Author: doug

Inspirational

I found myself staring at the chopsticks (which we never use) that come with sushi from Tienda Inglesa, wondering what this message in Japanese might say. Something inspirational like

?

Bon appétit? Buen provecho? Happy sushi?

So I did the obvious (which nobody could do a few years ago) and ask ChatGPT (GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer, but you knew that).

Me: What does this say in English?

ChatGPT: The Japanese characters in the image are written vertically and read as: おはし (ohashi). In English, this means: “Chopsticks.” Let me know if you’d like help with pronunciation or more context!

Uh, no. I’m good….

From days gone by

Looking towards what was an auto shop at the back of what was an Esso gas station, waiting my turn to get a trunk-full more of firewood because spring is not coming quickly enough, I had to admire the artistry of the wrought iron on the gate. No spikes threatening to lacerate anyone who tries to climb over. In fact, the spikes are curved like handles to aid in any attempt.

Another time….

Carpenters

In addition to leaf-cutter ants, the woods have carpenter ants. We’ve seen some in weakened trees, but I had never seen how much sawdust they produced. If ants are higher in the tree, sawdust will likely blow away before it reached the ground. So I found this pile impressive, and was reminded why I’m glad not to live in a wooden house.

So goes the sitzbad

Over ten years ago, we bought a chacra (mini-farm, 14 acres) with a crappy little house that we chose to fix up instead of bulldoze, the recommendation of some (all?) who saw it. I won’t go into it, but we had a reason.

Given the possibility of being creative, I had the idea to emulate the sitzbad my wife had years ago in her tiny apartment in Frankfurt, West Germany.

So I went wild, because hey, Martín can build it! And it ended up not being compact at all.

But pretty! At one end, a nook for a washing machine.

And don’t ask me what I was thinking when I framed this photo, but it’s the closest I have to an image of the finished project.

Which project was a stupid idea. No question about it. First of all, it would require a huge amount of hot water, and we never pursued the idea of installing a (large!) solar hot water heater. Plus, something that occurred to me only when I showed the house to a middle-aged couple: who, including little kids and older people, is going to be able to comfortably get in and out of the thing?

So an executive decision was made…

…and it didn’t take me long to realize that I was out of my league with a 1-kg sledge hammer and a chisel. I asked our contractor if he had a larger sledge hammer I could borrow, and he went one further and loaned me his small jack hammer. Which turned out to be exactly what I needed.

A few hours here, a few hours there, and three days later the job is done, leaving the question of whether we can match the floor tiles, of which we have six, or the wall tiles (none)…

…and of course, “done” is relative. The last two days’ rubble still needs to go away.

So what to do now (other than slather more horse liniment on my overworked shoulders, of course)?

Ants and acacia

Ants are, of course, amazing. What’s unusual about this trail is that we could actually find the end of it; usually the trails disappear in the undergrowth, often after a far greater distance than this.

Regardless, the question remains: why weren’t they harvesting the closer acacia bush?

Speaking of trees

This is not how you cut one down, regardless of whether you call it felling (eastern north North America) or falling (western north North America). In fact, I’m not even sure how they would accomplish this without a rope and a bit (or a lot) of luck. If you’ve ever used a chain saw, you’ve probably experienced the blade binding—not fun.

As a refresher, here’s how it’s done:

Out of curiosity, I spent one dog walk photographing stumps. I never realized how boring photographs of tress stumps are. So, you’re welcome. Anyway, it seems that perhaps as many as five percent of the trees cut were done by people who actually knew what they were doing.

(In my opinion.)