Just wrapped up another week working on the third new home built by the newly re-booted Habitat affiliate here in Tuscaloosa. This week we had a group of folks from Sycamore Presbyterian Church in Cinncinatti. The Presbyterians have a comon mission in all of their churches called Presb.'Disaster Assistance and all have bright blue t-shirts with that emblazoned on them. I have worked with PDA groups from all around the country in Biloxi, Ms, Bridge City, Tx, Port Sulphur, La, and now T-Town, Al. The leader of the group this week was Pastor Jerry Pitman. After a bit of a false start on Monday, we bounced back and the group did a great job cutting and assembling the window trim units and also the wooden shutters that can be seen on the front of the house. This week also started the installation of the bamboo flooring and ceramic tile. The exterior of the home is nearly complete (dangerously close) with a little touchup of siding and paint at the carport remaining. The driveway apron was poured after Woody's call to someone at the city made the missing culvert show up with a crew and get installed. Woody is also getting some dirt lined up for final grading of the lot. William Quimbley, who is our electrician, dropped by Friday and installed the meter pan and masthead in preparation of having permanent power hooked up. A bunch of students are coming on Monday to get some OJT (on the job training) and will install all of the plugs, switches and light fixtures. Once the flooring is complete inside, the next step that will be happening this week is the installation of all the interior doors, baseboard and casing at the exterior doors and cased openings. This past week also, we bid farewell to our beloved NCCC Americorp team. They are a great asset to our team and will be sorely missed. The good'news is that another team is scheduled to start with us in a couple of weeks from now. This home should be substantially completed within the next 2-3 weeks. Bob and Brandon have been working hard to get new sites for us to build on. Looks like we wil be closing on the empty lot across the street in Holt. There is an existing slab where a home stood before the storm and the engineers have given the green light to build on top of it. We will be building up from the slab two blocks high, run all of the plumbing rough in above the old slab, then back filling and pour a new slab on top. That way saves lots of foundation work, makes it easy on the plumber, and gets us where we can have volunteers building and settin up walls within the next few weeks. We also have been blessed recently with having a steady flow of law students who are mentoring with federal Judge Coogler. A team of them this week worked very well on installation of the bamboo flooring and also helped a lot with the interior painting. The judge drops by occasionally to see how his folks are doing.Yesterday, we had a group of 18 sorority sisters from Delta Sigma Theta, Lambda Zeta Chapter come out to help for four hours and we had them painting, flooring and installing ceramic tile in the kitchen. I must have mumbled my instructions because some of the girls heard me say to paint the floor. It's all good.