Moving right along.

So much to address.

I got me my money. I feel like the Hamburglar after that time he broke into McDonald's and ate seven dozen hamburgers. That's to say, I feel very satisfied, but the experience has given me a lingering case of indigestion. Ye, let it be known far and wide, from mountaintop to valley, that dealing with banks, in general, sucks, like, a whole lot. There, now that it's out there, I'm feeling much better.

Construction continues to crawl along. I've spent a lot of time in the bathroom this week, laying a subfloor, laying tile, cutting a toilet hole in the floor, perfecting the kind of half-assed drywall, etc etc etc. Did I mention that the only light in the bathroom is a halogen work lamp that goes from zero to one thousand degrees in fifty two seconds? So it's warm in there. But it's moving along. Plumbers are set to come in early next week, which is great because it means that I'll be able to, for example, wash my hands while working. And maybe pee. I'm pretty excited.

I think I'll lay the subfloor in the rest of the space in the next couple of days. And finish that dastardly spackling effort. And figure out my logo, build a bar, build a couple more small walls, buy an air conditioner, paint the place, solve the crisis in Iraq, eat a sandwich, buy $15,000 worth of coffee equipment, install it, take a nap, think of all the details I've not yet considered, deal with them, and open my doors. Should take, say, two or maybe three days.

See you at the grand opening on May 19th (???)...

Nineteen Days?!?

According to my original time line, I'll be opening the cafe in nineteen days.

I spent six hours drywalling and spackling today and somehow feel like I didn't make so much progress.

I still don't actually have the cash I need on hand (next week or I'm going to burn down every bank in Philadelphia).

I still have not submitted my massive pain-in-the-ass plan to the Health Department.

I keep getting distracted by things like baseball games, underwhelming hipster dance parties, and Myspace.

Cinco de Mayo's not looking so good.

Now I'm thinking maybe Doce de Mayo?

Which would not necessarily preclude hiring a Mariachi Band, for the record.

Hangin' it old school

For those of you who were wondering, it is, in point of fact, much easier to hang drywall with 1 5/8" screws than it is to hang the stuff with, say, 2 1/2" screws.

Because I know that many people wonder about these things on a Wednesday morning.

That said, my drywall is about 50% hung. Check back soon for additional updates on just how hung my drywall is in the next few days. Things could change at any moment...

Sweating...

It's been a tough week. For a couple of days, it was looking like all of my financing was going to fall apart. Completely. As it stands, it's looking like it won't be falling apart, but it's being continually pushed back instead. Figure by the time I open my doors, I'll maybe get my money. It's only through an obnoxious amount of persistence in getting people who I'm depending on to get their acts together that I'm even feeling as good about this situation as I am. Today. Tomorrow, we'll see.

I've built me some walls. I now have framed out a bathroom and an office and I just have a couple of soffets (soffits? sofits? Is there a proper way to spell this word?) to put up, then some drywall, some tape, some spackle, and we're good to go. Okay, I should probably build a bar at some point, submit my plans to the health department, and get a fuckton of plumbing done while I'm at it. I got a couple of plumbing estimates this week and they were about 400 percent higher than I budgeted. Remind me, why am I going into the coffee business instead of the plumbing business? Hell, Mario had a collection of video games made in his image. Name one coffee person who has that honor. Eh? That's what I thought.

Maybe I'll put up some pictures this week. That should satisfy the interested hordes.