Sun rising
The Village is installing a fire suppression system. The orange barrels are guarding a new fire hydrant.
While the Village crew worked on waterlines, I hauled loads of household goods to Thrift Town, and then moved a solid oak table I built when I was 15 years old and a freezer to our house. The women at Thrift Town were gaga over Jake. He loved the attention.
The Moon, the Pleiades, and Jupiter are across the top of the photo early this morning.
Sunflowers at Dawn
Venus at Dawn
Gino called me first thing this morning to see if I could go out and film Mr. Williams operating a large Link-Belt crane that few people in the city know how to operate at a construction site on Albuquerque’s west side. I drove over and took video and photographs for a couple of hours and compressed the video footage into a three-and-a-half-minute video of Mr. Williams hoisting trusses up onto the roof of the building under construction. The framing contractor is Nelson Framing. Jerry Nelson, the owner, and Gino have worked together on many projects. The building contractor is Bradbury Stamm Construction. The Superintendent of the construction site was kind enough to lend me a hard hat and vest to wear. Nelson’s staff working with Mr. Williams on the ground and on the roof came over and introduced themselves before they started hoisting trusses.
Miss Ing Link, the large Link-Belt Crane set up in the middle of the building project.
The 3 1/2-minute crane video with music
Il paparazzo delle costruzioni
I am super excited about this collaboration between Resa at Graffiti Lux Art & More and ArtGowns, and me. Resa mentioned that the construction project to replace the 130 year old sewer lines that run under the street in front of where she lives in the old area of Toronto, Canada goes on “all day and all the night through!” I told her that would make a good parody. Resa wrote the parody lyrics to go to All Day And All Of The Night by The Kinks. I go the music and recorded the first round with my vocals. I sent the music to Resa and asked her to try singing her parody. When she sent me the audio file of her vocals, I was like “Wow!” she sounded super good. I mixed her vocals in with the music, Resa sent me video clips and photos of the construction from her window, and I put the parody music video together. Laurie was reviewing the video and she thought there needed to be more desperation in the chorus, and asked if I could add construction sounds to the chorus. I pulled the scraping sounds off a backhoe video and added snippets of the scrapping and clanking to the chorus and solo. That was enough to give a better sense of desperation to the parody.
When Resa first told me about the construction I really felt sorry for her. When we lived in Madrid, Spain, the city constructed a new Metro stop about 100 feet from the apartment building we lived in. The construction noise went on 24/7 for a year. It was horrible. However, we were not in lock down, and so it was easy for us to simply go to parks, museums, and bars to get away from the noise. Toronto is still locked down with stay at home orders, so Resa cannot simply say the heck with it, go out and get away from it all. She can go on walks, but she is very limited in her activity under the lock down orders.
ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT THROUGH
By Resa McConaghy
Oh they have got loud work to do in the day time
Evac, jack hammers and backhoes too, all the night through
There is no time nowhere to hide losing my mind too
It’s cruel they pound and crash then roar all of the time
All day and all night through
All day and all night through
All day and all night through
I believe this crazy work will always be there
Oh yeah all day and night time through – PTSD
There is no time nowhere to hide losing my mind
Evac, jack hammers and backhoes too, not a good time
All day and all night through
All day and all night through
Oh go away
I just know that they will be here forever
Oh yeah all day and night time through, fixing the sewer
There is no time nowhere to hide losing my mind
Oh they have got loud work to do in the day time
All day and all night through
All day and all night through
All day and all night through
The cubicles that came with the new office.
The cubicles that came with the new office were old, broken, and worn out. We are getting new cubicles, so we had to get the old cubicles out. No one wanted to take and reuse them, so demolition was in order. I could not figure out how to take them apart, so our office manager’s brother sent a person who installs cubicles to the office to check them out, and I made a deal with him to have a couple of his staff come in and take the cubicle apart for us. He asked who made them, and when I told him he had never heard of the manufacturer. The manufacturer had gone out of business years ago. Even though the building is only 15 years old, we figure the cubicles were at least 30 years old. Two young men came by yesterday and took them apart. I would have never figured it out, and, although the two young me were fast, it was a lot of work for them to take down the partitions. The two didn’t want to haul them to the dump because they would be charged to dump them. We had them leave the partitions and we spent most of today stripping off the fabric, removing the insulation, and separating the metal and plastic from 72 partitions. Dolores took two loads of metal to Acme Metal and got some cash for it. She will take a couple more loads to Acme tomorrow and we’ll be rid of the old cubicles without simply taking them to the dump.
Uppers, a box of brackets, and a few partitions stripped to the metal remain to be taken to Acme tomorrow. The piles of fabric and insulation are in the center and some tack boards await me to take the mounting hardware off of them.
Intermission: My new La Llorona approved aqua-turquoise blue Nostalgia Retrowave microwave I got for my office. It’s a long way to the kitchen in the new building.
Daddy Owl holding on tight in the high winds that were trying to blow him out of the tree.
Ear Tufts in silhouette
I moved our 48 port switch to the new building today. I got 3-foot long patch cables because I didn’t know where in the rack I was going to put it. The screws that were left in the rack are slightly too small, so they pulled out of the holes under the weight of the switch. So the switch is on top of the rack for the time being with a mess of spaghetti-like patch cables all over it. We also got Internet installed today and the alarm techs were installing new alarm equipment since the old alarm was old and the person who installed it is long gone. The old alarm system didn’t call out to anyone, so if it got set off, then only people who would know about it are the tenants on the west side of the building. We will be able to monitor and control the new alarm system from our phones. I got Bruce’s desk built between working on wiring, answering questions for the alarm, and tracking down the wiring for the WiFi.
A wider view of the wries, surveillance monitor, the new alarm controller on the right, the old telephone system punch blocks, and the electronic access box.
Bruce’s desk that I was using to test the Internet.
The Internet we installed is 50MBps up and down highspeed wireless. The test is showing faster speeds.
Loki is a bit dazed by all the tech talk.
Guess who?
Daddy owl looking like a king with a royal robe wrapped around him.
Mama Owl was peeking over the edge tonight.
The forecast is for snow tonight. I believe it.
A major irrigation project is underway in the field west of Nora Owl’s tree.
This tractor is supervising the irrigation project.
Gwendolyn: “Wow! Is this kitty wonderland really for me?”
I have been wanting to put kitty hammocks on the opposite wall from the current two kitty hammocks. However, the problem I was facing was what to put on the opposite wall for the kitties to climb to get to the hammocks. When the kittens, Glenda and Gwendolyn, figure out how to get out into the rest of the house there are going to be a lot of issues with only two hammocks.
Another problem is the kittens are always climbing the walls to get in high places. I am planning on putting shelves near the ceiling for them to play on, but I had the same problem of what to put in the room they could climb to get onto the shelves instead of climbing the walls.
While looking for ideas online, I finally decided that a kitty play structure would do the trick. We found a play structure with the best features, dimensions, and height that looked like it would do the trick and I ordered two of them: one for the big kitties in the dance room and one for the kittens in the bedroom.
The play structures were delivered Thursday, so I spend much of the day between other chores and projects putting together kitty play structures. The kittens have really taken to their play structure. Gwendolyn really loves it. The big kitties helped me put theirs together, and four of them got on it before I could move it to the corner and secure it to the floor and wall. Since then, the big kitties have been lounging on and off on the play structure. I ordered hammocks, so next week I’ll be installing new hammocks.
All the parts. Silver beating up on a toilet paper roll. That’s a story for another post.
The instructions had me assemble the cat houses first.
Sasha helping out.
Spunk checking out Sasha checking out a cat house.
Marble went straight for a higher platform and started playing with her tail on it.
Spunk
Silver & Spunk
Marble, Silver, Spunk, and Sasha
Loki
Gwendolyn
Gwendolyn
The Kittens on the structure in its place in the bedroom. It replaced my nightstand.
Gwendolyn and Glenda
The big kitties’ play structure in its corner of the dance room.
Sasha is satisfied.
Remodeling in Uptown Albuquerque
You can see the full series of interior photos of the Imperial Building at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2016/5/imperial-building-interiors
Off Center & Not Even 