THE MICROWAVE WENT IN TODAY!!! Ok, that's not the only thing that happened, but after living with just a coffee pot (for the first two weeks) and an electric kettle (for the past week), it's practically a technological revolution to have a microwave at our disposal. So far we've only opened and closed the door a few times; we haven't actually cooked anything in there yet, though we've discussed making popcorn tonight.

The rest of the upper cabinets were also installed today, including the one open cabinet we asked for on the dining room wall. We were planning to use it for cookbooks and a wine rack, but now we're thinking we might store wine above the cabinets, where the soffits used to be.

I asked Jack about whether the compactor and dishwasher had to be installed before the template for the countertops could be made; he said no. (Now that I've looked at what *has* been installed, I can see that the dependent items were the lower cabinets, the cooktop, and the open cabinet.) He also said that the countertop guys would be coming on Friday to make the template. Hopefully the actual countertops will be installed in about a week.