h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a new one.

It is light, and airy.

It has lots of things that need either fixing or replacing.

It has a lovely garden, which now have seeds planted.

I'm doing OK; I had a bad day yesterday, with both mental and physical health taking a nosedive into awfulness, but a good dose of junk food, chocolate and NotCake managed to perk me up admirably (you would have thought healthy food, but that didn't cut it. I had to break out the Terry's Chocolate Orange to get me out of this one). The weather is delghtful, I am playing D&D this evening, and in general things are looking up.

On the downside my keyboard batteries have run out. Typing this on my touchscreen is surprisingly irritating.

Congrats on your new house. Be sure to send us your garden pics to . Otherwise more kitty pictures. Even Willem painted one in his Colours of Wildlife this week.

Congrats on the house!

Good to see you around, Vip. Sorry about the bad day, but well done on getting yourself out of it

Congratulations on the new house!

Thanks, all.

The house has been a bit of a rollercoaster. We almost lost it altogether when our mortgage company dragged their heels to the point our buyer's buyers nearly pulled out. Then once we moved in we discovered that some of the things we took for granted - like soundproofing between us and next door, the loft being boarded out for storage, the shower being, well, decent - turned out to be just assumptions.

But we are making progress; we have installed a proper loft hatch (the old one was just a tiny access hole) and we have ordered a new bathroom suite (because the long term plan was to renovate the ancient bathroom anyway, the discovery that the downstairs shower in the conservatory was awful has just made this more urgent!).

We will be ordering soundproofing boards in the next couple of days, and the new boiler (to replace the noisy one in 's bedroom) has been ordered to be installed in the under-stairs cupboard, where it should be.

I've also contacted Envirovent to get a ventilation system installed. We currently have natural ventilation - i.e. holes in the walls with a mesh over them - which isn't really adequate with the advent of central heating, especially in the winter. We had this installed in our house before the last one and it solved our condensation issues overnight. Hopefully if the cost isn't prohibitive we can then block up the holes before we put the soundproofing boards in place and redecorate.

Overall it will be fine, I think I just had envisioned this house wouldn't need any work straight away, so we could get on with it when we were ready... . And so many things are related! It feels like to get one thing fixed we have to go back several steps because there are decisions to make that will affect the original thing.

We shall prevail! I just hope we don't run out of money first. Eeep...