Hi all, About 2 and one-half hours to go - the deadline for posting is almost upon us! Deadline to post containers for Zone Wars: 11:59 pm (23:59) tonight! (Eastern Daylight Time) That's what Terrene has previously announced. Please note that Gardenweb uses Eastern Daylight Time (Summer Time) for the date and time stamp. Any post dated Wednesday, May 2 does NOT count as we want to wrap this up and announce the winners! You can see the date and time that will be on your post when you take "Preview Message." It's at the end of the line with your screenname. Terrene has asked me to sort the spreadsheet and announce winners in various categories based on the sort. Exciting. Here is a link to a clock showing different time zones. You can check how your local time differs from Eastern Time used in Boston, New York, or other cities in that time zone. Thanks to everyone for your hard work and for a fun competition. See you later! Cities listed on link - Boston/New York vs Chicago/Dallas vs Denver/Salt Lake City vs San Francisco/Seattle Here is a link that might be useful: Clock with time zones

Today is the last day to vote. Please, please take a moment to do it, and don't forget the Extra Vote. Link is in the first post of this thread. The answer to the Extra Vote question today (Friday) is FIVE. (The number of Americans with a disability). Last day to vote! Ben and Shelby are moving up and their chances of winning are looking pretty good, so every vote is important. Love you guys. I'll keep you posted. No more pestering for votes after today, I promise!

We will see about lost revenue soon. I went back yesterday evening to get my sunglasses and noticed the opposite wall has separated an inch and the hardwood in one bedroom has buckled. This will be interesting. I suspect overloading - there were no defects noted in the attic or structure, ever. Not by any inspector or contractor. The only comment was that the roof was getting old and I might want to think about replacement at some point. I say boring a bit tongue in cheek in that I am known to talk about design and decorating incessantly. Not as bad as the rehab addict lady... Hopefully a more subtle Mike Holmes. An engineer came by yesterday afternoon. Not sure whose insurance called them (not mine). The first thing they did was get in a lift and take pictures of supplies and whatnot. Google says this may not be unheard of, BC has a handy guide for how to load up supplies in a roof that I guess they should have read first. I know a structural engineer and we are visiting today too. Losing the plaster and lathe on the wall facing the school bothers me some since it makes things quieter on the inside. Another thing concerns me a bit is flood insurance requirements. BFE here is 13 feet and the living space is at 12.6. It has never flooded. If you do more than 50% of the value of the place in repair in a year you have to bring it up (physically raise it). If this is defined as market value of the place I doubt we will hit that since values more than rebounded. However if it's defined as value of the improvements per the county's housing crash values this could be trouble. Likewise for bringing things to code. Insurance is supposed to put it back the way it was, but rules have changed over the last century and I am not sure I'd that comes out of my pocket. I take this the same way Peter did in Office Space when the building burned down. Just stand back and watch... For now I will finish our place. I assume they will fix by removing the roof completely, take out the ceiling, remove the entire second story wall facing the school, remove a section of the opposite wall and then deal with whatever broke and buckled the floor. If required to raise ithe house the entire drain system must be redone, the place leveled and the enclosed rear porch rebuilt. @doug the floor looks awesome! Is it walnut? @texas - that may be me... I will check it out once I am not browsing by phone. Marine spar varnish is great stuff, it's the right choice. Coffee time...

I am in a rural/suburban county just outside of Indianapolis and we have had a month of early voting available to us. The lines at the courthouse for early voting have been 30 min. to 2 hours long, depending upon when you went. I waited to vote until election day and waited 45 minutes beginning at 11:30 a.m. By that time, more than 75% of the registered voters in my precinct had already voted, either by absentee (which includes early voters) or that day. Pretty awesome! Whether you are happy about the outcome of the election or not, I think we all can agree that the excitement generated this election cycle has been good. And, as I told my 10 and 12 year old daughters yesterday, no matter who won the presidency, it was going to be a moment for history. I'm not a coffee drinker but probably would have made the trip into town to a Starbucks had I known about the freebie! : ) Sandy