Here's Gina standing in front of the house "reflecting". As you can see, most of the house has been wrapped with the paper and chicken wire prior to the first layer of stucco that'll go on later this week.
Here's an exterior and interior shot of the skylight. I've been assigned by first official job once we move-in. I've been told I get to clean the skylight every week!! Looks like we'll be purchasing Windex in the convenient 55 gallon drums.
And here we have a sampling of the roof tile. They need to deliver and set the tile on the roof a few weeks prior to installation to acclimate the tile. They did an install on a small area to make sure Gina and I liked everything (color, pattern, visible concrete, etc.). Since we liked what we saw, they will finish the installation after some of the dirtier-elements of the exterior stucco are finished. 
Here's Chris our General Contractor showing us where to put it...I mean, where one of our exterior lights will be located. Actually Chris promised to have the construction completely finished by January 2009 if I put a picture of him on our blog. We have seven of these lights outside: two flanking the front door with another two on both side of the garage, with three more located in various locations around the house.
...and here's our very cool mahogany front door. This is one of many "problem" areas the house has created. The flat door jambs fits into a curved wall that will be our front entrance area. Lots of brain cells have been expended (from both the thinking and the drinking), to work out all the construction challenges this house has to offer. Who's idea was it to have a house with curves?
We wrap things up on the home front, with some construction details. The pic on the left is a downshot of the stairs from the second floor. All we need to decide now is what to do tile-wise with the floor at the bottom. The middle shot is the chimney and how it integrates into the third floor deck. Gina wants to make certain that it'll be real easy for Santa to find and to jam his fat-ass into it during his annual visit. The final is the interior framing for the fireplace. In an attempt to keep Gina from going stir-crazy, we took a quick road-trip to Yosemite National Park. It's less than 400 miles from us and is actually a very easy drive. Since Gina is not known for camping or being a big fan of nature (sleeping in a tent, co-existing with animals and squirrels, visiting an outhouse...without running water or fixing meals on a campfire), we needed to make reservations at one of only three, hotels in the park. As you would expect, these hotels are booked waaay in advance and reservations need to be made a year or so in advance. We got very fortunate and were able to make reservations at Yosemite Lodge (in the valley), for one night only (Thursday)...and off we went!!
Immediately after going through a long tunnel cut in the mountain, you open onto this picturesque-view of the Yosemite Valley. 
Here's Gina communing with nature and posing with friendliest tree she could find. This was midway on our hike to Vernal Falls. We planned on going to the top to camp overnight until she told me she needed to go the bathroom...and down the mountain we went!!
The shot on the left is the view of Yosemite Falls we had as we walked out of our room at Yosemite Lodge. Normally there's water gushing forth from the area indicated. Because it's so late in the year and water for the falls come from the glacial and snow runoff from the high country, there was no water left to "gush". On the right is Bridelveil Falls...which actually had water!! We climbed around on the rocks and were able to get to the base of the falls.
Guess what A-list celebrities were seen at the premiere of Kevin Smith's ZACK & MIRI MAKES A PORNO?OK, maybe the C or D-list grunts but Gina and I did attended the premiere of Kevin Smith's new film ZACK & MIRI MAKE A PORNO on Monday Oct. 20th. The premiere was held at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd....in Hollywood!! Though we did not see as many Chinese as I was hoping for, the movie was great and was viewed by an appreciative crowd. Gina was initially reluctant about attending the premiere. Regardless, she did attend and surprisingly, throughly enjoyed the movie. As expected, ZACK & MIRI is chock-full of well-written sophmoric humor,and is easily Kevin's best movie ever. Rather than dick-n-poop jokes starting at the very beginning of the film, he waits and gets you emotionally invested in the characters before he unleashes his colorful comedic wit. Once you realize that his humor though often off-color is not mean-spirited, it's easy to see beyond the moment (and the language), and enjoy a very sweet love story. Congrats to Kevin on what I predict will be his biggest hit to date and on his personal growth as a writer and director. He is so uniquely talented and was able to craft a commercially successful film while retaining his artistic vision, voice and integrity. The film opens this Friday Oct. 31th...check it out!!
