, in the middle of it I stop and ask him if it is still lame. He says No.... and wipes some tears away. We are all laughing about it. Then when it comes time to exchange rings, husband asks for mine back and gives it to the lady performing the ceremony and she adds another ring to my set. He had it custom made, not sure how he did that cause mine is all twisty and it matches up perfectly. I was shocked. It had more stones in it and makes my ring look totally different. Anyway, we did all that, went to an early dinner in Tahoe and made it back for the concert. Now here we sit at 32 years. Maybe we will do it again someday. I still tell him that ceremony meant more to me than the first one. This one came from his heart. We could have gone to dinner or had something on the weekend like we usually do/did. But he went to all this trouble to plan it and surprise me with it meant that he really would do it all over again!