Dec 7th - Fishbowls and Fire

Greenbay has nearly completed the framing on the third floor and has also reorganized the lumber out back as well as the garage.

I spend a portion of the day preparing the water filter for installation and also hooking up the main shut off valve in the crawlspace. Pat has loaned me his torch and I do what little soldering I need to do to prepare the valve. I am a bit discouraged to find that there is some water in the pipe and while not much, it has the temporary valve we used to test the system last summer, frozen solid. I am hoping that the pipe isn't frozen below the surface of the gravel in the crawl space and I won't know until we actually turn the water on. I've also installed the shower valve in the 2nd floor bath and managed to install 4 recessed lights on the 2nd floor.

I have been helping Hagen place the glass blocks I cleaned earlier this morning. They look great but tonight before I leave, I find some of the mortar has dropped down in behind the glass blocks and so tomorrow we will have to remove a couple of stones and somehow vacuum the excess mortar out of the cavity. Hagen has also cut a couple of stones that Pat brought by and he's cut them in 11" squares. I have drilled a center hole in each stone with a masonry bit and
these stones will sit above the glass blocks and the mantle. Hagen will be close to wrapping up the stone work tomorrow.

So why is this post called Fishbowls and Fire...Mike Hagen's wife called today to tell Mike she smelled smoke in the house....ready for this. In a south window, there is a kid's fish bowl sitting on a table with some newspapers on the table. The sun hits the fish bowl just right and the convex shaped fish bowl appears to have become a magnifying glass and the sun pin points on the newspaper and the smoke appears on the newspaper. Luckily Mary was there and smelled the smoke. Mike said she kept the newspaper with the black burned hole in it... Only in Rico. Mike wonders what the insurance company would have said if he had told them the fish bowl burned his house down...