There are art prints — there are cat prints — and then there are cat prints that are kind of artsy.  The kitties made the most noticeable changes in the remodel today by walking around in the spackling that took all night and most of the day to harden up enough for me to put a second coat on the areas where it had shrunk — so I worked on preparing the bathtub and reconfiguring the drain all afternoon. Once I got the bathtub in place, I discovered some of the plumbing I thought would clear didn’t. So I either had to do a major reworking of the drain and move the vent pipe, or do minor reworking of the drain and raise the bathtub six inches. I decided I would cause myself the least amount of pain by raising the tub, since I’m much better with wood than plumbing. The drain pipes are now reconfigured, so I should be able to put the floor down in the morning, install the new toilet and then the tub.  We also took a break this afternoon to go to the neighbor’s for a barbecue.

When I went out at 3:00 this morning to turn in the irrigation, the full moon was so bright, I could see color. The photo below captured the tree, sunflowers and stars pretty close to how I saw them. This is also a view that was not available before the demolition.

 

I have the bathroom stripped down to where only the toilet remains after day one of the bathroom remodel. I had to do a lot of figuring for the bathtub plumbing, replace sections of the  floor that had water damage from various leaks over the years and then spackle the repairs. I’m letting the spackling dry overnight, but Rosencrantz wasted no time walking in it. He was guilty by the white on his paws.  I only had to make two trips to Lowe’s today, and on my way home from the second trip, the low sun looked really great on a wall with a wheel in it.

We finally un-boxed our new mattress we ordered from Costco. A queen-sized mattress came in a 24X24X40 in box, which really surprised us. The mattress had been vacuum packed and shrink wrapped. When I unsealed the vacuum wrap the mattress inflated to a full-sized, beautiful 12″ thick queen mattress — simply amazing!

 

 

 

While there is a Wine Festival going on in Bernalillo this weekend, there will be a “Whine Fest”, with associated grumbling, cursing, cuts and bruises, happening at our house while I remodel the bathroom (if there’s a Hell plumbing is part of it).  We settled on a floor covering, after discovering the one we really liked was discontinued,  and I bought a new toilet, tub and surround — so first thing tomorrow morning the demolition of the bathroom begins.  As you can see from the photos, we had barely set the 66 inch tall box for the tub surround down before Stretch hopped up on it, taking ownership of the box. I’m sure he’ll still be there when I’m ready to install the surround.

 

A dahlia’s stem broke, so Laurie put it in a vase by my computer, giving my point of view a nice touch of purple.

 

If anyone wants to use my special coffee cup they have to deal with my guard spider. I bought this cup from Pier One Imports when we were first married. We couldn’t afford to get a set at that time so we bought just one. By the time we could afford to buy more cups, they were no longer available. I’ve used this cup pretty much daily for the past 30 years.

I put together a video of the final demolition of the casita. You can view it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUHdxDQTUKo

 

I find interesting people on the street corners when I’m on my way home. The low sun and varying levels of dust and debris on the car’s windows add some nice effects.

 

 

 

 

Puck was very grateful we let him out tonight and posed for me on the VW. We didn’t get home until 7:00 pm, and usually don’t let Puck out that late because he tends to want to stay out late. But since Laurie is going into school again tomorrow, we decided to take the chance of him staying out to all hours, and let him out instead of listening to him mournfully complain to us about not letting him out.

 

 

 

When I went out at 3:00 am to turn in the irrigation water, there was a hot wind on my shoulder, which reminded me of the opening lyrics to Wall of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio”.  The warm air also explained why the house didn’t cool down during the night.  When I went out at 7:00 am to shut down the irrigation gates, the spider in the lead photo had her web built out over the water.

Guildenstern has been getting out by pushing the screens out of the front bay windows we leave open for air circulation. I closed them down leaving only a 2 inch crack. When I opened the front door at 7:00 to go out and check the water, Guildenstern was sitting at the front door.  When I came back in I looked and the window and he had pushed it up enough to slip out.  I still find it funny that none of the other cats figured out that he had pushed out the screens.

Laurie is a very nice math teacher. She baked a large batch of chocolate chip cookies to give the her algebra students tomorrow if the majority of them get the on-line homework done by 10:00 pm tonight. The cookies on the table in the last photo were left to cool before Laurie could bag them up, 4 cookies per bag, for distribution.

While she was working on cookies, I cleared out a bunch of small elm trees and wild plums on one edge of the property and discovered some barrels of oil and cans of tar hidden by the brush. So now I have more toxic waste to dispose of. I also found another ham radio antenna, metal stands and various pieces pipe and steel laying under the leaves and branches, as well. I’m starting to think that junk breeds.

While I was down working on clearing the trees and brush, I also had batch processes running on Photoshop and uploads going on that took a couple of hours. When I got the trees and brush down to where I needed a chainsaw the thunder sounded close and it started to rain, so I decided to go back inside and work on cooking up a 20 pound green chile, chicken, blue corn tortilla enchilada, while Laurie was finishing up her cookies. I started a new batch of processes on Photoshop, and more uploads, while I was cutting up and frying the ingredients for the enchilada; so by the time the enchilada was done, I had finished doing a whole lot of photo processing and uploading that I had been needing to do for weeks.  I just ate some of the enchilada for dinner. It’s super!

I spent all afternoon making forty pounds of carne adovada — definitely one of my best batches so far. During the moments between preparing the beans, potatoes, spices and the carne, I helped Laurie look up info on Tunisia for her presentation in French class on Wednesday.

The stump is all that remains of the cottonwood the demolition crew knocked over for us. The tree crew didn’t have room on their truck for the stump, so they’ll pick it up when they come back to start cleaning up the neighbor’s trees.

 

I found this Nifty Albuquerque soda bottle in the center of the roots of the cottonwood tree we had the demolition crew push over. I found one museum site during my Internet search about Nifty Albuquerque that had a list of soda bottles and when they were made. They placed Nifty bottles between 1945 and 1950. The bottom of the bottle shows it was bottled by Dr. Pepper in Albuquerque and includes the number 48; however, I don’t know if the 48 refers to the year, the batch the bottle was produced in, or some other number. But given the fact that we found “April 1947” inscribed in the footing of the two room addition, I believe it would be safe to assume this bottle was discarded at the base of the young cottonwood in the late forties or early fifties.