Yeah, well ... you know. It's all about the journey or something. Just be content that no matter what adventure you go off on, you can always come home and read up on the latest misadventures on how I screwed up this, or do that wrong and had to redo it, or whatever. I give you at least that constant in this ever changing wondrous world. No need to thank me.
To me, things still feels a long way off. The next thing will be to work on will be the lighting. The rough frame is there and the halide reflectors are mounted but I have some mods needed now to the light rack so it can hold T5's. I mistakenly bought too many Radiums (I bought two initially, then bought one in a BRS bulk order a few months ago .. then forgot I had done so and went and bought ANOTHER one in the last BRS bulk order. I was CERTAIN I was going to find strainers that I thought I had bought in that BRS box and lo and behold it was ... oh ... a Radium. Score! ... too bad I only have 3 reflectors mounted. Technically I do have 4 ballasts though ... hmmmmm. And spare reflectors in my shelf of tank junk. Man I am an amazing packrat. You'd think this latest skimmer issue wouldn't be so bad but apparently despite all the junk I have hung onto, a lot of "what I really need right now" is STILL not in amongst it all. It's really similar to shopping at Home Depot. Wow, they really are big stores full of "stuff." I marvel at the number of times I go to one and despite how big the store is and how full of it with stuff that it is, not one thing of that stuff is what I happen to be looking for at the time. But, I digress.) Point being I bought too many Radiums and not enough T5's. I have the T5 reflectors and sockets though and was hoping to buy some T5's soon but the skimmer pump thing is going to eat into my ability to purchase new T5 lamps anytime soon. Luckily I don't need the T5's to at least get working on the aquascape but I'd at least like to get the light frame all finished up before starting on that.
After that I have to sit and stare at the wall for a while until inspiration hits me for how and where to put ballasts and etc. Then I'll end up redoing it because what I imagined would be awesome is never as awesome in reality and I come up with "gee, if I had only done THIS" type things. Maybe redo it once more after that. It's a good thing I don't pay myself an hourly rate.
I also want to repaint the floor. The last 8 months of construction and concrete rework has really taken a toll. I don't mind the painting so much but the prep work and cleanup afterwards is such a drag, I've been putting off this task but it's the point I can't put it off much longer.
The skimmer thing is an unexpected expense and it comes at time when things are very lean so it's a little annoying. At the very least there though, behind the scenes it seems as if a path forward has presented itself, so we'll see how it plays out.