Anyone who's walked into the Great Hall of the Education Annex recently and looked up towards the stage has likely been wondering why the showers aren't completed yet. It does seem like we've been looking at those two-by-fours for a very long time.

Everyone involved in the construction business around here is overbooked, including the inspectors. We've needed multiple construction, electrical and plumbing inspections at various stages of the shower-construction job, so the work proceeds in fits and starts. A subcontractor does a little work and waits for his next inspection, then the other subcontractor does a little work and waits for his next inspection, then on to the general contractor for another piece of the puzzle - you get the idea. They have to leave walls open until the inspectors sign off on the plumbing and electrical work.

There are three different building inspectors: the municipal building inspector for the carpentry, and County electrical and plumbing inspectors.

No one anticipated the shower construction would take so long, but it seems to be running at about the same pace as the Sandy recovery in general. Our advisors at the national office of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance assure us this is to be expected, and matches the experiences of the Gulf Coast area following Hurricanes Katrina and Ike. If anything, they tell us, we in the go-go Northeast are a little ahead of the game, by comparison. Deep in the weeds, where we are, things seem to be moving slowly, but as they view the whole scene from above, they tell us we're where they've expected us to be.