Update from the Mud Shack

What ever possesses people to do some things is totally incomprehensible to me. A standard washer/dryer pair takes up just over 58 inches---each is 29 inches wide, you need a couple inches clearance. So why make a laundry room 55-1/2 inches wall to wall??? Glad those new front loaders can be stacked; sorry to not be able to use our less than 2-years-old conventional top loaders.........

Gotta do a commercial for Lowe's---got the units on sale and they delivered Sat. a.m. at 7:30!! So nice to not waste a day hanging out waiting for delivery/service people!!!!! I've always had better service from them than their competitor.

Since the gas heater in the front of the house needs work, we have been heating with wood. The kiva fireplaces are wonderful. They are easy to light and once the massive masonry structure gets warm it retains the heat and keeps the area warm all day and most of the night.

We found a place that offers a variety of firewood for pretty reasonable prices and spent Friday stacking a 1/2 cord of pecan for our heat source.

Now Comcast is another story. The customer service people were a pleasure to deal with, the contractor was a jerk. We wanted at least two live connections. He provided one and groused that it wasn't on the orders to do two. Of course he still had his ladder against the roof and it would have taken him about 5 minutes to reconnect the splitter he had just disconnected.....It took me 10 minutes but that's because I had to wait for CZ to find me a pair of pliers to undo the connection.

There's some other small repairs that need doing, like the line to the swamp cooler that decided to spring a leak Thursday night......but no big deals considering the house is a fifty year old adobe!!!!! And I can sit in just about any room and marvel at the views, or curl up on the couch in front of the kiva fireplace with a good book or magazine.......

Can I figure out how to retire NOW???????

T-Day '09

Dad drove past a sign on a church in Alamogordo that said "This Thanksgiving, try counting your blessings, not your calories." So---

mud house

lots of running room

'Roid, Weetz, Bertequila

cousin dogs

Klingon Kats

warm kiva fireplaces

a great place to live

my people all together here for the holiday

Happy Thanksgiving to all!!!!!!!

Leny

First Mate of the Pirate Dogs

Elegy

So our 97 year old aunt died last Wed. in her sleep. The way one should check out---sleeping and with no pain. Nice service, too---very quick, no wake, viewing for two and a half hours before the funeral mass.

Lately I've been re-discovering Teilhard de Chardin and thinking and reading about religion. Aunt Mary watched "the mass" every Sunday at 10:00am. I knew better than to do my weekly Sunday call at that time. I guess I lost my faith one August day in 1966 and never really got it back.

So as the quote that serves as a header for this blog states, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." So should we view Mary's life. And be happy for her that her suffering is past and she rests in the bosom of the creator along with the litany of family that preceded her--parents Alessandra and Vincenzo, siblings Rose, Frances, Philipina, Delia, Philip, Gennaro, and Amalio. Requiescat in pace, Aunt Mary, for no-one deserves that peace more than you.