Ceiling fans

Yesterday Jessi and I made our first attempt at doing electrical work. I have to admit that I was a little intimidated. We decided to put in some ceiling fans to help offset the cost of running the air conditioner. Unfortunately this house was built in the 70's and the overhead light was not popular, so there is no electricity running to the ceiling, and no box to hang a fan on.
I have a very rudimentary understanding of electricity and circuits and the way that it should all work together, but I have a book. Being the kind of person who likes action, I immediately take off the plates that I think are going to be the ones that I have to change and start working...I should have read the book!
I spent the first hour or so just figuring out that I shouldn't have taken off one of the plates and the next half hour trying to remember where all the wires went. Having that part nailed down I went to the attic.
Living in Southern California means a couple of things: you can count on your cost of living being a little more than your neighboring states, you can go to the beach when you want, and you will never see snow! The important one to this story is the last. Because there is no snow there is no need to have a steep pitch to your roof. Which, in this case means you have virtually no room to move around in the attic. Add insulated ducting for your A/C and heat, and you spend the next hour and a half figuring out that there is virtually no way to get to that side of the house. Hoping that I was just too big, Jessi suited herself up for fiberglass protection and spent a good half hour figuring out that she too could not get to that side of the house.
So for those of you not doing the math, that is three and a half hours down and we have successfully, and correctly, removed one face plate.
We returned to the book and found out that there is a way to install an electrical box when you do not have attic access. And, joy of joys, it involves drilling holes. So I got out my trusty drill, and the new bits that I bought just for the occasion. We drilled three holes, cut the hole in the ceiling for the new electrical box, spent about fifteen minutes fishing the wire down to the hole and wa-la we now have four holes in our wall and a wire that isn't plugged into anything! We stopped at this point as Joe and Anita were coming over for lunch. Then we had plans for the evening so I put the one faceplate back on and flipped the electricity back on at the box. Now we have two working outlets and a light switch that has to stay in the "off" position or we blow the fuse...today should go more smoothly though, right?