We're in

Finally, on Thursday, Durwood came by early to inspect the gas shutoff -- and within an hour, Carolyn called me from the Building Department to say that our Certificate of Occupancy was ready.

It's conditional, expiring in October, and I had to post a huge bond to cover tearing out the windows, but . . . I'll take even partial victory. I picked it up, made a quick run to the apartment for some things I'd need to spend the night at the house, stopped at Fausto's for a bottle of champagne (ex-Mayor Jimmy hugged me on hearing the news) and went home -- how sweet those words are, at long last -- for a victory dance.

The landscapers were putting in even more of their spectacular wares -- lady palms, foxtail palms, dwarf Madagascar date palms; and I'd post more shots of the garden progress, but our order for a DSL modem fell somewhere in the crack between the old BellSouth and the new AT&T, so I'm typing from a dialup line in the upstairs bedroom, crosslegged on the big bamboo bed.

But typing with a smile.

There was another victory dance when Waste Management hauled off the outhouse, after about the 12th call. We closed the day with martinis at Mangoes, where Franko Richmond was playing piano brilliantly as ever.

Friday I had early coffee on the porch, and then we met with the alarms guy, changed our voter registration, changed our postal address, changed our driver's licenses and had a little meeting with the lawyer, who said he'd be there with me Wednesday when the magistrate hears our appeal on the windows.

As you can imagine, there's lots to do to shut the apartment down and get the house fully arranged. I'll post more when I can.