Diario de Tepintzin

This is our new kitchen. It was a horrible mass-built thing with the cabinets from an RV. Steve and I love to cook, and since we live in the back of beyond we wanted a kitchen where we could make restaurant-quality meals.

The kitchen as it was:



And as it is now:




I found a copy of "The Joy of Cooking" on clearance at Sprouts for $7.95, and that's been a serendipitous combination.

I've had a whole week to start adjusting to Arizona. I was called on Tuesday to tell me I was needed at administrative separation boards starting Thursday, which meant 3 days back at Los Alamitos. Great...they went okay, but I was still pretty resentful. I stayed at the billeting, which was very quiet and comfortable and the boards went easily enough.

From there I drove home to help Steve pack up the truck and trailer and drive out to Arizona. This trip went far less painfully than we feared. Even at a sedate pace we made it to the hacienda by 2300, getting to bed at a decent hour.

I leave on Sunday morning. So far this trip:

I painted my study dark green. Steve had done two and a half walls before the paint sprayer gave up the ghost, and said it was up to me to finish. So I have. I need to touch up the white paint now and get a pseudo Persian rug. I have film to put over the windows which will make them looked like a stained glass window of flowers. With my dark brown bookshelves and rolltop desk, it should make a good Victorian adventurer's den.

Steve had a job interview, and is going to a second interview. While we were downtown, we drove to Davis-Montham Air Force Base to check out the BX. We didn't get to the commissary. In the lobby of the BX was a woman selling Celtic-themed tiles of various sizes, and it many of them were pagan. I got two tiles for us; one with a mjollnir and one with the golden boar Gullinbursti on it. I got a third with a Bridget's cross on it for our kittysitter, Dreya.

We had a wonderful July 4th with the neighbours. Bob and Julie provided the tri-tip, Jake and Sarah brought beer, Marilyn brought a German potato salad. Steve and I had corn and fireworks. We cooked up a great feast, after which Dawn made ice cream using a non-dairy creamer in the flavour "Sweet Cream". The ice cream worked out marvellously. She made it in chocolate and strawberry, with the strawberry coming out almost more like a sherbet.

I've given the saloon a good cleaning and need to get acrylic paints to touch up the Arizona flag painted on the front of the bar. We had to retire the flags flying over the saloon; they were in horrible shape. Replacements have been ordered.

Tomorrow Steve suggested us going to a pistol match, so I'm going to ask him if we can have breakfast out beforehand. There are a lot of good restaurants in the Tucson area; we won't lack for those!

It's monsoon season, which means it's only in the 80s right now, and feels cool after 113 degrees.

We went up to Lake Elsinore to meet Kathi, Little Kitty's foster mom. She's a vegan who takes in critters with her mom. Her mom, in fact, has a tortoise rescue. We have the same philosophy on cat care (raw meat, no grain, very fussy about the kibble) and she was sad to see LK go, but glad that she was going to a good home.

LK played with us, let us pet her and was very, very good in the car. We ensconced her in the back room with her little blanket in a plastic bin, some food and water and all her toys. She ate right away and put away a whole Fancy Feast appetizer.

But poor Ivan! He came in to say hello and was polite, not at all defensive. LK flattened herself on the floor, put her ears back and snarled. Ivan kept his cool and growled a little bit, but not much. Now he's outside the door of the back room and he wants to play with her SO badly. He's such a sweetheart. I'm leaving her alone for now so she can process things in her little mind and we'll try introducing him again later.

On Saturday, Jaime and Rebecca came over to help us move boxes and the smaller furniture. This put us long ahead of schedule and I had to call seki_raku for emergency cat-sitting. Ivan was not happy about this at all, and did plenty of outraged howling. Seki got some good photos of him pouting.

We decided to sleep at the condo, bed or no bed. By late night, Ivan had a new game: slap the hard plastic ball around in its round track, then run madly around the condo, coming back to slap the ball again and repeat. He's also puzzling out the mystery of the kitty in the mirrored doors of the closet.

Today the movers came for the furniture, so now the cottage only contains our bikes, cleaning supplies and a couple last boxes. electorprince and I need to clean it out later this week. This weekend I have drill, including a PT test. Blecch. E-Prince said that whenever he gets too nostalgic for the Army he thinks about PT tests and that cures him real quick.

I met with our window covering lady. Seki helped me pick out the colour for the shutters we're installing, which is Swiss White. In the bedroom we're getting horizontal blinds in a medium brown wood whose name I can't remember.

Tomorrow, I have a harp lesson for which I am sadly underprepared, and procuring groceries to fill our fine new stainless-steel fridge.

Steve and I went into the office. Such is the life of a solo practitioner. Oddly, Chase Bank was open when I went to do the office deposits.

After work, we stopped at Wal-Mart. When we moved in the bathroom had a sort of off-white fabric shower curtain already there. We put on a fresh liner and kept changing the liner annually.

Well, I finally decided I was sick of that curtain, so now we have a new curtain in sort of a beige/brown/dark blue tartan. The walls are kind of a butter colour and our bath mats are blue so it was an attempt at coordination. I think it might make the bathroom appear a little smaller, but it's a step up from the shabby old one. I also bought a couple more hand towels because we're down to one and it looks awful. They're blue, to continue the theme.

Now I'm looking for a batik-type wall hanging to put over the living room windows. I hate the vertical blinds.

The plan right now is to have a house built rather than buying one. That way we can have solar panels in place from the start, WiFi built into the walls, and everything set up as we like.

So far these are the thoughts I have about how to have it look inside.

Mediterranean colours throughout; sky blue, terra cotta, brick, with talavera in the kitchen.

Laminate in the kitchen. I thought about textured tile, but too hard to keep clean. White, yellow and blue in there; I'm inspired by Frida Kahlo's kitchen where despite their marriage troubles, the names "Frida" and "Diego" are inscribed above the stove.

We bought a new toaster oven today. It's got a much smaller profile than the old one and I'm thrilled about it.

I also bought a new flexible slotted spatula, since I'm going to try cooking whole fish filets in a wok and need such an item for lifting them, plus a silicon 8x8 square pan since my old one had Teflon flaking onto whatever I baked. No bueno.

Tonight's dinner is going to be aforementioned fish served with pasta and a light cream sauce. I'm not a huge fan of cream sauces (neither is my stomach) but I have pills for that and Steve loves them. I think it'll turn out well.

Next purchase is going to be a set of tall open-backed shelving for the kitchen, to maximize storage space while still keeping the microwave and coffee maker where they are. We want to dig ourselves in more with the cottage. Less expensive places are starting to open up around us, but A. we don't have the money to move, B. I might be called up any day now and this place is a perfect size for one person and C. our landlord seems very, very disinclined to raise rent, knock wood. We've been paying the same amount since November of 2006. This is probably because we've never been late on a single rent payment and if rents are falling around us and we don't want to move, he is in a good position.

Time to take care of my rose bushes.

We've already found a place. Pending approval of our applications, about which we don't have any worries, it should be ours. I'll put up the full address when it's official, but it's at 33rd and Orange Avenue, RIGHT at the 805. Since in three weeks my company moves to the 805 and Governor, that's mighty handy. AND it's only six blocks from Lestat's.

It's a one-bedroom cottage surrounded by banana and coconut (!) trees in a locked complex. It's $925/mo as opposed to the $1250 we've been paying and the $1325 the landlady wants to raise it to.

Downside: It's small, though bigger than that micro-apartment we saw in Clairemont Mesa.

Upside: It has its own storage unit in back where my books will be residing for the most part. The satellite dish is OK. And there's a YARD. Out the back is a large wooden deck with a yard that wraps around the house. Steve plans on putting the yard under production and I'll have a kitchen garden because a door from the kitchen leads into a small greenspace too.

It'll be a bit of a tight fit, but there's enough connection to both nature and our friends who will be only a few blocks away that I think it'll end up being "cozy" rather than "claustrophobic".