Lorena and I have been excited about this house. It is in a very quiet neighborhood up on a hill with just spectacular views. We cannot wait to take some pictures at the right time of day with the entire panorama. It is small enough that there will not be a lot of maintenance that needs to be done. We have a ton of things we want to do and, thankfully, there is not going to have to be a wholesale restructuring of the house like Casa Mexican #1.
Our builder, Lynn Neri, tells us there are going to be major changes in the appearance of the exterior of the house over the next 2-3 weeks. The area of the images marked in red is open to the soil in front of the house. A planter or two and a couple of trees are planned for that area. Tile for the entire facade of the house is scheduled to start this Saturday. I am not sure exactly what Lynn has in mind for the tile, but I am pretty sure it will create some pretty dramatic changes. After that, the clean-up and finish work required for the interior of the house is really minimal and should take only another 2-4 weeks. When the exterior is cleaned up and while we are still working on interior finish work, plumbing, and wiring, we will put the house on the market and start thinking about the next project.
A colleague of mine, John S., has joined me to start his PhD in Natural Resources Science at University of Nebraska. He is a highly skilled software architect and an image processing application development expert with decades of experience. He is less than ten years younger than I am so I am sure the average age of the PhD students in our department has gone up a good chunk. We will be doing a hydrology independent study class together and his research will extend some of the stuff I have already started. Honestly, his programming skills are broader and deeper than mine so he will be a huge addition to the program. I am really looking forward to working with him.
As for me, I will be two credits short of half way complete (will have 43, need 90) after fall semester. After that, I have four more classes to take, research to perform, comprehensive exams, and a dissertation and defense and I am done. There is some chance I can get this all done by the end of Fall 2023, God willing, but it will probably be Spring 2024 if I am being realistic. I am still really enjoying it, but have been disabused of any notion that I want to wallow in the petty politics of academia and especially in academic publications. That being said, I really enjoy writing and hope to continue to contribute scholarly work through Troy and his colleagues at UNL if/after I graduate.
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