Mortgage Monday: Time To Keep It Simple

With all of the work being done on the house lately things have been rather complicated. So far, nothing has been as simple as it should be. Everything on our project list has had a few subsections added to it with the floors and the exterior doors being prime examples of this ongoing process. However, in the end, many of these things, all of these complications, are going to give us what we have been picturing in our minds as our ideal home. Further, many of the things that have been uncovered and a couple of the future projects have and will remove some of the complicated aspects of our home.

The best examples of this are the HVAC overhaul currently underway and the electrical overhaul that we have on the schedule. The old oil and electric system required a heck of a lot of copper pipe running across the basement and up the walls to supply the baseboard heating. The air conditioning, being an afterthought of the original homeowners, was something that was put in as inexpensively as possible leaving us with duct work running through bedroom closets and really not being very efficient. The boiler, oil tank, and all of the copper pipes are now gone, the duct work has been overhauled, and we have now simplified the two zone (the heating was originally on four zones) system running forced air for both heating and cooling.

This project is nearing completion but the electrical work has yet to be started. While a few steps have been taken to simplify this (i.e. old whole house fan has been removed) there is still a lot of work to be done with new matching fixtures being installed and a lot, and I mean a lot, of outlets and switches that are going to be removed (with a few simply being moved). This will eliminate the need for a lot of the wiring that is running throughout the house and will put things (or leave things) in place that actually make sense (i.e. I don’t need three separate switches for the kitchen lights).

It is definitely a process but, as I said before, it will simplify some of the basic aspects of our house. After all, I don’t like having excess pipes and wires running through the walls when they don’t need to be there. After that it should be much easier to maintain. So, we will have to deal with a little more complication before we can reach a point of simplicity. Well, at least until the next round of renovations and projects.

A More Complicated Petition

Well, it should be no surprise to anyone who read my post yesterday that I didn’t make it to the lode last night as I was recovering from my second serious car accident in the past ten days. However, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been working on a few things for the lodge. In fact, I have been working on a rather interesting petition as of late that has been an ongoing project since the last stated meeting. While most petitions are pretty straightforward, this one in particular has had a number of details that have made it a great learning process both for the petitioner and also for me.

The situation is rather simple in that the candidate already petitioned another lodge which presented said petition at their last stated meeting. Following dinner last month at my lodge, he expressed a desire to join our lodge which is more convenient for a multitude of reasons. Following that meeting and after confirming his intentions, I circled back with the original lodge in possession of his petition. This is when things really got interesting as having not found myself in this position previously, I made sure to copy both District Deputy Grand Masters. After all, I always want to make sure that decisions such as this are by the book and as transparent as possible.  

Fast forward and I now find myself in a friendly back and forth trying to confirm many of the details of the process and double checking the conclusions with both my District Deputy Grand Master and the petitioner. It has been a process to say the least but it has also been a great learning experience and we will have a solution to the situation in short order now that the broad strokes have been taken care of. However, the most important thing that I have made sure not to lose sight of is the simple fact that a good man has shown a desire to become a mason.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter where he receives his degrees (although I have my preferences), the important things is that the fraternity is gaining a solid member. Too often lodges lose sight of this fact and focus on what is best for their lodge. While the betterment of your home lodge is hugely important, we can all agree on that fact, the growth of our fraternity, of Freemasonry as a whole, needs to take precedence. We have to keep in mind what is best for the brotherhood and for the man who desires to become a brother. If we do right by these two, things have a way of coming back to us both as a lodge and as a mason. We must do what is right.