I took this picture earlier this week at about noon on a sunny 55 degree day. Weird, huh? A little blurry since I snapped it leaning out of my car window as I drove by. I drive by these orchards every day on my commute to work. For the past week or so the sprinkler system has been blasting away as I drive past in the dark at 6 in the morning, presumably running since the night before. I guess the idea is that on nights when the air temperature drops below freezing they spray the trees to protect them from the cold.

This probably seems a little backwards until you think about it a little more. Think about it…

Ok. Ice never drops below 32 degrees, so a little bud draped in a 32 degree shell is protected from the 20 degree air. Clever. I’ve also seen and heard these gigantic propellers whap, whap, whapping away all night. I’m assuming for the same general idea, though I haven’t quite figured that one out yet.

Kitchen tile is just about done. I laid tile for about five hours each day Monday and Tuesday last week after work, finishing everything except for the tile that required cutting. It probably shouldn’t have taken quite that long to lay 180 square feet of tile, but I was meticulous with my measurements and was working with a designed layout that didn’t give me much breathing room for misalignments. And it was my first time doing this. By myself.

Anyway, everything has come out looking great. Today I picked up a tile saw from Home Depot and sliced up about 30 tiles that needed to be shaped. There were a few trickier cuts, such as around the heat vents in the floor, but for the most part this was pretty straight forward. And kind of fun, like putting together a big puzzle. Only downside was repeatedly picking up shrapnel wounds from the ant-sized flecks of tile spinning off of the saw blade. You’d be surprised how much your hands bleed from this. I would’ve worn gloves, but I opted to use the saw without the tile guide and felt like I needed the extra dexterity that would’ve been lost by a layer of leather. My hands are pretty clean in the picture below because Nora just finished licking off the geyser that had been spraying from a knuckle on my left hand.

Tomorrow I’ll probably cement in the cut tile and then we’ll grout the joints a day or two later and that’ll be that. We bought some nice solid wood doors to replace the mirrored ones that I’ve loathed since the we moved in last may. That’ll most likely be the next mini project on the agenda.