A few weeks ago I said that we'd had the first snow of the year.... Well I guess that was technically true, but yesterday morning was MUCH cooler!

This pic was taken around 8 AM.

Twenty minutes later the sky cleared, and six hours later the snow had all melted; you couldn't even tell it had happened!

Work on the house continues apace. We're trying to get the space enclosed before the winter really sets in. That way we'll be able to do interior work, like framing, plumbing, and electric inside a warm space even when it's skin-cracking cold outside. This pic from inside the house shows the hybrid construction.



Christina the Superstar wielding her NailGun!! Having a roof feels like a big deal. It sure beats not having one.



Christina had the excellent idea of cutting the parapet profile into a modified gear pattern. Not an easy job, but pretty damn cool.



At 6:45 AM this morning, there was an awful ruckus under the bed. That usually means that one of the cats has brought in a half-dead mouse, but this was much more violent. Turns out that one of the cats managed to bring in an extremely alive rabbit! He was surprisingly easy to catch, and he was in good shape. I took him far from the cabin and let him go, and he ran like hell right back across the front of the cabin! I guess rabbits aren't know for their intellects....

Two more pictures, taken just this morning, of the house! Christina and I have done most of the framing of the front of the house by ourselves in the last week or so.Starting yesterday we've gotten some help from a very talented builder here in Taos, John Hunt. The wall initially was tending to bend inwards toward the interior of the house, so I parked the Scout outside and used a ratchet strap to pull the wall back to true! The large openings in the wall will ALL be windows! We'll have to come up with some kind of innovative privacy solution.



A few days ago we finally moved out of the dome over at Christina's shop. We lived there for months before our little Kaczynski shack was finished. Also, Christina had all her personal domestic stuff stored there since she sold her house over a year ago. We got it all into one truckload on Geronimo. It was a bit of a milestone in our long journey to really living on our own land!



I'm now working three days a week at a leather store called Letherwerks right in the heart of Taos. (The fellow I work with is named Kristian and moved here from LA a few years ago!) I'm actually having a blast learning how to make custom leather stuff in the old-fashioned way. Among the things I've made is this pair of "Banana Holsters" for a theater production. (You may have to click on the picture to really see the holsters!) This play will happen in the fall, and I'll be doing more stuff for it later, including some robotic modifications to an electric wheelchair, so stay tuned for more info on that.

And obviously, stay tuned for more progress on our house!

Oh, and I got a loan for my shop!!! Yay!!!

November 2nd of this year (and every year!) was Day of the Dead! This is the day specified in Mexican culture when the living honor and celebrate the dead. For several years now Taos has been the site of a Day of the Dead parade, originated and still organized by Christina and a few others. Christina, on stilts and in Victorian-era dead-person's garb, and me, in my newly completed steel and leather skull mask, accompanied a full marching band and 60 or 70 other celebrants and marched through the tiny town of Taos to celebrate our fallen fellows.


The container, which will be our winter kitchen and protected storage, now has a window and a door. Even though the kitchen will be protected from the elements, it's still damn cold in there.


It's amazing how fast stuff gets built when you actually have a paid crew working for you. The quonset is now fully erected, and the end-walls are mostly framed. Within a day or two, the crew will be gone, and the rest of the exterior wall framing and roofing responsibilities will fall on Christina and me. It will be fun, but probably a little slow.