Saturday, June 16, 2007

Agua update

This morning we had a huge downpour. I'm very sorry to have to report that our chimney does NOT have "no more leaks;" in fact, things look very much like they did before. >:-P All that leaping about for nothing!

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Muchos agua

I was just berated by one of my friends for not posting regularly. So, Emily K, as promised, here is your blog. We expect comments!!!

First of all, we just bought new furniture. FINALLY. We have both a den and a living room in our apartment, and were suffering from a lack of furniture. The den had a futon that was once my uncle's, but the living room became the catch-all for anything we needed to dump or laundry that was trying to dry. Recently, the futon began to spontaneously shed armrests and we began to think that we should really have some furniture when guests came over. Luckily for us, Rooms to Go was having a sale, and we are now the proud new owners of a couch, a loveseat, and an armchair. They are all VERY comfortable and very nap-inducing!









(You can still see what's left of the futon!)


In other entertaining news, our ceiling has a hole in it.


Our chimney has been leaking pretty much since we first moved in. I think we've become a bit of a running joke with maintenance because we always have a puddle of water in our fireplace. An contract roofing company has been in charge of fixing the problem and kept patching it from the outside. Finally, after about the 5th time this hadn't worked, they sent a crew to check out the inside of the apartment. This crew consisted of one very Texan supervisor, and three men who only spoke Spanish. After checking out the chimney, the supervisor turned to the rest of the team. "There's a problem with meoo-chowus ah-gwah here. Do you understand? Meoo-chowus ah-gwah!!!" He promised to send a team to rip out the sheetrock and fix things from the inside, then went away.

A few days later, I was innocently taking a shower. Mike was off teaching, and, since our bathroom has no fan, I was showering with the bathroom door open. Suddenly I heard some thumping of workboots up our front steps and a knocking on the front door. "COMING!!!!!" I squealed and FLEW out of the shower. I just knew that it had to be my Meoo-chowus Ah-gwah men, and that if I didn't let them in on my own terms, maintenance would be there with key in hand. So I kept squealing "COMING" as I hopped around the apartment, digging for my bathrobe. When I opened the door, it wasn't Mr. Texan standing there, but a very astonished (but very polite) Mexican man who spoke very little English. (Certainly his English didn't cover the fact that I was standing there in a bathrobe, but this is probably a good thing.)

They spent several hours cutting holes in our ceiling and finally left us with this lovely patch:



But before he left, my polite but astonished Mexican proudly told me that there would be "No more leaks!" I'm happy to report that he is good to his word!

I am still hoping that one day we may have the ceiling completely patched and looking like a ceiling again. There's also the problem of the wall...the rain made the drywall so wet that when I went to poke it to see just how squishy it was, my finger went right through!!!



Meoo-chowus ah-gwah indeed!

~Ruth Ann

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Many things to tell!

Hello to our faithful readers from your not so faithful bloggers!

We have been meaning to write a blog for a while but, SURPRISE!, we haven't gotten around to it until now! Lots has been going on lately. We finished off the school year with a bang. We're still teaching over the summer but much fewer students: I have 2 so far and RA has around 10. One of the big exciting pieces of news: RUTH ANN IS MAKING BASSOON REEDS!!! I taught her how and she has made her first reed. I'm very proud to say that it makes a sound! It doesn't play very well, but that is because I didn't give her a very good piece of cane to start with. Here is a picture of the lovely reed.



Now, my plan is to teach her how to make all my reeds so I don't have to anymore!!!! Every Double Reed player's dream!









Juliana turned 2 last week. We had the exhausting fun of going to the birthday party. Here is the birthday girl in her birthday splendor:





There were lots of her friends from across the street. Eric grilled hot dogs and everyone had a lot of fun. I learned that Skittles, birthday cake, and bratwurst don't mix so well in one's stomache.








Our latest excitement was a trip to Santa Fe! Ruth Ann had an audition there and I thought I had better go along and take care of her :b. Ruth Ann advanced to finals but alas, they gave the job to the local sub. BUT she is on the sub list so we're hoping she'll get to play with them sometime. When that happens, I think I may need to go along to make sure everything is alright! We liked Santa Fe so much that we didn't want to leave! RA's aunt and uncle let us stay at their place. The took us to all the haunts and restaraunts. We had some of the best Tex-Mex food ever. On Sunday we went to Bandelier N.P. There are numerous Anasazi ruins and some of the ancient cliff dwellings.






There was one dwelling that we had to climb 140 feet to get to! We were comforted by the fact that many thousands of Indians went before us....





Despite RA having to 'work' on our little vacation, she and I both had a fabulous time and feel very rested. Even though we'd rather still be there.

~Mike