Happy Valentine's Day. I'm really not way into Valentine's Day this year. I guess it doesn't help that I've been in a perpetual bad mood all week, and today's events are certainly not helping. Before I get in to that, I would though like to say that on the day where people express their love and affection for one another, I have to say in this area, I am extremely lucky.

Martin gave me a really sweet and cute and very true to life Valentine's day card today. It says, ''Sometimes I lose my patience, I've been known to lose my keys, I've even lost my way a time or two. But looking back I have to say I never will regret the day I fell in love and lost my heart to you.'' That was such a cute card and has funny illustrations. After reading the card, I stopped to think of all the odd things that he deals with by being married to me.

I am not an easy person by any means. I certainly have my faults. I can be quite tempermental, moody and impatient myself. But I am very lucky in that I have found someone who is able to reasonably and caringly deal with me and continue to love me despite my myriad of faults. I have to say that I am quite grateful to him for that. He is quite special and I am grateful daily for the sacrifice he made by crossing the Atlantic to be by my side.

So now we've been married for almost two years and there has been no shortage of challenges. Let me tell you about the latest one.

Today the inspector came out to do the final walkthrough for the Certificate of Occupancy. And he failed our house. The reason has nothing to do with the house, really, and actually, his claims are unsubstantiated. His reason for failing the house was that he says that he's not sure if when it rains, whether or not the water will indeed flow from the back of the yard to the front of the yard. He seems to be of the opinion that if it rains heavily, that there will be standing water in the backyard. Now, despite the fact that we have purposely gone by to check these things ourselves, and we know that this is not the case when it rains, we have a certified surveyor's report that shows all of the elevations of the land, and it clearly shows that the land in the backyard is higher than the land in the front yard. Therefore, the water will flow from the backyard to the front. But apparently, this certified report just isn't good enough for this inspector. No, this inspector wants yet another certified letter saying that the information on the survey is true. So folks, when it comes right down to it, the inspector is just being an asshole.

You know that I can't just stand idly by waiting for someone to do something, so as soon as I learned all this information, I was on the phone with the builder and I was on the phone again to the city trying to talk to a inspections supervisor but of course as luck would have it, no one was available. I have the contractors making additional telephone calls as well and I'm waiting to hear back from them. There is a director of some sort in the office today and we left a message for him to call the contractor- perhaps there is something he can do. Added on to that, of course the buildling department is closed on Monday, adding to the continuous delay.

SO, that is where I stand right now. The other day my friend Dominique said, "if I had a year to think about it, I would have never come up with as many problems as you've had with your house." So there ya have it folks.

Anyway, I hope you find yourself in the company of someone you love today- either in the company of your significant other or in the company of good friends.

Martha at 3:53 PM