The roof is getting closer to being done. It still needs more flashing, on the east and west ends. It also needs two more lightning rods and the ridge cap.
They also fixed up the road this weekend:
The windows have arrived and will hopefully be installed this week. The adventure continues.
Any adventure in your life now? Notice I use that term very broadly. 🙂
These pictures were taken last May. We had gone down to a big home improvement store looking for tile for our entryway and bathroom. At first the choices seemed overwhelming, but then the salesman explained that a lot of the different tiles we saw were actually variations of the same tile–the tiles had so much variety we wouldn’t have a clue what we were getting. And we couldn’t possibly get a uniform look.
So a few days later we went down to Santa Fe to try again. We tried a couple of stores before we found a salesman who knew his materials and helped us match some tiles to our samples of the flooring and the wood for our cabinets. Thanks to him and to our samples the process didn’t take long at all.
This weekend we started on making another choice–what color to paint the house. It has to go with the roof, the dark brown of the flashing and and the terra cotta trim on our windows. There are gazillions of different colors and shades so those constraints help a lot. I still spent a lot of time on the internet looking at possibilities so we would know more or less what we want when we go down to our local retailer and look at color swatches. It’s highly unlikely the colors on our computer screen will be the same as the swatches. Also the swatches won’t be exactly the same as the paint, and the paint looks different in small samples than on a whole house, and colors look different in different light, and they also look different depending on what they’re next to. So we’ll choose the best we can and expect to be surprised.
This whole enterprise is one great experiment, so we might as well enjoy it. For some reason it tickles my funny bone. 😀
What about you? Have you had to make any choices lately? Were they hard or easy?
My husband bought a surge protector for some of his equipment up on the land. When he came home he said, “Guess how much lightning protection coverage there is?”
I looked at the box and noticed that it said “lightening” rather than “lightning” so was suspicious. Sure enough, inside it clearly states that lightning strikes are considered an act of God and are not covered. I carefully read the fine print and nowhere does it say what “lightening” protection is.
We’re not surprised that the surge protector can’t handle lightning. Smaller devices like this one are simply not designed to handle direct lightning strokes. But we are surprised the company would indulge in such obvious false advertising. Have you ever bought something that was misrepresented?
On a similar note, they installed our lightning protection system for the house this week:
Even that might not protect us if we had a direct strike, so Andy checked with our insurance company to be sure our policy covers lightning. Being one of the highest points on that ridge does make us vulnerable.
What about you? How do you feel about insurance?
The main things that happened this week were continuing to wire the house and solar system and drilling some holes to ventilate the insulation in the roof.
This first picture shows the hole Eric, the electrician, cut to give himself enough light to see what he was doing on the ground floor. (The hole was cut where a window will be.)
This picture shows Alex removing one of the side panels of the attic so Eric could get inside. Until then it was completely enclosed.
It’s a different way of operating than we’re used to, but we’re no ones to talk. This is a picture of our house number at the bottom of our 0.3-mile driveway. Presumably some people would think that a bit different too. 🙂
What about you? Have you done anything, or seen anything being done, differently lately?
The above pictures of last year’s Las Conchas fire were taken from our porch down here. The following two pictures show our trees going up in flame as Andy escaped the fire.
The following pictures were taken last Friday:
It’s been quite a year here. What was your year like?
I’ve been having a great time the past couple of weeks learning some new software programs. A couple of them have steep learning curves and are great mental exercise. I tend to be happiest when I’m learning new things.
I’ve also been labeling the pictures Andy brings home from the land and putting some of them up on Flickr. These are two he took Friday, when they were putting up ceiling joists:
And here are two that he took today as he walked down one of our old emergency escape routes. The road was rough before but now it’s impassable by car because of the flash flooding last summer:
There are a lot of changes in our life right now. What about yours?
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
—John W. Gardner
I was surprised a few years ago by the preface in the U. S. News and World Report annual issue on the country’s best colleges. It said its rankings are still valid but they couldn’t honestly say the colleges were worth the price. Things have not improved since then.
Costs have gone through the roof, increasing faster than the cost of medical care, and many students end up saddled with years, or a lifetime, of debt. I read one article that said 15% of student loans are owed by people over 65. And economists are warning that the over one trillion dollars of student debt will weigh down the economy for years to come. Some call it the next financial bubble.
So what happened? As far as I can tell the main problem is the notion that everyone should go to college, regardless of interest or aptitude. That was the only way to success in life. To give everyone the opportunity credit was made easy with no regard as to whether the students would be able to pay the debt off after college. Or without any regard as to whether or not the college experience and degree was really what the students needed to prepare them for life.
The colleges were in great shape, with plenty of students clamoring to get in. In general they could blissfully go on doing what they’ve been doing and raise their rates. It wasn’t their problem. Fortunately that may be changing. For instance Harvard, MIT and Stanford are looking into providing online classes, so new alternatives will be opening up. I think that’s a healthy development. I also think that it would be healthier if we stopped equating education with a college degree. I went to college because I always wanted to go and worked hard to get there and to get my degree. My sister didn’t go because she wasn’t interested. We both made great choices. She had an outstanding work ethic and did just fine in life. She’s better read than a lot of people I know who have their degrees, and she’s doing a fantastic job doing research on companies as she trades in the stock market.
What about you? How important was college to you? If you went what parts of it was the most valuable? Would it have been worth being saddled with years and years of debt?
The above picture was taken from our porch yesterday evening. It doesn’t show the brilliant orange of the sun, but it does show how the smoke is obscuring the view of Jemez Mountains a couple of miles away. The smoke was from the Wildwater Baldy fire in the southwest corner of the state, several hundred miles from here.
Fortunately the wind shifted and it was clear again today, with the temperature in the mid- to high-60’s.
As I write this (3:50 pm) the fire down south has consumed over 122,000 acres and is presumably still growing. To put it in perspective our Las Conchas fire last year burned over 156,000 acres and was the largest in New Mexico state history so far. It’s clearly going to be another bad fire year.
On a different note, Kaitlin wrote to say it’s 94 degrees where she is and everyone is inside enjoying the air conditioner, except for Montana, their youngest dog. She has short hair and is outside basking in the sun. Here’s a picture of her and Sammy that Kaitlin sent last night. You can see why Sammy isn’t basking in the sun too. 🙂
What’s the weather like where you are?
Last weekend they hauled some big rocks and a lot of dirt from the big culvert:
And a tiny bit of light was shining in from the far end (circled in white in the photo):
This weekend four people, including Andy, hauled out more rocks and dirt.
The light at the far end was growing bigger. The rope in the picture was attached to a little cart that hauled the dirt out:
And finally, success!
It sometimes take a lot of work to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Have you ever noticed that?
Update: Andy installed a stake in front of the culvert to prevent further big rocks from going in. It sometimes helps to be proactive. (But there are no guarantees. :))
Andy hired Orlando and his helper, Ron, to work on the roads this weekend. They especially worked on clearing out, and replacing if need be, the culverts. The idea is to give water a path under the road so it won’t wash the road out. One culvert big culvert in particular was a lot of work! The flash flood we had last summer clogged it with big rocks as well as dirt:
Hopefully your weekend wasn’t quite as much work. 🙂
