Back Home Again - Bumfuzzle

Just like that, England was over. It was a great birthday trip that brought 80 year-old Grammy to tears of joy multiple times, which is really what this trip was all about. It was a great experience for all of us, but the best part was seeing Grammy get to fulfill a lifelong dream. England might seem like a quick and easy place to visit for us, but getting there had eluded her for so long that she had pretty much written it off as something that would never happen for her. We were all happy to be a part of it with her.

While Ali and the kids flew back to Mexico, I detoured with Grammy to Portland. Bridget was very happy to see her. I spent a couple quick days getting her situated back home again, and then continued on home myself.

I’d been home about twelve hours when it was determined it was time to move a couch. Again. As a reminder, our stairway is not big enough to move furniture up and down through, so everything goes up and down with ropes and muscle.

One of our third floor balconies. You’ll notice the rebar sticking out on top, in case you want to tack on a fourth floor. This has become bird balcony, where Ali puts out seed every day. We get all kinds of birds, and they keep the dog busy when they venture down to the courtyard to eat the seeds they accidentally dropped. She’s only caught one, which we managed to save, but that doesn’t keep her from trying.

Lowe’s laptop finally got fried. It lived a good long life. Longer than I’d have ever expected, especially after years on a boat. We’d long talked about what kind of computer he could have if we were land-bound, and he seized on this opportunity. Since I was in the States with 24 hours before my flight home we rushed to get everything we’d need to build one from scratch. Somehow I managed to both source all the parts, and slip through customs without being waved aside on my return home.

We ordered a case when I got home, and then got to work. Thanks to AI it was surprisingly easy to put together. We gave Gemini a list of parts we had and asked it to walk us through the steps of putting it all together. A few hours of work and we’d done it. We plugged it in, fired it up, and nothing happened. Some quick troubleshooting and we realized the mistake, changed a cord out, and tried again. Success.

The result? A crazy powerful computer, that runs silently (the laptop always sounded like an F-15 about to take off), and lights up his room at night like a fully-customizable disco. That was really a fun project. Next time I need a new computer I’ll be building my own, too.

Bridge collapse. Life just got harder for the two homes located on that side of the creek.

The pepper plant our neighbor gave us awhile back is producing more than we could ever need. These are piquín chiles and this is as big as they get. And they are absolutely smoking hot. Scoville scale puts them at about 10x hotter than a jalapeno. We like our spice, but with these I can’t muster more than a few tiny nibbles off of one of these with my dinner.

I love it when Ali takes pictures of me because she is fairly sure it will be the last one ever taken. All right, this one isn’t that dangerous, it was just that the dang fountain was in the way and I had to have the ladder virtually straight up and down while punching rivets over my head. I was just replacing a screen.

That’s gonna leave a mark. The result of a sudden slip on the climbing wall at the gym. At least it was on a tough route, and I wasn’t just a total goon. It was also nice that I was the only one there at the time, so nobody else got to witness my face rattling off a boulder.

Sleeping.

On her never-ending hunt for flies.

Any time something is being moved, she just has to climb on it. Not sure what’s going through her head.

The little town of Atotonilco is just a twenty minute drive away and every now and then we get the bug on a Sunday morning for gorditas from the Sunday market. This week a big gang of bikers had taken over the plaza in front of the church. I spotted this guy tucking a giant can of Victoria into his spider web platform for the drive and asked if I could grab a picture. He happily obliged and even offered to hop off and let me sit on it. I declined, but thanked him for the offer.