houston...

we have heat.

the guys finished about 2:15 and were gone by 3:30 (tons o' cleaning up). we've got the heat set at 68 and it came up fast...considering the first water to go through was 46 degrees.

it's unbelievable how quickly it heated up. with the old boiler, it could take two days to get it to the desired temp. and even then we had to set it at 75 degrees. i'm wondering if we could just set the new thermometer at 65 and leave it. although we'll only recoup the $10K when we sell the house, it'll still be nice to see (hopefully) smaller heating bills. $318 for natural gas was utterly preposterous...

guess who sat down on the radiator when she got home ;)

well?

do you agree?

i won't be able to tell you until i rent most of 'em ;)

however, we have been seein' some good movies...

how about 'The Eel' or 'In The Bedroom'.

speaking of Oscar nominations, Cindi, it might be good if you sat down and watched some of the videos that someone lent you...last year...ahem. at least watch the 'Oscar's Greatest Moments' tape w/ bfg. you MIGHT just enjoy it...

it's time to move that box off of the piano bench and in front of the TV, missy!

didja know that...

a cord of wood will also produce one of the following:

30 Boston rockers
460,000 personal checks
61,370 No. 10 envelopes
1200 copies of National Geographic
12 dining room tables that each seat eight people

89,870 sheets of letterhead bond paper
942 one-pound books
1500 pounds of paper
7,500,000 toothpicks
4,384,000 commemorative-size postage stamps
the heat equivalent of burning a ton of coal or 200 gallons of fuel oil.

geez.

almost...

just waiting for the boiler guys. they didn't quite finish yesterday...but they did get a lot done. friday, the removal of the asbestos and boiler dismantling took about four hours. after those guys left, the install guys were here for another two and a half. yesterday, four guys worked straight through between 9 and 5. hopefully, today they'll get done before noon. of course, i don't know what work looms today...

if anything, it'll be great to have heat for the first time in 11 days. we've been cranking the space heaters and burning lotsa wood in the fireplace. it's funny because we have about thirty logs that have been stacked in the backyard, uncovered...baking...soaking...drying..., for at least three years. our friend, Beto, dropped it off and we had been cursing him ever since.

ha...those babies have saved us.

we had forgotten how nice it is to have a real fire. the prefab logs that you buy at the store don't give off much heat since hot embers aren't produced. you get a firestarter (made of chips pressed in paraffin) and a few logs going - you're all set.

now, what to do with all those ashes...

not quite...

looks like i've got a few more minutes to blog...lois is on the phone with her sister.

if you haven't already noticed, i've added some cities to weather pixie because...

Ushuaia is the southernmost town in the world, which we hope to visit this november (if) we go to Argentina.

Hollywood, FL is where my eldest niece, Natalie, lives. she's gonna deliver the first great grandchild of the family this july...whoa! i simply CANNOT believe that i'm gonna be a great uncle!

Abilene is the (major) town closest to where Lois was born in Texas. we're supposed to go to Coleman this may for a 60th wedding anniversary. we were last in that area of texas in 2002 (when the Hayman fire was raging here) for a (now traditional) family reunion.

Santa Fe is where my friend, Antonio, works. He's the curator of ethnography at the Museum of Indian Arts. We were drinking buddies in the 90's...who systematically terrorized the national anthropology meetings from '95 to '00. he's still terrorizing, but with charlie cambridge and ruben mendoza now (and they wrote the book on anthropological terrorism). that's okay though. seems that i've dropped out of the anthro circle/network...

in transition...

the boiler guy came this morning to wipe out the half ton monster out of the basement. it took four guys four hours to hack that baby out. it's surreal how the boiler room echoes now... and with that done, the heating guy is back and is pounding out some old pipes that will probably be retrofitted with the modern stuff for the new, svelte model. in a gesture of kindness, the owner of the company brought over two space heaters to compensate for all the woodburning we did over the past few days. unfortunately, i forgot to take a pic of the behemoth before they hacked it up and took it out, but here's a photo of the model that's gonna replace it. notice that it's wall mounted...
so it looks like they should be finished on monday. let's hope so. and then you'll no longer hear about 'fweezin' anymore.

out for thai food tonight. we'll warm up there with spicy food and contemplate coming back; they may let us sleep in their kitchen if we're nice.

fweezin' part two...

although it's not that cold outside, it's downright frigid in here. ya see, we've had stronger natural gas smells lately in the basement. turns out that the 80 year-old boiler downstairs needs to go. however, before they put in that beautiful 95% efficient replacement, someone has to chop it up and remove it...along with the asbestos. oh joy...

even more titillating is the cost - $9440. i don't know how much the new model is, but i do know that there's more work than meets the eye. the boiler is a huge cylinder...roughly four feet wide by six feet high. it's set upon a cement pedestal (which will be removed) and is a major eyesore. so, once all that is out, they're gonna replace it with a unit that's wall mounted and about the size of two computer towers.

bi-iig difference.

it's too bad that this house isn't heated by a furnace. don't they run $1500? ah well, hot water heat is nice too...

it'll be so weird to have space in the boiler room. we're gonna have to call it something else though...mebbe the all things flammable room. after all, there's the xmas tree and wrapping paper all jammed into the corner.

poof

fweezin'...

brrr. do not want to go out for some groceries today. we've got company tonight, someone who works with lois...jen from boston :) she's the assistant to the pr guy. a really cute gal who simply adores lois - we like her heh.

i've been trying to decide what kind of seasoning to use for the pork tenderloin. adobo chile rubbed...caribbean jerk...emeril's baby bam...honey mustard...or apple cider. at least i do know that we'll be serving it with a mixed greens salad with cherries and granny smith apples; that nixes the apple cider i guess. some couscous and glazed carrots. we already have a bottle of gewurztraminer in the fridge but may concede to some sangiovese depending on what i decide for the meat flavor. the gewurztraminer would go well with a spicy or salty pork tenderloin and the sangiovese would pair well with a rich/hearty flavor.

we'll see.

jen said she'd bring over dessert...i wonder what though. heck, i'd be happy w/ oreos.

been checking out more things from the library. lois got a 28 cd audio version of a book. that should keep her eyes rested some. did i mention how her surgery went? well, it was the fourth surgery on her right eye that sustained a detached retina last january. this time, it was to remove the oil that was placed in there last march and to fix the (transplanted) lens that she coughed loose in a bout of pneumonia not long after the third surgery.

we went to the retinal specialist last thursday and he said it all looked good. the vitreous fluid in the eye was busily regenerating and everything was intact. even better is the glare that lois endured for a year is finally gone. unfortunately, she's got to get over a little double vision and slight headaches. hopefully, all that will subside in the next month.

yay!

btw, i went back to the corneal specialist last wednesday and he put me on some other drops (Lotemax). it's a weaker version of the prednisolone (Pred Forte)that i was on for roughly six months. apparently, if you take the Pred Forte drops for too long, it increases your eye pressure too high and cataracts develop. oh joy!

so i've gotta be on these lotemax drops every day for the next month and every other after that for another 30 days. he said that my dilation may never go down (groan)...but i'm hopeful. what else can i be?

hope you're all someplace warm.

gluttony huh?

a food meme...

1. What's your comfort food? Either chili dogs or braunschweiger sandwiches. Boxed mac and cheese with a can of tuna is a close third.

2. What's the most you've ever eaten? I once had ten slices of pizza and two salads at a Pizza Hut when I was 21 or 22. I'm not sure if that's equal to the 16 tacos and two quesadillas I scarfed at a taquería in Guanajuato, Mexico in 1998.

3. What's your favorite restaurant? I'm not sure if i have one but I can tell you that my favorite type of food is ethnic. Of course, buffets are always good.

4. What's the grossest thing you've ever consumed? It's a tie between a vietnamese duck egg (the embryo is pretty well formed and is swimming in its juices) or a huge purple pig's foot sandwich in Cholula, Mexico.

5. What eating habits disgust you the most? Smacking lips or nose blowing at the table make me homicidal.

in a rut...

maybe this will get me out of it.

Five Weird Habits/Quirks

1. Although Dr. Pepper and Coke are my preferred brands of soft drinks, I must have root beer when I'm eating pizza.

2. I can't stand having a dirty windshield or driving someone else's car with one.

3. Whenever I eat steak, I usually cut off five or six pieces at a time.

4. When I'm on the can, I must have something to read. Okay, mebbe that's too much information ;)

5. I have two rings on my right pinky finger. On occasion, I'll twirl them out of habit. If I've set them down and forgotten to put them back on, I'll feel a bit out of sorts when I want to twirl them and they're not there.

busy is as...

busy was.

We got back from Phoenix on Monday afternoon, quite unwillingly. Three days in that city was simply not enough.

Other than some rotten beds at the hotel, it was blissful. We were able to visit the Heard Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, and Taliesin West on Saturday and Sunday. All three were impressive in differing ways. The Heard Museum, which is supposed to be one of the finest Native American museums in the nation, was just gorgeous and downright vast. The collection of both ancient and modern vessels, paintings, weavings, etc. was mindnumbing. It would take a good three days to take it all in. One wing that impressed me was the Sandra Day O'Connor room, which housed their intricate collection of kachina dolls, including one unreal piece that depicted multiple dolls in a ritual; the whole thing was carved from a stump of wood. Talk about 'wow.' Outside was almost as nice as inside - there are a couple very peaceful plazas with benches and an open air cafe that were perfect for just whiling away a lazy day.

The Art Museum, although under major renovation, had two really excellent photo exhibits. The first that we saw was a 150 year overview of photography, covering everything from daguerrotypes to 21st century digital imaging. Some of the black and whites from the 30's were especially striking. There's something about black and white photos from the depression era in the U.S. On an emotive level they affect me more profoundly than the most powerful photojournalistic endeavors today. Maybe it's the change of photochemicals over the past 70 years...maybe I'm just weird too.

Anyway, after traipsing around the second floor, which wasn't that great, we returned to the ground floor and stumbled upon a Barry Goldwater exhibit. I had no idea that this Republican senator from Arizona, who was known more for his conservatism, was a phenomenal photographer. Apparently, Goldwater was interested in much of the natural and cultural beauty of his state, quite evident in the stunning shots of Navajo weavers and geologic formations. It's good that he used slide film (back then) because the colors usually last 50+ years minimum.

brb

another one...

come an' gone. Happy New Year. Hope you're all having the laziest of days. Let's just resolve to take more time to ourselves, whether in solitude or with loved ones. Life is too short to waste on meaningless quibbles; it cuts into our happy time.

nothing exciting last night. not even a champagne toast. we went out for dinner...without any reservations. of course, that means either waiting obscene times or settling for anything.

we did the latter. luckily, it wasn't 'just settling'...we were pleasantly surprised.

initially, we drove by a red lobster and olive garden. neither had a wait less than 55 minutes. so...we ended up at a little place called Applecreek (on Iliff and Havana). i think it used to be a Coco's or sumpin'. we had passed by it a few times, wondering how the food was.

pretty darn good. now, the offerings were diner-like, but with no wait...excellent service...and a pretty decent T-bone, we were outta there in an hour. about the time it would have taken to get a table somewhere else.

didn't go join the 180,000 people downtown. we did that once...froze our butts off...watched substandard fireworks...and almost walked into a pile of human poop as we shuffled our way back to the car. yeah, something i'd do againandagain.

nope. we went home and popped in a travel tape from the library. as you know, we had some documentaries that were made in the late 80's - 'The Burma Road' and 'The Pan-American Highway.' neither could have been more different in both locale and presentation.

these travelogues are two episodes of an 8-part british produced series for american public television in the 80's, called 'Great Journeys. each was narrated by a 'well-known' writer/poet/journalist.

well, the burma road was awesome. it chronicled the adventure of British journalist/broadcaster, Miles Kington, who traversed the 700 mile long corridor between Lashio, Burma and Kunming, China. the Road was hacked out by 200,000 chinese workers (some as young as five years old) between 1938 and 1939. it was originally used to supply China during the Sino-Japanese War and the first couple years of WWII. after the Japanese overran parts of it in early '42, the road was closed and supplies were flown over the Himalayas, which became to be known as 'The Hump,' for the remainder of the war.

this episode was made in 1987, before the Burmese military put the clamps on the people, ending basic freedoms of speech, and enforcing martial law. it was a much carefree time for the Burmese people and it shows.

Kington, was a phenomenal narrator. sure, he didn't speak the language well...and the travel conditions were rustic, even by third world standards, but he took everything in stride and interacted with many of the people he came into contact. he was the perfect traveler in every sense...or at least what they had on film ;)

the tape on the Pan-American Highway was almost a polar opposite. it was poorly narrated and condescendingly presented by some poet, Hugo Williams. having traveled much of the Pan-American Highway myself (in mexico, guatemala, costa rica, bolivia, and peru), i was offended in the way he made the route to be...a long sinuous path of filth, poverty, and shallow oddities. it was merely about his idiocy (without any self-deprecation) in traveling through lands in which he barely tried to speak the language, did very little research of each respective country, and catered to his sheer survival in a wild and dangerous place. BARF

at one point, we were appalled with one segment of him, talking to the herpetologist at the San Salvador Zoo. it wasn't the five minute conversation about snakes and politics that bothered us though. no...we were pissed that he chose a British ex-pat who had a skewed view of the politics. it just seemed less genuine and more self serving that he hadn't sought out an El Salvadoran.

i know it's rather subjective - the guy's point of view regarding the trip. i just feel the whole presentation did no justice whatsoever to the culture, history, and geography of Central America. when he could have showed and commented on the volcanic topography, tropical regions and occasional vast stretches of desolate land along this highway that crosses through 15 countries and gobs of diversity. we were disgusted by this video debacle to say the least...

ah well. it's not like we paid $8 to see it at the theaters. but hey, it gave me something to blog about, since the majority of my postings have been nothing short of innocuous.

we're off to lunch, a cheapie, and shopping now...maybe even in that order. have a great day!