Best Curtis photo ever?

It's been a peaceful few days here, aside from Celina trying to climb the Christmas tree when we aren't looking. So far she has got half way up. The ornaments can't break, and we don't think the tree will go over. The concern is she will drag off some of the cloth ornaments and carry out acts of disgusting cat perversion that will taint our souls just from being nearby. The plan is to take the tree down tonight.

That is, as soon as I finish my post meal wine (and hit the publish button). My buddy Janet and her husband Ron gifted us with this coffee port, and tonight is the last of it. We've been sipping over the vacation. Lovely!

The last little while has been a voyage of discovery in several ways. For instance. This is the first time since I built the flower boxes out front many years ago that I could take a picture of all three tape measures at once. Usually I was happy to find any one of them when I needed one, and two was a bonus. Usually then I didn't know where the third was. I even found a fourth one I had forgotten I had.

When we did the renos I insisted on getting a big stainless steel sink.  I was tired of washing carboys and wine stuff in a bathtub. Did you know if a carboy slips out of your hands into a bathtub, it's the bathtub that breaks, not the carboy? It's handy for other things too. Like scrubbing my interlocking mats. They were filthy. I've scrubbed all kinds of things down there, including me after various adventures. Then a good scrub with comet and it's ready for wine stuff again.

I'd put them in the sink to drip off most of the water, but then I took the heat gun to them to dry off. They are much, much cleaner now. Many dust bunnies died in the process of this cleaning.

This is part of the library. It's been a bit of a dumping ground for a while.

At least you can see part of the floor now and one of the couches, but the recycle bin is full so we had to stop. More next week. I need to work on another section of the basement first to clean up a bit, to make the room for some of whats in the library. Some days this sort of stuff is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. And no, I still haven't found the cowboy boots.

Working on the library was after a long swim with Michelle this morning. Long in the sense of being in the pool a long time. Lots of drill. It's doing me a ton of good to have to think about what I'm seeing, understanding what drill would help fix that, and then explaining and demoing the drill. I had some trepidation about showing her fist, since I remember thrashing and flailing down the pool the first time I tried it. But she took to it like a natural! She has made so much improvement.

I finished up several books, nothing really worth talking about, though I excavated The Organized Mind from the pile. That's next to finish. Then a Robert J Sawyer science fiction binge, I think.

Best photo ever of Curtis! Completely unretouched.