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I'm better now.

Yesterday, after work, I went out to play basketball with "some of the guys" from work. Liz has her Weight Watcher's meeting that night, so it sounded like a lot more fun that just sitting around the house. And it was.

But Christ am I out of shape.

I didn't think it would be that bad. After all, Liz and I have been going to water aerobics for the past 10 months or so. I had assumed that had gotten me into, if not good shape, then at least decent shape. After all, the instructor's told us a few times that a half-mile of laps in the water is equivalent to three times that amount on land. So, hey, I'm fine! Right!

Nope. My bullshit detector should have gone off at that statement. Or that half-mile is equivalent to three times that on land, but at the same, sub 1 mile-per-hour speed. In any case, I was really out of breath after about, oh, 30 seconds into the first game. And I played 2 full games, and most of the third. The accomplishments that I can list are rather petty:

• I didn't fall down.
• I didn't pass out.
• I didn't vomit.

You get the idea. For the record, everyone else met those goals, and then some. Especially my 40+ year old boss, who ran me and a whole lot of the other players into the ground. Must be all the coffee he drinks or something.

And then there's the matter of the shoes...

I don't like shopping for shoes. I used to dislike getting haircuts. I solved that problem by just growing my hair long. I dislike getting new shoes, but it seems I can't exactly keep going with the same pair I've had since, well, since graduation from college. They're a little more than beat-up right about now. All the inside sole-padding has ripped off, and there's just this odd foam-rubber stuff down in the bottom, and the exterior is now a rather unappealing grey color. The result of this rather abused footwear is that after the basketball game I had two blisters on the bottom of my right foot. I used the left foot to run around with during the game, too, but for some reason it's the right foot that got the blisters. I don't understand this stuff, I just write it down.

So, I really think that before I play another game, I really should get a new pair of shoes. I like playing, but this whole getting blisters, being reminded every time I take a step that I needed to get new shoes about a year ago isn't my idea of basketball fun.

The house stuff still is moving along fairly slowly. We talked with the electrician yesterday, and while I feel a little stupid now, I also feel I've got a better idea of what's going on.

Here's the thing. One of the times we visited the model house, I went out to look at the circuit board, and wasn't too pleased with the way they had the electricity in the house laid out. The two upstairs bedrooms, one of which is going to be the computer room and the other is going to be the guest bedroom/sewing room were both on the same 10-amp circuit. Not enough. Not close. We would need more power.

Then I went to the circuit board in our apartment and counted up the amps on the circuit switches. It totaled 300 amps. The house only was going to take in 200 amps. Clearly, this would not be enough. So Liz and I decided we were going to ask for 400 amps for the house, figuring that would easily power all our current stuff, and give us some more room to grow.

So we went to the builder, and drew little notes on the electrical plans for the house, and where we wanted circuits to be, and how many amps on a circuit, and could we please bring 400 amps into the house.

They had a hissy fit. What did we want with this much power? Did we know that 400 amps could power a 7,000 square foot house? Did we know how much extra this was going to cost us (No. And they didn't either)? Were we sure we needed all that power? Could we talk with their electrician? No, sorry, he quit, and the subcontractors are taking over the rest of the work. Could we talk with them? Of course. We'll just play phone tag for a bit, make sure that everyone has a chance to figure out what they're going to say and everything.

Turns out that adding up the numbers on a circuit board doesn't give you the number of amps coming into a residence. Only way to tell that is with an amp-o-meter or something, which electricians have. So we talked to the electrician on the phone, and he assured us that he was pretty sure that we didn't have anywhere close to 300 amps coming into our apartment, and that 200 amps in the house would be just fine. Liz and I, sort of feeling a little stupid, said that we'd take his word for it and hope.

The thing is, Liz's dad is rather adamant that 200 amps won't be enough. And while he's not a house-builder right now, he used to be. So we're not really sure what we're doing is right, no matter what we do. :P

Oh, well. If we go to plug in a blender or something in a few years and the whole house goes black, we'll know we should have listened to Liz's dad more.