Saturday! All of us prepared to go to the site early in the morning. As we started off in the trucks and the van, however, we noticed hordes of cars and trucks and people gathering in the parking lot of the nearby Twin Rocks Cafe. Today was Bluff's annual Headstart Parade! We love supporting community events, so all of us decided to treat ourselves to the parade and the local yard sale. We found some pretty amazing treasures at the yard sale, including the rare book gems, "How to Be Suddenly Slim", "Wit and Witticism, the Third Time Around", and others. Wow. When the parade started, we cheered on the floats and tractors and motorcycles and kids, all dressed in their parade finery. In return for our exuberant cheers, the kids in the parade showered us with candies of all sorts. We left the parade, our pockets full of sugary parade plunder.
The work day was filled with many odd jobs. Kaitlin, Monica, and Camille spent hours gathering beautiful river rocks for the trombe wall. (For those of you who don't know what a trombe wall is, stay tuned for more pictures of the trombe wall's progress during the blog. Courtesy of Wikipedia, "A Trombe wall is a sun-facing wall built from material that can act as a thermal mass (such as stone, concrete, adobe, or water tanks), combined with an air space, insulated glazing and vents to form a large solar thermal collector.") C.B., Hunter, Eric, and Monica all helped install the most amazing fire pit (which we initiated tonight with a bonfire and S'mores!). Ryan, Lindsay, and Matt continued assembling the actual wall, and all of us made some important decisions about the interior finishes of the home.
Parade fun!
Eric gets very excited for parades and can't keep from dancing during them.
Hunter carefully carves the high dive.
Kudos to C.B., Hunter, Eric, and Monica for hauling this beast of a fire pit into place behind the Benally house. Despite bending some rebar and pipes in the process, their herculean efforts paid off in producing the most stunning addition to our awesome home.
Jailbirds.
The interior of the meth lab.
The space in between the trombe wall and the exterior wall.
Jimmy, Ryan's dad, takes a breather. He's been such a great help the past couple of days, especially with his tools and talents! Thanks Jimmy!
River rock.
Trombe wall team. Everyone who visits the house asks us if we're building a prison with our wire mesh trombe wall. Hey, that's not a bad idea . . .
Our first visit to the site at night! Yeah, electric lights!
The first fire in our fire pit!
S'more-fest.
Dinner blog: Lindsay and Eric prepared a most delicious Asian dish of egg noodles, snow peas, and sirloin steak strips, all tossed in a black bean and green curry sauce. For dessert, we each opened a fortune cookie and read our fortunes around the table. Great stuff! It definitely beat out Atsushi's snack of the afternoon: raw ants. He was curious about an ant crawling around the site and informed us that many people in Africa eat ants. He inquired if this ant was good to eat, and when Hunter said it was, Atsushi ate it! The crunch of ant on tooth loudly horrified all beholders of this spontaneous act. Upon digesting the insect, we asked Atsushi what it tasted like. His response: "Tastes . . . like sand."