As usual, a lot has happened since last post.

It's been a tiring week, and today was a particularly dense day. Today, with a lot of help from friends, we poured the concrete foundation of the house!

The first pic shows the pre-slab plumbing, which got the thumbs-up from the inspector. Hey, does that mean I'm a plumber now?

The second pic is, I think, one of the nicer stitched panoramas I've put on here. These pics were taken from the top of the forklift, about 30 feet up. This shows the spread of the land and the foundation about two days before the concrete pour. The orange tubing in the foundation is radiant-floor heating (hot water goes through these tubes buried in the concrete and heats the house). I think this pic is worth clicking on for a better view.

In the third pic, Christina shows off her trowel!

And lastly, Christ and Christ posing happily in front of the new slab. That was snapped only hours ago.

Tomorrow, off to Burning Man!

Oh yeah, who said blog entries have to be frequent? I never read that anywhere! (But then I've never read anything about blog theory and practice, or whatever....)

So as usual, a lot has happened since the last entry. First, we went to Seattle to take part in the "Funeral" for the Infernal Noise Brigade, a politically motivated marching band that Christina was a part of when she lived in Seattle and which decided to call it quits by throwing itself a weekend-long party. The night we arrived Christina and I got into a canoe with her best friend Becky Quick and INB founder Gray (AKA Filastine) and rowed down the Duwamish river. This river is where all the industrial container loading happens, and in addition to narrowly evading the Coast Guard, we also rowed under the beautiful cranes in the first pic. The rest of the weekend was one march and party after another, for which Christina and I got suitably attired (second pic).

While in Seattle I got the cell-phone call which sealed the deal on a long-simmering proposal to do a robot performance in Zagreb, Croatia in late September. This will be part of an art and technology festival called Device Art which is organized by the group Kontejner (after navigating to their home page you can find the Device Art link near the bottom). So, after returning from Seattle I spent four days fixing robots before overloading yet another Penske truck and driving it up to San Francisco so that the robots could be transferred into a shipping container bound for Croatia. In the third picture I am maneuvering the Subjugator across the loading dock between the Penske and the container truck.

While in SF I was lucky enough to catch an SRL show. Click the link for their home page and lots of pix of the show.

After a sort of hellish, hung-over day of air-travel to get back to Taos (with no liquids, mind you!) it was time to get to the plumbing of the house!

Drain lines for houses on slab foundations have to go into ditches, and ditches have to be dug, one way or another. Don't let anyone ever try to convince you that digging ditches by hand in areas overrun by subterranean lava flows is easy, cuz it ain't!!! I came across this fucker of a rock, and it took me an hour just to figure out how big it was. I finally was able to dig a tunnel underneath it and pull it out with the forklift. So much for the four-inch-wide ditch! Stay tuned for more pictures of the plumbing coming very soon! (I know you can't wait!)

And finally, on a sad note, my cat Cuca disappeared about four days ago. That pic above is the last one taken of her. Unfortunately, it seems she probably didn't come to understand the dangers of coyotes soon enough. Well, she led a happy life.... wish her well on her journey to kitty heaven.