(Yes, this is it — the famed pumpkin from the LA home show!)

As difficult as some things are seeming with all this, others seem positively, wonderfully easy. Here are two examples.

I have talked to our new phone company a few times, and they are so great to deal with. Seriously, nothing is a problem to them. I just got off the phone with them to set up all the lines we need for home and business. They can do everything we want, including moving the lines when building is done. Then she said “Do you have email?” (so they could send me the app instead of doing it all over the phone). YES!! EMAIL…how wonderful. (I was beginning to think no one out that way used computers.)

Another example is the Cochise County Planning Dept. We met with them last week to talk about permits and the whole building process. They couldn’t have been nicer and more helpful.  If you can believe this (we don’t), they even said that all inspections are done within 2 (and usually 1) days of the request.

After attending the home building show in LA a couple weeks ago (from which the best part was getting a free pumpkin and stumbling into a Hispanic heritage parade downtown afterward), our expectations for this one were tempered.

The show in NM, which included an eco/green building exhibit, was better, but not great. There was a lot on solar, which we are now already pretty well versed in. We did discover a new roofing material that we think might be a good option. We learned about geo-thermal, which was interesting, but not a good fit for us.

We talked to a couple designers. Neither was a very good fit, but talking to more people has helped me better articulate what we need and be able to judge potential fit in just a couple minutes. We’ll keep looking.

Like the LA show, there were an assortment of seeming unrelated exhibits, like cookware, knives, beauty products, teeth cleaning, jewelry, and even a Kumon booth. Apparently, the “lifestyle” part of the show refers to this, along with a general idea that if you have the money to remodel or build a new home, you have plenty of disposable income for this stuff too.

We spent a couple hours at the show before heading off to hike in Petroglyph National Monument.