billeyler | Thought-free Sunday

Since we have been on the run for what seems like forever, I promised myself a thought-free weekend. Well, not EXACTLY thought-free, but nothing that would cause me to exert more than a couple of brain cells at a time.

Right now, it's just past midnight and I spent the last two hours watching a fascinating PBS HDTV show about the origins of life and where we might go from here. The show might have been a couple of years old, but the graphics in it were superb. Lovely!

As I was turning off the TV to head upstairs, I see there is more distant thunder and lighting. It's also quite pleasantly breezy and cool, so I stood on the back deck enjoying Nature's little show. Those living in areas where this is common probably don't get the verve we desert dwellers get from mere weather.

We did do some renovation shopping today, which actually was not in the original budget. After trips to a Lowe's and THREE different Home Depots around town, we succeeded in spending lots of money on a tankless water heater, a large water softener and the various accessories they require. Tomorrow morning, a plumber is coming over to give us a quote on installing all that, doing the new plumbing needed in the laundry room for the mini-kitchen, plumbing the new refrigerator for water and something else that slips my mind at the moment.

Of course, the water heater/softener wouldn't have happened if Danny hadn't noticed the water heater had a small leak after we got back from Anaheim. Danny's convinced it was our friendly ghost that kept the water from getting hot this past Wednesday morning, which keyed him to go down into the furnace room to check. It was plenty warm for me just a few minutes later. Oh, my.

Part of what I didn't want to expend brain cells on was the serious-and-getting-more-serious warping of the parquet floor in the dance floor area of the rec room. It's totally unusable now, having warped in at least five different areas. I just don't want to think about it, and I refuse to get unwound about it, like I did in 1997 when I caused a leak from outside that destroyed a significant part of the parquet on the west side of the room. So I had to cancel the C1 dance/workshop...they'll always be other times.

I quickly cooked up a batch of jambalaya after spending some time pulling weeds in the garden between late afternoon rain showers. The food was a bit thicker than I would have liked, but tasty. Breaking open a cookbook once in a while never hurt anyone, I hear.

After dinner, we broke open the game

abqdan gave me for my birthday a few weeks back, "Deflexions." A fascinating idea for a game in which you have to move mirrored and unmirrored pieces around on a board in such a way that you shoot a deflected laser beam and eventually either eliminate their "Phaeroh" or their pieces. A very 21st century take on Chess with totally different rules. After two games (Danny won them both), I decided that I was using too many brain cells for this and we put it away for now.

Danny's day was very different from mine, except for the shopping. He spent hours working on the IAGSDC website, some time on the NM Gay Men's Chorus website, and caught up on lots of back episodes of "Nip and Tuck" and a couple of his British dramas.

[Danny reminded me that we also spent a couple of leisurely hours in the morning strolling the Albuquerque Museum. Sunday morning, it's free, and since we hadn't been there since it had been remodeled last year, seemed like a good bet. The highlight was an exhibition of detailed quilts a woman had made reflecting her love of jazz and jazz legends. There was also an exhibition by a Japanese artists that from a distance looked like 3 spray painted old children's bicycles in a bike rack, but on closer look, they were all carved out of wood! It was a relaxing way to start the day before heading to Homo Depot]

Oh, and about 3, we walked around the corner having spied an Open House sign on the HUGE house that's been vacant for what seems like forever. That house lost 100% of it's mountain views when 3 houses were built in the last few years just east of it. Apparently, the original owner built it in the late 50s and bought EIGHT lots and just developed the one. After he died a few years back, his children decided to finally sell of the parcels. Five have been developed to the north and east of him. Two more lots that were just sold to the west will be developed with 2 story houses and block any views of the west mesa and the volcanoes. Oh well. It was a fun tour, since I'd always been curious about the house. It's 4300 square feet on two floors, with FOUR entrances into the house, absolutely zero landscaping (it used to have a lawn front and back years ago), and rambling large rooms all over the place. It's been partially renovated over the years, having a decent kitchen, 4 bathrooms, 4 fireplaces and even more space than we would ever be able to use. But NO privacy, since all the other 2 story houses look into that property. Even at $407,000, I'm sure it would be a really hard sell.

And with that, watching the lighting out the North office window, it's time for bed. And it's starting to rain again. Yay!

Tomorrow is another (work) day.