We finally set a deadline and bought a washer and dryer at Sears when they had a sale a month or so ago. Elaina picked out the Mercedes-Benz of washer and dryer pairs, which was primarily because of energy efficiency. This motivated us to finish the room before they were delivered. It's roughed out with electrical, almost done with plumbing and we have an appointment with the drywall guy this week. We can't wait to run our first load of laundry at home again.

We're thinking of getting a Kubota L3130 tractor with a loader, backhoe, post hole digger and maybe a bush hog. They have a 0% for 3 years, and right now we can afford a payment. We've looked at used but the most we can save is a few grand, if we can find the right size tractor with the right implements. Even then we'd have to pay for it all up front, or suck up way more than 0% financing. We have a lot of projects this year that we could either pay for excavation work, or do it ourselves. This is in addition to the hundred or so trees Elaina ordered, hence the post hole digger.

Things have changed since I wrote about the tractor. A house might be coming on the market in Enfield, which would make for a perfect store front. The place is currently gutted and will require a lot of work before it will be usable, which means we might just need to rent equipment for this years jobs and decide about a tractor at a later time. Sigh.

The 2006 Jetta TDI (Diesel) we picked up last fall is over 7500 miles, which means anyone from the forbidden states (VT, MA, NY to name a few local ones) can now register it as used. Our pre-purchase information led us to believe we could drive it for a few months and sell it for what we payed for it. Time will tell but it doesn't have all the options we wanted and with spring coming Elaina really wants her moonroof.

On the diesel front, we're looking at a 1983 Mercedes-Benz 300CD with just shy of 200,000 miles on the clock (and a moonroof). It's like this one but silver. This is one of the bullet-proof turbo-charged 5-cylinder diesel platform cars that gives MB their prestige in the diesel world. I'm sure it's not going to be all roses but it should last us quite a while if we take care of it. It's originally a southern car, so the body looks to be in great shape, there are a few rough spots but we will have that taken care of if we'll be keeping it.

Google and I have made up, I found their web master toolkit. Now you can search for Northeast Renewables, nerenewables, Oxymoron Communications, JDG and Sons, Anstey Design and we have top billing! Finally. I need some CSS help if anyone knows it or is interested in learning. Most of the new sites I've been setting up have been with Joomla!, which is easy to setup a quick site out of the box but they look so cookie-cutter. I need to find a way to play with the CSS-based templates available.