Day by Day

December 4, 2022

Hello again,

It's taken me forever to get this week's edition out, after spending the entire week cutting flagstone at work every day.  On top of that, it's now been a couple of weeks since our new flagstone finally arrived and it feels like six years have gone by since I was last doing anything other than cutting pieces of flagstone each and every day...I feel like I'm shuffling through life currently on zombie feet with leaden arms!  It's been a terribly windy week with temperatures somewhat mild for this time of year(40-50s daily) and then diving down to anywhere between 22 and 44 at night over the last few days.  I'm still waiting to see if our stock tank de-icer for the horses is truly working or not.  It's hard to tell with the temperature fluctuating so much.  I'm pretty sure that we finally have the problem fixed, but, unfortunately, it's going to take a week-long freeze to truly assess the situation.  Otherwise, things have been pretty quiet on the ranch, as we're not quite into snow/ice/freezing fog conditions, but have pushed well beyond the summer monsoon and all the crazy critters we have out here when it's warm.  The time change did not help matters much and time now feels very pinched with all the things that need attended to throughout the day(on top of working construction for eight hours) and it's all that I can do to finally stumble through the door at 6 or 7 at night(twelve hours after I left) and finally take my boots off.  And, even though it hasn't been freezing cold for the most part, coming into a nice, warm house just about always puts a sleeping spell on you!  Our new electric-powered, dual inverter mini-split has been installed and running now for a few weeks and we're starting to get used to it.  The boss had the head unit installed on the wall of the second floor loft and the heat is not making it down to the first floor very well.  We still have two oil-filled electric heaters that we keep plugged in downstairs and, between the three devices, we're keeping fairly warm.  It is nice to not have to get up every hour or two all night long to take care of the fire, but, truth be told, I do kind of miss it.  And we both really love the smell and the sound of the wood fire, so that is missed, too...and we never lacked for heat!  Usually, Erin was just about dying upstairs and me and all the animals were splayed out on the couch downstairs, soaking up the heat.  But, as long as the power doesn't go out on us, heat is no longer something that we need to worry about.  Don't tell anyone, but we're both wishing for a long break in the electric supply so that we can go back to spending the whole day camped out around the fire with a good book as company!

Otherwise, after a busy Thanksgiving week that involved watching my friend's farm and running up with Erin to Taos for the day, there hasn't been much going on lately.  I am a closet soccer fan and have been very much enjoying the World Cup that's been going on for two weeks now.  With games on at 3am/6am/9am/12pm out here during the group stage, I've gotten the chance to watch all or some of quite a few games: peeking at the early one when getting up to pee or letting the dogs out; watching the first half of the 6am game before work; checking updates all throughout the 9am game; and then watching the first half of the last game of the day over lunch.  Unfortunately, the USA is already out, as is Mexico, who my friend, Valentin, has been rooting for, but Erin and I are also both big Portugal fans from all of our trips there over the years, so maybe they'll go all the way!  We're still trying to force ourselves to get down to storage to work on cleaning up our two units there.  There are still lots of things that we haven't seen since Pennsylvania two years ago and we know that it will just take some time digging around through all of those boxes that we haven't been able to get to yet.  Still, it seems quite daunting at times to think about what all we've already unpacked here in our little casita and the even larger amount of stuff still in boxes tucked away from the light of day.  We're also torn about unpacking more before we finally make a move on some property around here some day, or just going through all of it now and then repacking/selling/donating/reorganizing as necessary.  Either way, it would be in our best interest to start getting down there a little more often and starting to make sense of it all.  In fact, Erin has even threatened to basically turn one of the units into a man cave...I just can't tell if it's going to be for me when I've been bad or for her when she just needs a break!  If we could only get some WiFi down there...

So, here's another batch of pictures for everyone to look at.  I actually didn't take very many in the last week, but it gave me a chance to play around with some other older images to turn them into little art projects.  First up, eight different shots of my little art projects that I came up with: first, Valentin's new calves; then, Starvation Peak from I-25; next, the Low Road to Taos; then, two different shots of Erin mugging in her two pairs of new sunglasses; next, one of me taking a break from cutting rock; and, finally, two cats shots...one of Valentin's cat while I was farm-sitting and the other one of Zia taking a break from feeding her babies.  Then, two shots of some of the new kittens from Zia's litter.  Next, five shots from the jobsite where we cut stone every day: first, an altered image of my stack of stones; then, a real shot of the stack of stones; next, my work table in two shots, one with pencils and stencils, the other with a big slab of uncut stone; and, finally, a more wide-angle shot of where Valentin and I spend all day working.  And, last of all, a shot from up in Taos that Erin took last week that captures just a little bit of the magic...

Take care and see you soon.