Views from the Slow Lane

Two months from today and we will be in Switzerland! I think that, once again, we will be disorganized for this trip. Too much to do between now and then to leave me the time to get my plans together. Just like last year. Luckily this is mostly a moutains and seaside vacation - so we will be doing mostly outdoor things.

So far I have booked most things:
Zurich: Hotel Claridge Tiefenau - 2 nights
Konstanz: waiting to hear from our German friends who we want to meet there
Gstaad: Apartment for 14 nights in Saanan from a Gstaad agency (Sicking Immobilien AG)
Northern Italy: have to figure out one night on the drive from Gstaad to Levanto
Levanto: Apartment in Villa Margherita for 11 nights
San Quirico d'Orcia: Palazzo del Capitano hotel for 2 nights
Rome: Hotel Farnese for 3 nights

I still have to book the car from AutoEurope. Must do that next week.

I heard from our friends in southern Germany and they are going to meet us in Konstanz. They suggested staying in Zurich and driving back and forth to Konstanz (under an hour each way), but I know we will be jetlagged and the thought of driving out in the morning, spending the day with our friends, then driving back to Zurich at night makes me know I will want to rest a bit during the afternoon. So I did some internet searching and found a nice, small hotel in Konstanz.

Since Konstanz sounds like an interesting town (our friends Ursula and Lionel love it), I decided to book us two nights there and arrive at our vacation rental in Gstaad on the Monday instead of the Sunday. I don't know why this vacation rental starts on a Sunday, not a Saturday. Maybe they will let us stay a day later - then we can drive straight from Gstaad to Levanto instead of finding a hotel somewhere along the way. I will email them and ask.

Seehotel Siber in Konstanz, two nights, arriving Saturday, August 30. As usual, I opted for an expensive hotel and got a room with a lake view. Too many years staying in cheaper hotels - now I like the luxury. It is a Relais & Chateaux hotel. 12 rooms in an old villa.

There are Roman ruins in Konstanz and the town is between the Rhine River and Lake Constance.

With less than two months before we leave, I am starting to do some research. I ordered these books today:
"The Italian Riviera: A Complete Guide to Liguria, including Portofino, Cinque Terre, Portovenere, Genoa and Sanremo", Touring Club of Italy
"The Alps of Tuscany : Selected hikes in the Apuane Alps, the Cinque Terre and Portofino", Francesco Greco

And from Amazon.co.uk (using my SlowTrav clickthru credits - thanks guys!!):
"Ripe for the Picking" Annie Hawes

I LOVED Annie Hawes' first book about Liguria "Extra Virgin". Someone on our message board was reading this second one and like it. These books will get me in the mood for our 1 1/2 weeks in Liguria.

I spent most of today working on my trip report from last year. I had good, but rough notes typed into the computer, my notebook where I taped in the receipts for each day and made notes, and a little notebook that I always carried with me to jot down driving times or menu notes. Using all these things, plus my photos, it all comes back to me in great detail

My trip report is pretty boring - just notes about what we did each day. As I write it, I end up updating pages on the website, which is why this all takes me so long. I have our weekend in Sperlonga and our last week in Vetralla and Rome to complete. I have to make several more photo albums too.

I recently bought Adobe Photo Album to help organize my several years of digital photos. Currently I keep them in folders for each trip, with subfolders for each day. With Photo Album, I can organize them even better - by trip or by type of photo. So a photo of Steve in Switzerland in 2002 would be categorized by the date, by the place and as a photo of Steve. Pretty good.

I finally started the AutoEurope booking. We pickup in Switzerland and dropoff in Rome. Last year we pickedup in Zurich at an office near our hotel - we will pickup at the same location - 33 Lindenstrasse. It was a nice, small office in a quiet residential area a short cab ride from the hotel.

For dropoff in Rome, we are trying another in town location. Ann from HI on the message board found this one - Via Dei Prati Fiscali, north of the downtown and Villa Borghese area, just off the Via Salaria (SS4), not far from where the A1 meets the Rome ring road.

I requested a midsize automatic because it was almost the same price as the compact (VW Bora for midsize, VW Gold for compact). The cost is about $500 more for automatic for this 29 day rental. Expensive, but the driving will be easier and I can do some of the driving (although last year we had an automatic and I only drove once). There is also an extra charge for droppingoff in a different country. I should be able to get a travel agent discount, since Slow Travelers is an AutoEurope affiliate. We got a discount last year.

I also wrote to our Gstaad rental agency to see if we can change from a Sunday - Sunday 2 week rental to Monday - Monday, because adding on the extra day in Konstanz means we don't arrive until Monday in Gstaad. I don't know if this is possible, but if it is, it means we can just drive straight from Gstaad to Levanto on the Monday. Otherwise we will make it 2 day drive.

I can't believe the time is going by so fast. One month before we leave and I have so much to do: redo all our Tabby Software marketing materials for our November conference, some client work, finish my trip report and photo essays from last year's trip, update the sections on SlowTrav that have references to lire (restaurant menu section, language lessons), decide on the classified ads software that I like best and install it and promote it (in a deperate attempt to make some money from SlowTrav - to justify all the time I spend working on it), dead-head the flowers in the yard.

Is it just me or is it because we do 5 week plus trips - but I always think I need to get my life completely in order before we leave on a trip. Oh, and get the books balanced for this year.

The Swiss agency in Gstaad happily changed our dates to be two weeks from Monday, September 1, so now we can just drive from Gstaad straight to Levanto and not have to figure out some interesting place to stop for the night.

The AutoEurope rental is booked and I got a 25% discount (instead of the usual 10% for booking online) because I am an affiliate. I did this last year, but had to rent the car in my name instead of Steve's, which makes me nervous because he does all the driving. This year I first changed our Affiliate info to be for Pauline Kenny and Steve Cohen, then booked the car in his name. Clever!

I got my books on Liguria, but have not opened them yet. I need to spend some time now getting organized, printing out materials, maybe getting new shoes - if I leave it too close to our leaving date, I will not get to it.

And get our International Drivers Licenses. The last month before a trip is always exhausting and exciting. No wonder I suffer from jetlag.

Work things just keep piling up. So do SlowTrav things. And I always feel like I MUST get everything done before we leave for a trip.

Steve's girlfriend before me (we are talking 25 years ago) always said to him "I will not go to X fat!!". Then she dieted for months before each trip. I am more like "I will not go to X with messy closets." Then I do major spring cleaning before we leave. Do I think I am going to die on the trip? So my house had better be clean, my books up-to-date (this usually does not get done - too boring), my web site as updated as possible.

But, we do have a number of Tabby Software things to be done because we have a conference one month after we get back. Advertising materials, new release of the software and docs, banner for our booth. Must get working on all that (but today is hot and I feel lazy, so here I am at the blog).

Today I did the first few things in getting ready for the trip:
- We got our IDLs (International Drivers License) from AAA. Only took a few minutes - their office was quiet and they were fast.
- I ordered foreign currency from the bank (Swiss frances - enough to pay our 2 week Gstaad rental - and Euro for Germany and Italy).
- I called Delta to confirm our flights (we leave 20 minutes earlier than originally stated!) and order our vegetarian meals.

Things really are under control - it is just in my nature to panic. Time usually goes by so fast for me, that one minute we have 3 weeks until we leave, then I blink and we are leaving the next day.

We also bought a TIVO. Yes, another electronic device stuffed into our very small, but well equipped, house. We tape things from TV all the time. This is another instance of how time escapes me. If there is something I want to watch on TV, I always set up to tape it because I usually lift my head up from the computer, look around, and realize it is 9pm (and have missed the show). Also our house sitters always seem to mess up my TV taping when we travel - and TIVO seems like it will be hundreds of times better than a VCR. I hate having to keep track of what is on the tape, what we have watched, etc.

All this so we can tape the nightly news, South Park and whatever HBO series we are currently addicted to. :)

I spoke to a fact checker at the New York Times today. They are running an article in the August 24 Practical Traveler column with a mention of SlowTrav!!!!!

The other day I was wandering around a Smiths in Santa Fe (big grocery store) and I saw a section called "Hispanic Cookies".

1. If you are driving in Italy, get your IDL (Internation Drivers License - required by law in Italy). >>DONE

2. Get cash for each country; extra if you have to pay your first vacation rental in cash. >>cash ordered

3. Make a detailed itinerary with all contact information and directions for all hotels, vacation rentals, people you are meeting; all flight and car rental pickup info; prices and what you have already paid; all your home information (medical plan numbers, airline numbers, AAA, house sitter numbers). Print several copies to take with you and make an abbreviated version to give to friends at home or who you will be meeting (so they can contact you). >>ALMOST DONE

4. Go to and print out all your driving directions for the trip. >>DONE

5. Reconfirm all flights and hotel and vacation rental reservations. >>STARTED

6. Make sure your passport is current. >>DONE

I will add more to this as I get ready for the trip.

Did I mention that SlowTrav is going to be mentioned in the New York Times Practical Traveler on August 24?

And that is the "thing that happens just before a trip." Just before every long trip (more than a month), something happens. Something happens that we have to take care of before we leave - spend days taking care of it. This is the thing for this trip (at least I hope it is).

My panic is that I have to get SlowTrav and SlowTalk in better shape before the thousands of new visitors :) hit the site after the article comes out. And I have to get it done this week, so the web site has a week to "settle" before the article. For example, tonight I broke the classified ads system - don't know what I did, don't know how I did it. Now Chris has to go fix it. If I was messing with all this the day before the article, I could break the site on its most important day!!

So a few more days of working on SlowTrav and SlowTalk and then I declare myself finished and get back to getting ready for the trip.

We have this weekend, then next weekend, then we are off on Wednesday.

I got a new digital camera (Canon Powershot Elph, 4.0 megapixels). I liked my other camera (Pentax 2.0 megapixels), but this one does short movies with sound (the Pentax did short movies but no sound) and give higher quality photos (which I didn't think I needed because I don't need high quality for the web, but now I realize if I want a good quality image for a small part of a photo, I will do better with an overall higher quality image). Plus this one is just as small - maybe a big smaller - fits into my blue jeans pocket (and into the palm of your hand).

I also got a new carry on suitcase - a computer bag on wheels. It will hold both our computers. Steve is traveling with his heavier notebook (5lbs) and me with my subnotebook (3lbs) and 8lbs of computers doesn't seem like much but with all the other stuff, it is very heavy lugging them around. So now we have two wheeled carryons. Mine is for a change of clothes, toilet kit, and things for the plane on the way out; olive oil on the way back. Steve's is for all our computers.

Tomorrow I am going to pack our hiking gear for Switzerland: boots, packs, poles, socks, polartec shirts and vests, rain coats, hats. Then I will know that that is done.

I still have to get a last few house things organized, but it is all coming together. I just took on some new work to do next week - but I will still have plenty of time for getting organized. This weekend I will finish up my SlowTrav work - so the site can be well tested before we get our NY Times mention (the importance of which I have probably totally blown out of proportion).

I also have to get my blogging by email to work - it works for the blogs I set up for Dana and Dean - why not mine? I will get the blogger support people to help me figure it out.

European style toilet brush - it was really called that!! Just a regular toilet brush from what I could tell. Do they think we will buy it because they put the word "European" in the name? Or do we Americans just assume that the Europeans really know toilet cleaning?

This is a cool new feature on the Google Toolbar (you can download it from Google). If you are on a web site and you want to copy the link to your blog, click Blog This and it opens up Blogger and puts the link into the post.

To test this I linked to our message board.

Italy - Forum Powered by Infopop

Testing posting from Steve's account.

I miss keeping my blog! I still have the last couple of days from our trip to write up and now we are planning our December 15 - January 1 trip to Naples and Rome. I am going to try to post every Friday about trip planning and about SlowTrav things.

We have both been very busy since we got home on October 1. We had to get ready for a conference for Steve's company Tabby Software and I just finished a new web site for a client The Vacation Rental Network. Now things are easing up and I have several SlowTrav projects to attend to.

I will post more on Friday - and this will encourage me to get going on my trip planning!!

One Month from Tomorrow we fly to Rome! - - - This can't be possible! It feels like we were just there. The weeks and months just fly by. I must get in gear and start doing some reading and research for Rome and Naples.

Colleen and Shannon are in Santa Fe this weekend visiting their friend Nancy and Shannon's mother (and us). Colleen is going to come to Rome with us! The apartment we are housesitting is large, with plenty of room for Colleen and for us.

We got our first winter snow a couple of days ago and it mostly melted today. But I noticed it clouding over again this afternoon, so maybe we are getting more. It is really cold and kind of cold in the house too. The second bedroom that we use as our shared office (we work sitting about three feet from each other - hard to believe that this works - we both have a good ability to concentrate) is the coldest room in our house. Someday we must look at insulting under the floor of this room.

I still have not even looked at my trip photos. I want to go through them and make some photo essays for the web site. Our big work crunch ended last week with the business trip to Florida, so once I get a couple of other things done, I should have time to get to the photos.

Things I am Reading
Rebecca posted a new essay and it is great (as all of them are):
Oh, What I Would Give to be a Canadian

I just started reading "Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris" by Sarah Turnbull. Someone on the message board did not like this book, and I have just started it and quite like it so far. It is about an Australian woman who falls in love with a French man and moves to Paris. She loves Paris, but living there is not always easy for her.

Colleen gave me a present of a bunch of books from Amazon and Stephanie sent me a great book translated from Italian (it is three books published in one volume) - so I have a large pile of books to read.

SlowTrav Projects
The new Trip Reports Manager is doing very well. Kim is back from Italy, so has taken over managing it. We had a flurry of new trip reports in the last month and still have not copied all the old ones from the message board. We should get that done soon. This really is a great resource as well as being entertaining. Reading trip reports is good for trip planning or armchair traveling.
Trip Reports Manager

I am still working on our soon to be release paid classified ads system. Steve did a project in August to find the best software available, but when I started customizing it, I was not convinced that I liked it. So I spent a few days (okay, wasted a few days) doing the research all over again, only to come to the same conclusion as Steve. We are going with E-Classifieds. It runs in Perl with its own database. The main problem is that the pages are not indexed by Google - and for the life of me I cannot figure out why not - but I think our approach will be that the ads are for the Slow Travelers community - not for bumping up your Google ranking by being linked to by SlowTrav (we have a good Google rank).

I need to get this classifieds system launched ASAP. Right now we are getting an error message every time an email is sent and you can't upload photos. I have to convince Steve to spend some time figuring this out for me. I think this will be a great way of listing vacation rentals and other tourist businesses. The businesses will input their own ad and photos. I check them out before they get posted.

I am working on my redesign of the web site. I have big plans!! It is just that they are hard to implement on a site this large.

SlowTalk Things
The message board seems to slow down frequently. Infopop, who hosts the message board and provides the software, is putting out a huge new release next month and is upgrading the servers - so eventually this will be solved. They are releasing a new photo album feature that goes with the message board and if it is a good design, we will close down SlowTrips and move all the photos to the message board.

The upside is one less website to maintain. The downside is that bandwidth is expensive at Infopop and looking at photos eats up bandwidth. But Infopop has promised better hosting plans - so maybe that won't be an issue. Anyway, our AutoEurope and Venere clickthrus are up this year, so they will cover the additional costs.

Ending
I will end by describing our morning walk today.

It snowed a few inches the night before last and yesterday was overcast and cold. But this morning it warmed up and the snow started to melt. We live right in town (30 minutes walk to the plaza) but we are on a dirt road. Many roads in this old neighborhood are dirt. It is not so much dirt today as mud. Yesterday we did a long drive down to the airport and back to get Colleen and Shannon, so we really needed a walk today after all that sitting. We left the house just before 9. The road was muddy and as we walked mud splashed up the back of our jeans. (I just realized that I am still wearing those muddy jeans.)

The sky was overcast but the clouds were high up and were a beautiful steel grey. The bright blue sky was starting to break through, but the clouds hovered over the mountains. We live right at the edge of the Sangre de Cristos (part of the Rocky Mountains). The look of the sky with the patches of blue and the clouds hanging like a thick mist on the mountains was stunning.

We have a two mile route that goes around our neighborhood and ends at Downtown Subscription, our local coffee shop. We walk through lovely neighborhoods of old houses and down narrow lanes until we come to a public footpath that leads from one lane to another. Yes, a public footpath here in the US!! This footpath always reminds me of when I was a child and we lived in the countryside outside of Toronto (now it is all suburb, but then it was beautiful countryside with huge open fields and tree filled ravines). We walk on this path with fences and big trees on each side. The leaves are all yellow and gold now and about half of them have fallen off, so we are walking on a golden carpet of leaves, mixed with the melting snow and the mud. Unbelievably beautiful.

We end up at the coffee shop and today we sat inside for the first time in many months. Only the smokers were sitting outside. After coffee and a bagel (and a discussion of the work we have to do today), we do a quick one mile walk home on the direct route.

A wonderful way to start the day. In the good weather we do this walk 6 days out of 7. In the cold months, we sometimes forget to do it - but we shouldn't. Sometimes when we are tired of living in Santa Fe, we say our walk is like walking around the prison yard. But during the 90% of the time that I love it here, our walk is glorious!

My problem is that I just cannot commit geographically. I like too many places and one lifetime is too short to try living in all of them.

Where did this week go? It went by fast.

We had a great weekend with Colleen and Shannon. On Sunday night the whole gang came to our house (Colleen, Shannon, Shannon's mother Connie, and their friend Nancy) and we had dinner (yes, I cooked - simple vegetarian polenta) and watch a bunch of Italy stuff on tape that Colleen brought (Marv from the mboard sent it to her). It was all from the Fine Living cable channel which we don't get here.

The first show was 30 minutes about the Butterfield and Robinson bike tours in Tuscany. We ran into this group once when we were buying oil in Montisi. They were getting a demonstration on oil making, so we sat in. Steve ended up doing most of the translating because their tour guide was having trouble. The group we were with were pretty uninterested and thought it was all a sales pitch (which it was). We were the only ones who bought the oil. They went off for lunch at the restaurant in Montisi (run I think by the people who sell the olive oil). On other occasions we have seen the B&R groups riding the road between Montisi and Pienza - that must be part of their standard route. The 30 minute program was like an infomercial - and it sure did not convince any of our group. First, I don't think bike riding in Tuscany is that great of an idea (although I have talked to many people who love to bike in Tuscany). The roads are narrow and the traffic is fast. Second, this is a luxury tour and very expensive. The show consisted of one couple on the tour talking about how great it was and their comments showed such a superficial level of understanding of the area. The woman said at least three times how wonderful it was that they took your luggage to your room. She even said how you would never get that in the US. Huh?

But my favorite part was that the group stopped at a house for lunch. They were pleased with themselves because they cooked the "Bruschetta" (they pronounced it wrong) - Bruschetta is hardly cooking! Bread, tomato, garlic, olive oil - bread lightly toasted. Not exactly cooking. And the narrator said "Where else in the world could you have lunch in someone's house?" Uh, my guess is anywhere - when you consider what they are probably paying for that lunch. Lunch at my house next week guys!!

Okay, I will admit I am writing about TV shows. This is pretty lame.

The next show was an interview with Frances and Ed Mayes. I loved it. As much as I like to criticize her first book (which really was three different long articles glued together) I still read everything she writes. The show took you through the Bramasole gardens and into the house - you even got to see the fresco they uncovered when renovating (it is very plain looking). The gardens and house are beautiful. Steve and I saw the house from the outside in 1997, the year her book was published and when we spent two weeks near Cortona. In hindsight, I am really glad we had our long Cortona visit then, because the town was the same as when she wrote about it. It became much more touristed and crowded after her book became a best seller.

Did you know that when Frances and Ed got married (after she was famous - but they had been together since before), Ed changed his name to Mayes. At first I thought - what? - but then I thought about it and realized it was such a compliment from him, acknowledging her name and her fame. Steve and I have different last names and we thought about picking a third one and both changing to that (we thought about "Presley" because everyone loves Elvis) - but we never did it.

And the last show was about expats in Italy. The Sutherlands from Tuscan Women Cook were profiled (Bill Sutherland is on our message board) along with some other expats. All the expats portrayed seem to teach tourists something - cooking, painting, boat building. It does seem like many of the expats who move to Italy get involved with the tourist industry. The Sutherlands house looked beautiful on the show and the cooking scenes were great. But again, this show was more of an infomercial - you know "life is always perfect and sunny in Italy". Still, it was great fun seeing people we know on TV!

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This week I did the long awaited facelift to SlowTrav. I have been planning this for months, but never had the time to do it. In the end it took about 3 days to do. It would have been longer, but I had done a lot of the foundation work in the spring (stripping off font tags and using style sheets to drive the formatting). So all I had to do was bring in the new style sheet and redo all the headers. Stephanie did a logo for us - she still doesn't like it and is working on another one, but I quite like this one.

<< image no longer there - we redid it in 2005 >>

The circles graphic represents our basic premise of staying in one place and exploring the area around you - my Concentric Cirlces Theory - possibly the only original work I have ever done in my life, and really it isn't that original!

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We get our second mention in the New York Times tomorrow. It is already on the Times web site and on the message board, a member from NJ has the print version already.
Travel Q&A: Hiking in Tuscany
In the article they use quotes from me to talk about hiking in Tuscany. I don't think the hiking in Tuscany is that good. You can go for a walk, but if you want to spend a week doing nice day hikes, like you can so easily do in Switzerland and England, it is difficult. The public transportation is not great - so you can't easily walk from point A to point B, then use public transportation to get back to your car. Many of the trails go along busy roads. You can always find short walks on white roads (dirt roads) or short trails here and there, but it is nothing like the wonderful hiking you can do in Switzerland and England.

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I have been working all week on implementing a paid classified ads section for Slow Travelers. I probably have another week of work to do. Setting up the database is quite tricky - even though we purchased a classified ads package. I want to set it up to replace the pages and pages of vacation rental listings that I have on the site. These listings were fun to do originally as I hunted down interesting vacation rentals, but I have not had the time to keep them up-to-date. So if I found an estate with vacation rentals a year ago, it is on the list, but one that I heard of recently is not on the list.

I put up a free classified ads section, but it is not well layed out and even I hardly ever look at it. I just put it up to stop the daily emails from people asking to be listed on the site. The new section will not get as many listings (because people have to pay) but I am hoping will get a good quality of listing and a good amount. Then I can remove my listings pages from the site and point instead to the classifieds. This will automate the listing process (people who post classifieds can go back and change their ad at any time) and keep everything current. Hopefully it will also provide some income that will allow me to devote more time to SlowTrav. If I could spend a couple of working days each week working on the content, the site will be much better. As it is now, I have tons of new material to add and big plans on reworking existing sections - but I never get the time to do it.

I am not complaining - I am very happy with SlowTrav and the message board. I love the community that has formed - and I find out all kinds of things about traveling that help us with our planning.

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Our new Trip Reports Manager is now the second most popular section on the web site (second only to Italy vacation rental reviews). Trip reports are coming in at a good rate and we still have not copied all the ones from the message board (but are working on it).

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But what about our upcoming Rome trip? This week for sure I have to start thinking about it!!!

If relationships with countries were like relationships with people, I would be in several relationships right now, not capable of monogamy, afraid of commitment, flirty, and kind of slutty.

I would be married to Santa Fe and we had some really good years in the beginning, but now we are starting to fight. Some days it is great, some days a big horrible fight. This has been going on for a few years and something is going to happen.

Italy and I dated very seriously for years, considered marriage, but then I totally freaked out at the reality of it. We kept going on for a few more years, but then he just got overwhelming and now I need some time away from him. We are having a trial separation. I am dating other countries (although I always dated other countries anyway), but now I am dating them seriously. After a few years apart, it may all start up again, or maybe the relationship has changed and we will just be friends.

Switzerland is the wonderful old lover you have been with forever. You only see each other once a year, but it is always perfect and you always wish it could last forever. Switzerland is who I run to when Italy gets too much for me.

England is the country I am courting now, but part of me thinks maybe France is the one for me. He seems more exotic, more sunny, warmer. But England is a better match. We suit each other perfectly. He is the country that would be best for me in my later years. We could grow old together.

Hawaii is a once a year fling. Wonderful while I am there, forgotten once I leave.

New York City is my passion, but is best longed for from afar.

Canada is an old husband, divorced, forgotten, and never thought of again. But he was there for the first half of my life.

Steve and I came up with this idea for a contest to celebrate the 3 year anniversary of the message board (June 15) and I thought it would be great fun, and not involve much work. Wrong. The prizes have flooded in and I am realizing how much work it will be organizing the judging, doing the judging and making sure the prizes get awarded correctly. Not to mention posting all the wonderful new content that is coming in (that is how people will win prizes).

The best thing about the contest is how prizes are going to be awarded. It is part contest and part raffle. You have to "win" the contest to be part of the raffle. This makes it less competitive and more fun. Plus, when we do the raffle, we give each person a number (as their name is pulled from the hat), and that is the order they select their prizes. So people will get to choose a prize that suits them.

The prizes are excellent. Have a look!!

I lost an entire week to Movable Type, but then was so darned pleased with myself figuring out how it works, redoing all the templates to make the blog pages look like part of Slow Travel. And today they announced that the commercial version of the software for the new release is way more expensive (I paid $150, now it will be more like $500) and you run a limited number of blogs!! I was planning to bring lots of Slow Travelers blogs online!! I guess I will have to go back to Blogger for the majority of blogs. I was in a snit all day today because of this. So are lots of other bloggers.

I am working on Alice's train section. This current bit is fiddly, but will be excellent when I get done. She has written a detailed description for each type of train ticket, making graphics showing each part of the ticket and how to read it. Trains in Italy will be fully documented when we are done, and will no longer be a mystery to anyone.

I have been doing more of my own writing for the site, but need to do more. It feels like I have been working for months on What is Slow Travel? I keep messing with the style sheets, when what I really need is to schedule two weeks to redo the style sheets for the whole site, instead of picking at it one section at a time. I am just getting confused.

I also need to schedule two weeks or maybe a month to convert the whole site from FrontPage to Dreamweaver. The FrontPage extensions have screwed me for the last time - now I am mad!! The classifieds were down for a whole day because FrontPage extensions were reinstalled and the permissions throughout the site got messed up.

We are going to New York City for a big SlowTrav part June 10. All the moderators, except Maureen who will be in Italy and Cristina who lives in Italy, will be there. Three of us will be staying at the same hotel (me, Colleen, Chris). I am pretty excited about this trip. I still have to buy the plane tickets - we are thinking of adding on a few days back east and can't decide where and how long.

And I still have not booked our first week in September for our England trip. If I don't do that soon, it will no longer be possible.

But it is Saturday night and we are watching the first season of Upstairs, Downstairs on DVD!!!

What are the 5 stages of dealing with a housebound cat?

1. Denial - he can't possibly howl day and night for a week!
2. Irritation - will he ever shut up?
3. Teasing - Spike, do you want to go out; shall I open the door?; oh, you can't go out because you are injured!! Sorry!!
4. Anger - Spike, shut the freak up!!!
5. Acceptance - I shall go without sleep, I don't need to concentrate anyway, it is only for a week.

On Wednesday I was examining Spike (one of our two cats) because he had been in a fight a few days earlier. His ear was torn and he had a new scratch on his nose. I noticed a big hard lump on his leg (rear leg, at the "ankle"). Of course, Wednesday afternoon is our vets "early closing day". So we took him in at 8am Thursday morning.

We figured it was an abscess, because he gets them once a year at least, from cat fights. Vet felt it, said "tumor" and "90% chance it is cancer". (So much for bedside manner.) All this before I had even had coffee.

So we left Spike and they cut him open and removed the tumor and sent him home with a silly bright pink bandage covering his whole leg.

For the first 24 hours, he could not sit still or sleep. Just kept pacing and howling. He must have been in pain. Today finally he slept. But he is still howling to go out. Under normal circumstances, in this good of weather, Spike spends 23 hours a day outside. But he has to stay inside for a week, until his wound heals.

Last night he finally went to sleep around 3am - in the bread basket on the kitchen counter beside the toaster. After I took out the plastic bags I had been storing there and put in a nice towel.

I put him in a harness and on a leash and took him out onto the deck for an hour. I read a magazine and he lay in the sun.

Here is hoping we both sleep tonight!!

(And he seems fine, we will know about the tumor on Monday, but he is 13 years old and I guess these things happen.)

Spike is winning the battle. Now we put a harness on him each day, tie him to a long leash, and let him spend the day on the porch. Anything to stop the howling.

At night, we sleep with the bedroom window closed (I love to sleep with fresh air) to stop Spike spending hours trying to take apart the screen on the window. I put cushions from the couch in front of the glass French doors in the bedroom, to stop him from spending hours scratching at the glass. We sleep in a barricaded room.

I tried to lock him out one night - the howling increased.

Here he his, with his pink bandage, enjoying being outside.

Well, it is cancer. Melanoma. The vet said it is not as nasty in cats as in humans. It may reoccur in his leg and he said it sometimes reoccurs so they can't remove it - and we might have to cut off his leg.

We will cross that bridge when we come to it. He gets his stitches out next week and we will talk to the vet more then. For now, he seems very healthy and happy.

It is 13 years this week that we got him and Butch as kittens (6 weeks old, brothers from the same litter).

But for now, the tumor is removed and the vet said Spike can go outside, so he is a happy boy. Last we saw was him and his pink leg going out the front gate, across the street and into the neighbor's yard.

Don't you think it would be great if cats lived as long as humans?

Spike started to work seriously on removing that pink bandage yesterday and today when he appeared, it was gone. Now he looks like a poodle with his shaved leg. I wonder where he left that bandage - like a snake shedding its skin?

He gets his stitches removed next week and then we take him to consult with a pet oncologist. Can you believe this? A Vet that specializes in cancer. She is recommending some chemo injection (one time I think) in the area where he had the cancer to stop in from reoccuring. We will have to have a long think about that - I don't know about subjecting a cat to chemo.

Poor Spike, but he is a happy boy these days, being outside again.

We leave tomorrow for a week in New York City! Nearly all the SlowTrav moderators will be there. It will be great!

A quick update about Spike. Our vet wanted him to go to a cancer specialist for possible chemo on the area of the leg where he had the tumor. We went to a local vet who specializes in cancer treatment, sat for an hour in her office and observed the chaos, listened to her discuss treatment options for a 15 year old cat where the option chosen depended on your budget and had them lie to us saying the vet could not see us because our vet had not faxed the paperwork. The lie was that they said they had asked for it when we booked the appointment, but they made the call when we arrived.

So we all left, and dropped in on our vet and said we would not take Spike to that other clinic. The result was that our vet, who used to do these chemo treatments, but stopped with the specialist came to town, met with her (the specialist), consulted about Spike and is now doing the chemo treatment for Spike.

Our vet is wonderful (Dr. Hinko, Animal Clinic, Santa Fe). He saved Spike's life about 5 years ago (snake attack). Dr. Hinko phones you up and talks to you himself. He even called me once from his home at night.

Spike's first chemo treatment was today. It is an injection of a chemo drug into his leg where the melanoma was. To stop it from spreading. If it spreads, he would lose his leg. He has to have one or two other treatments.

At this time of year, Spike spends about an hour a day home. 30 minutes in the morning to howl for and then eat breakfast; 30 minutes at night to eat and have a bit of lap time. We were pretty worried that we would not be able to find him in the morning to take him to the vet.

So we slept lightly. Steve heard him come in around 2am and got up and shut th cat flap so Spike and Butch were locked in (Butch spends the whole night with us, sleeping on a pillow on the floor). From 2am to 7am was on and off dozing and listening to Spike try to take apart the cat flap, the screen windows, the glass door in our bedroom.

So I am tired.

But, we had him, took him to the vet, picked him up this afternoon and he seemed fine. A bit dozy from being knocked out, but after visiting for 15 minutes, he trotted off into the yard. Things to do, people to see, I guess.

We are in the final stages of the Slow Travel contest. At this point I am wondering why I ever came up with this idea and I think the moderators would like to smack me on the head. I was posting, they were all reading. Even Steve stopped work and devoted days to reading. We have announced about half the winners and are going through the rest today and tomorrow. It is difficult to choose, because many are not apples to apples. Luckily there is a big group of us, so we are doing it by concensus. But it means lots of reading for everyone.

On Thursday the names are being drawn - that is when the fun starts - watching as people pick their prizes!!

On Friday Steve and I were out for our usual morning walk through our neighborhood and then to Downtown Subscription for coffee and bagel. As we were walking along Garcia Street, near Downtown, we felt water or something falling on us. We were on the sidewalk, beside a 10 foot wall, with a tree hanging over us. I assumed it was someone watering.

Then I saw the Coates Tree Service truck. Then I saw the big container of pesticide on the truck. I was furious. I called out as I approached the truck and the guy spraying the pesticides came out from the yard. I shouted "Did you just spray us with pesiticide?" He screamed "It was not my fault, I didn't see you." More shouting with me pointing out this was a public sidewalk and he had sprayed us with chemicals. He got very beligerent, screaming at us, phoning his boss, following us down the sidewalk telling us to wait because his boss was coming over. All we wanted to do was get away from all the chemicals, wash off our arms and then deal with it.

We went to Downtown and scrubbed our arms. Didn't stay for coffee. Went home and threw away our hats and t-shirts. Had showers.

Then I called the Department of Agriculture and filed a complaint against the company. Called the City and talked to their IPM coordinator. All he could do was make a not of the call and if he gets more complaints against Coates, he will file a complaint with the Department of Ag. Steve called Coates Tree Service to find out what we were sprayed with.

It was a fruit tree being sprayed for mites. The company and the Department of Ag. say the pesiticide is harmless to humans. It was Malathion 57 and Sevin (active ingredient Carbaryl 4L). But anti-pesiticide activists do not think this is a harmless pesticide. Malathion is the most commonly used insecticide in the US. Here is some information about it from the Pesticide Action Network.

The irony here is that we never use pesticides in our yard, we keep our house as non-toxic as possible (no pressboard, no regular paint, non-toxic floor finish, no wall-to-wall carpeting, no cleaning chemicals, no pesticides, no fragrances), and we eat organically grown foods. I did two years of volunteer work with a local organization promoting non-toxic building (Healthy Housing Coalition). Many of the people I worked with are Environmentally Ill (MCS - Multiple Chemical Sensitivities). One person we met became ill when she was sprayed in the face in a situation similar to ours.

I feel fine. Steve is feeling a bit sick. Steve is more affected by chemicals and fragrances than I am. We went to our chiropractor/acupuncturist that same day and both had treatments. I don't think this exposure will damage us in the long term, but it was frustrating that it happened. The guy working for Coates Tree Service was acting irresponsibly and he knew it. That was why he overreacted and kept screaming that it was not his fault.

We use too many chemicals here
Pesticides and lots of other chemicals are over used in this country. Fragrances, insecticides, herbicides, cleaning chemicals all create a chemical soup that we live in that is having profound affects on our health. Most public places are sprayed on a montly basis. Airports and airplanes are sprayed regularly.

This is one of the things that I dislike about the US and Canada - the overuse of pesticides and other chemicals. Our houses are built cheaply and with very toxic things. At the first sign of a weed, we spray our yards. I think it is better in Europe, but it is not perfect their either. On our trip to Rome this winter, Steve went into a public restroom at the Roman Forum just after it had been cleaned and the strength of the cleaning chemical they had used made him feel sick for a day. Friends of ours with a country house in Lazio assumed the vegetables their neighbors give them were organically grown, but now they find out the neighbors use pesticides. In Germany, many years ago, many people became environmentally ill because of heavy chemicals on wood used to build houses.

But, I don't think they have the number of chemical trucks driving through neighborhoods to do spraying that we have in the US. Santa Fe is better than most places because people do not have regular lawns that have to be sprayed to be kept perfect and we have a wonderful "old hippy" population here that are active against use of chemicals. The city uses mostly IPM (integrated pest management) and only uses pesticides in extreme situations. And when they do, they are required by law to post signs. Private people are not required to post signs when spraying is going on.

The manager at Coates that Steve talked to said that if they post signs, the neighbors all get upset about the spraying and complain. So instead they don't post signs and just spray quickly before people notice. Some states and municipalities have laws that require everyone to post before spraying occurs, during the spraying and for a few days after. If we are going to continue dumping chemicals onto our trees and lawns, the least we can do is require notification so that people do not walk through the chemical mist or get sprayed.

Sometimes I just feel so assaulted by daily life. The person drenched in perfume or aftershave who sits beside me at the coffee shop. The monthly pesticide spraying of the movie theatres. The outgassing of all the plastics and chemicals from the clothes for sale in a mall. We try so hard to avoid as much of this as possible. We live in a small town with good air quality, we don't go to movie theatres - but we go out for a morning walk and get sprayed with pesticide.

Coates Tree Service, 1075 Pen Rd, Santa Fe, NM
Coates Tree Service in Santa Fe, New Mexico (NM) does not always do responsible application of pesticides. In the situation described above, the worker was spraying pesticides onto a public sidewalk without being able to see the sidewalk. The Department of Agriculture said that the company should have either had another worker on the sidewalk to warn people of the danger or the worker should have sprayed the part of the tree that hangs over the sidewalk from the sidewalk, not from inside the yard.

Resources
Pesticide Action Network
Pesticide Education Center

Link to description on my other website.

We leave in three days!! Santa Fe has enacted a new law for dogs and cats - required dogs to be leashed and cats to stay in their yards. Plus they have to wear licenses.

We lasted one day with cats wearing collars and metal licenses. When I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of Butch eating and his metal tag clinking against the metal cat bowl, I got up and removed the collar.

If cats are picked up by Animal Control, or if a neighbor catches one and call Animal Control, they go to the shelter. If they do not have a license, they may be killed after 5 days. If they do have a license, they will phone you and you have 7 days. Nice. I found out from our vet that we could have a microchip planted in them, but we have no time to do this before we leave, so will do it when we get back.

If we do follow through on our plan to move to England for a year or so, we would have to chip them anyway.

My current pre-trip worry is that the cats will be rounded up in the excitement of this new law and our cat sitter (we have three different ones for the next two months) will not know what they look like when the go to the shelter to look for them. So - mug shots!! Here is Spike's mug shot which I am printing and leaving in the house book. And, as soon as Butch appears, he will be photographed too.

Butch stayed away all day - must have known we wanted him! Normally he sleeps beside Steve's computer or on the porch all day long. The suitcases are out and he knows something is going on.

Here is his mug shot. Now our housesitters will know what he looks like.

I have been TIVOing a lot of movies lately. We watched "Little Shop of Horrors", the Rick Moranis comedy/musical version, not the Roger Corman horror version, and loved it. Things seem so crazy in the world now and have seem like this for a few years. Steve said "From now on, lets only watch musicals".

Now my TIVO queue has "Guys and Dolls", "Damn Yankees", "Bye Bye Birdie", "West Side Story", and "Cabaret" (which Steve says is not a musical, but a movie about singing - and I say "okay dear").

A whole new genre for us.

I turn 50 in a few weeks. 50. At 40 I promised myself that at 50 I would pick 100 books and read only them for the rest of my life. I then negotiated in a few magazine subscriptions. Now that the Internet has become a part of my life, I will have to negotiate in blogs and message boards.

I think when I turn 60, I will pick 100 books and read only them for the rest of my life. Meanwhile, my 50s will be devoted to musicals.

To celebrate my entry into my fifties, we have been watching musicals:

"De-Lovely", 2004, with Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd, directed by Irwin Winkler. Musical based on the life of Cole Porter. Wonderful movie with great music. It is not exactly cheerful, but I don't always like cheerful.

"Guys and Dolls", 1955, with Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Musical based on Damon Runyon's Manhattan short stories. Fabulous music and you get to see Marlon Brando sing and dance!

"Damn Yankees", 1958, with Tab Hunter, Gwen Verdon, directed by George Abbott. We are half way thru this one. It is one of Steve's favorites, but I had not seen it before. All about baseball and selling your soul to the devil to win.

When we get to Kauai, we will watch "South Pacific", because it was filmed there. Another on our list, our old favorite "Rocky Horror Picture Show".

I have been bitching about turning 50 all week, to anyone who would listen, and now that the day has come, it doesn't feel so bad. We had a wonderful day.

Did a hike from Waimea back into a beautiful canyon. The hike was about 3 hours round trip and the weather was perfect - sunny and clear.

Got great takeout tacos from Tako Taco in Waimea and ate them on our porch.

Went for a lovely late afternoon swim.

Now we are heading off to dinner at Roy's - a nice restaurant, but not so nice that you have to dress up!!

Here is a photo from today.

My wonderful cat Butch is being put to sleep in Santa Fe at 2pm, an hour from now. We are still in England (in Devon this week). It all happened suddenly. He has not been well since we were away last September - lost some weight, then blood tests showed kidney problems. Over the winter, he stayed inside more than usual and was not as active.

But, last week, our cat sitter thought he was looking thiner and he was sleeping a lot, so she took him to the vet Friday. They did a blood test and saw some problems, so put him on antibiotics for the weekend and Kathi brought him in again this morning. They did an x-ray and saw tumors in his intestines. It is probably cancer. And he was bleeding internally and in pain and about to die, so they are putting him to sleep this afternoon. Kathi is going to be with him.

Steve and I are very upset and wish we were home to be there for this. We are lucky that our housesitter knows the cats so well and has been looking after them for years - so it feels like "family" will be with him.

Butch just turned 14 - and it is almost 14 years to the day when we got him as a kitten (6 weeks old). We still have his brother Spike - who is doing well.

Goodbye Butch.

Butch, August 2004

What a horrible day today with those morning attacks on London. All I could do was watch the news and read the message board. We dragged ourselves out of the house and drove up the Santa Fe mountain in the afternoon to have a picnic lunch and then hike the Borrego trail to Big Tesuque Creek. To remind ourselves of what is right with the world. It was a nice 3 mile hike through lovely woods with a good climb (and my lungs about to burst out of my body) and a river at the turn around point.

A perfect meadow just over the river.

Steve crossing the cool water on a hot July day in Santa Fe.

Almost two months to the day after Butch's death, his brother Spike (our one remaining cat) has gone missing. The last time we saw him was at midnight last Thursday. He went into bed ahead of us - we assumed he was outside - and it was such a nice surprise to go to bed and find him there already. We woke up in the morning and he was not there (this is usual in the summer) and we have not seen him since.

We have been to the Animal Shelter and filed a "lost cat" report. We have talked to the neighbors and walked the streets near us. We even climbed to the top of the hill, went through a wire and barbed wire fence to get to the top, but No Spike.

Have you seen this cat?

At the end of July, our remain cat Spike went missing. He was in bed with us one night, we all heard the coyotes up the hill, woke up and he was not here. We never saw him again. We talked to the neighbors, walked the streets and hills, put up flyers, went to the Animal Shelter and Animal Control twice a week for a month. Nothing.

I always thought Spike would go first and we would have Butch for more years. Instead Butch goes first, and Spike goes right after. Like an old married couple, Spike lost his edge after Butch died and the coyotes probably got him (after avoiding them for 14 years!). It seems just in a way considering how many animals he slaughtered in his time. But we really miss him.

Then our friend Nancy died suddenly. One day she was sitting on the terrace with us wondering where Spike could be (her theory - on the roof), a few days later she is in the hospital, a couple of days after that she died. She did not lead the healthiest life, but she was only 65 and it was a shock to all of us. A Mind's Eye in Italy.

If bad luck comes in threes, we thought we were done. But maybe the cats counted as one, not two.

Steve's computer hard disk crashed in the middle of a big work project. He ordered a new Dell, spent two days loading software, then it crashed. It took a week to get it fixed because Dell and New Mexico are not a good match. They use a repair guy based in Colorado, they ship parts to Farmington - and it takes 3 days to get a part ordered and the guy out here (he had to come twice).

I was working late one Friday night on Slow Travel, while eating popcorn, and I managed to delete the file that controls the site navigation. If you use FrontPage, as I do, this is HUGE. Slow Travel is a 2000+ page site (over 6000 pages if you count the database generated pages) and I use the FP navigation to control breadcrumbs and the navigation columns. I need to switch the site to DreamWeaver, because Chris who does all the database programming uses DW and we could coordinate our work better if we both used DW, and because FP screws up Moveable Type by putting its control files into the MT folders (and then I have to spend an hour removing them). But it is going to be a big project to switch to DW. I have been preparing for this for the last year and hope to do the switch this fall/winter.

Then I get the phone call I have been waiting for over the last several years. My mother was in the hospital. We were just leaving for Phoenix (for Steve's business) so we did that two day trip, then flew to Toronto for a few days. The trip went well, all things considering.

I posted this as a draft and then forgot about it. I am posting it now a couple of months later.

We have been without cats since Spike went missing at the end of July. Nearly five months. A friend called saying her mother was dying and her cat needed a home - did we want a cat? I hesitated, then told her we would take the cat for a month, so she would not have to deal with looking for a new home for the cat.

He arrived on Tuesday (December 20). He was exhausted from what he had been through (his owner had been ill for awhile) and slept nervously for one day, then soundly for the next day. Now he is settling in. He wants to go outside, but we won't let him for a week or two - in case he tries to find his way "home". I had to go out and buy all the necessary cat things, because I had given everything away after we realized Spike was not coming home (it was heartbreaking to see his things - and we were not going to get another cat).

It is wonderful having a cat in the house again!! The Slow Travel Community Bloggers have decided he looks like the Lion from the Wizard of Oz. Thread on Slow Travel Talk.

Buddy has been with us for four weeks and is starting to settle in. It turns out he is six years old. We took him to the vet to have him chipped (microchip in case he gets lost, or if we take him to England). We took him to a groomer who showed us how easy it is to brush him and remove any knots.

Buddy is not much of a lap cat, but we are working on this. Here he is on Steve's lap - but just for a few minutes.

Buddy started going outside about 10 days after we got him. He loves being outside, but is not a maniac about it like Spike was. He goes out in the morning, then maybe once more in the afternoon, then for an hour or so after it gets dark. He seems to be afraid of big birds (which is a good thing - they scoop up cats). It took him days before he would walk out into the big open part of the yard.

The benefit of him going outside other than it makes him happy and he gets good exercise? He doesn't use the litter box much!

He likes to be where we are and these past few weeks, that is usually our office. Here is his looking after the scanner.

And this is where the scanner is. On a shelf above my (totaly chaotic) desk!

This was his first time in the tree (or the first time we saw him)! Butch and Spike loved this old Apricot tree by our front door. It was so nice to see Buddy up there.

Steve Jones from the Slow Travel Message Board emailed me this weekend, after looking at the blog photos of our new cat Buddy, to tell me that he may be a Maine Coone Cat!! One of the traits of this breed is that they are a "companion cat" - they like to be with you, but are not really lap cats.

We did a bunch of Internet searching and got out our book on cat breeds and I think he is right. Buddy is either a Maine Coon Cat or at least part. This is a good healthy breed of cat, like the Tabby Cat.

Buddy sleeping on my desk beside my monitor, this morning. Now he is out in the yard somewhere. He has still not learned how to use the cat flap!

The three little pigs built their houses of straw, sticks and bricks. But what about dirt?

We live in the historic district in Santa Fe in an old adobe house. The outer walls are nearly two feet thick. One of the interior walls is too, because originally this was a very small house and the outer wall became an inner wall at some point. The house is still small (1400 square feet, but under 1200 if you don't include the walls) and is typical Santa Fe Pueblo Adobe with small windows, low ceiling, kiva fireplace, and vigas (logs) to make the ceiling.

The ceiling and the roof are our concern now. The ceiling from inside is logs across the whole room (in every room of the house), spaced about a foot apart with wood boards above running perpendicular to the vigas. Above that - 6 inches of dirt. On top of that - a tar and gravel roof.

vigas and boards above

Tomorrow the tar and gravel roof comes off, the dirt remains, solid insulation is put down and a new BRAI roof on top of that.

I have heard many horror stories of roofing these old adobe houses; they range from your house fills with dust to your house will be filled with dirt. Everyone expects the dirt to rain down from the ceiling (through the cracks in the boards above the vigas). I don't thinks so, but better safe than sorry, so we spent two days moving stuff out of the house; rolling up the carpets, removing whatever we could (it all went out to the garage).

our "zen" living room after the stuff was moved out

It has not snowed in Santa Fe since early December, but the weekend before the reroofing we got about five inches of snow. Today is Monday and there is still snow on the ground, but it is getting warmer and no more snow is predicted for this week.

I am always nervous when they open up these adobe walls because I keep thinking "my house is made of dirt - how is that possible?" (But I am a somewhat nervous person.) The house is built from adobe - dirt mixed with straw and water, formed into a block, left to dry in the sun. Our house was probably made from the dirt in our yard. In modern times there is a factory in Espanola that makes the adobe blocks and they are stabalized (i.e. don't melt if exposed to rain, like ours would). There is no framing to the house; the adobe walls are the supporting walls.

When the walls are built, vigas (logs) are placed across the walls to make the roof. Wood planks go on top of the vigas. 50 years ago, when our house was built (it may be older), dirt was then put on the planks. These days they put insulating foam on top of the planks and they build with just one row of adobe and then foam the outside for extra insulation. Our walls are double adobe with no insulation on the outside.

This morning the roofers arrived to "prep" the house. Three of them arrived with rolls of plastic and staple guns. Within two hours the house was covered in plastic. We were not absolutely ready, so we raced ahead of them to get the last things done. I think if we had dawdled, they would have covered us too and stapled us in place.

living room covered in plastic

Tomorrow the real fun begins. I don't think the dirt will rain down because Valerie's husband Bryan looked at our ceiling and told me the planks are tongue and groove - so there are not big cracks between the boards like in some houses. But we shall see. We had to move out of the house to a vacation rental apartment a few blocks away and Buddy (the cat) had to go to the kennel (he just spent a month there while we were in Hawaii, now a week later, he returns).

Slow Travel Headquarters - my desk in the smallest office in the world (Steve works there too)

One of the reasons we moved to Santa Fe was so we could live in this type of natural house. I love the adobe - the thick walls, the solidness of it, the natural materials. Every time we think of moving, I change my mind when we start looking at houses. I will have to get over this, because we are probably going to move. But at least I had these years in my dirt house.

Buddy is not happy with the plastic

Today there were at least ten guys on the roof removing old layers of roofing. Brian, who owns the roofing company, phoned me at 11 this morning asking me to come over because they had got down to the dirt. We drove over and climbed up on the roof.

1. The house looks really small when you are on the roof.

2. What views!!

tearing off the old roof

There were five old roofs (rooves?)! Brian thinks the original dirt roof was from the 1920s or earlier. On top of that was a layer of pitch (I don't know what that is, but I kept a piece), a layer of pumice, and then a few tar and gravel roofs. It seems like when it came time to re-roof that house, everyone just put a new roof on top of what was already there (the code has changed and you can not do this anymore).

They tore off about 5 inches of roofing today and got down to the dirt (the dirt stays).

the dirt roof - 80 - 100 years old

It was an amazing feeling standing up there and seeing the layers of history of the house. It made me fall in love with that house all over again. We bought it originally because it was adobe and small and historic and I realize now what a good choice we made.

We almost sold this house last September. I fell in love with a brand new adobe house that was a bit closer in to town and larger (2,000 square feet), but the builder had set the price very high - much higher than the neighborhood warrented (my real estate agent figured this out and then I did some research and he was right). We made a lower offer but it was turned down. I think I wanted to move to avoid things we had to do to our old house (get rid of mice - done - fix a stone wall on the front of the house - done - repair a leak in the garage - done - get a new roof - almost done).

Tomorrow the new roof goes on - on top of the dirt.

The weather has been fantastic here. We had a few cold and windy days (our horrible spring weather), then had 6 inches of snow on Sunday, then today the sun came out and it was in the 50s and beautiful.

view from roof looking at our garage, the neighborhood, the mountains and that Santa Fe sky

Steve's Tabby Software is in the Yahoo News - a press release from Pearson:

Pearson Centerpoint Now Features Scheduling Optimizer

This is the project that Steve was working on all last summer and fall!