Greg In The Desert

My indoor cat Saturn has apparently made friends with a outdoor cat. On more than one occasion I have walked up to the back door to find my cat staring at the back door while a black cat is walking off. It usually spots me before I spot it and starts walking away.

I never hear my cat making any indication that she dislikes the black cat and as far as I can tell, they just sit there staring at each other through the glass. Mostly I only notice the quiet since Saturn has stopped running around and spazing out.

Last week I drove up into the driveway and saw the black cat sitting on the front porch, with my cat watching out the front window. The black cat wouldn’t allow me to approach it and ran off. Where the black cat was setting was a large dead rat, with it’s guts pulled out.

I’ve read that a cat will leave a dead animal for its owner as a sign that the owner doesn’t know how to hunt, the cat is trying to show them how it’s done. In this case, Perhaps the black cat was trying to show Saturn how to hunt since she cannot go outside. Or the black cat is trying to impress Saturn with it’s hunting skills.

I have no problem with Saturn learning to become a better hunter through this method. Especially if it reduces the rat population in the neighborhood. Saturn has done a great job at eliminating the crickets, scorpions and other bugs from the house. However unless I get any varmints in the house, Saturn will have to be happy with hunting twist ties and pieces of plastic from the trash.

My house was built in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s. I don’t know because it was a foreclosure and the bank didn’t really give a shit, they just wanted to sell it. It is easy to tell the era due to the rest of the houses in the neighborhood and the style of the house.

The fireplace is one of those dated artifacts that is not to my liking. It consists of a false brick veneer with a brick hearth that sticks out from the wall about a foot.

If the original designer of the house had put in some storage under the hearth or made it somewhat more useful, it might have been worth keeping. Otherwise the hearth just takes up too much space and I wanted to take it out before I re-did the floors in the living room.

I surrounded the area around the fireplace with sheet plastic that I attached to the ceiling with tape and push pins. I smashed the hearth brickwork with a sledge hammer and a pry bar. Under the brick veneer I found dirt and brick fill, no hidden treasure of gold and rubies.

There is still a layer of brick attached to the block fireplace that I was not able to remove. Like many of the projects at my house this is a mult-stage project. When I get ready to hire someone to do the drywall throughout the house, I will remove the remainder of the bricks and have drywall installed where the brick is now.

I was somewhat worried about completing this project as it was not undoable, but I am happy with the extra space I have in the living room and the fireplace is still functional.

Also see the Toolmonger post.

There was a 200lbs bear in Rio Rancho this morning. The bear was initially spotted right near my house then was chased into a tree a few blocks from my house. There was quite the circus around the neighborhood with all the police, fire and ever single news van in the state.

KRQE has a report and video from this morning. I don’t know what happened to the bear but I’m sure Game and Fish knocked it out and took it away.

Update: The link to KRQE seems to be doing something weird. You can watch the original breaking news on YouTube. KRQE has a follow-up about the incident with a video on YouTube. They don’t know where the bear came from but it will be going to the Zuni mountains.

Some people in a Rio Rancho neighborhood hit by a water main break on Sunday are saying that the city isn’t doing its part to assure that they have clean, drinkable water. “It’s just getting really old,” said Renee Popovich, a homeowner near Rockaway and Pyrite in northeast Rio Rancho. “We’re not getting any support from the city to provide at least drinking water for the residents.” Popovich said that her children had to spend the night with friends so they had water to get ready for school on Monday morning. The break carved out a mini arroyo in front of several homes leaving people unable to back their cars out of their driveways. Rio Rancho officials say that they are aware of the problem and have recently removed asphalt over the water main in preparation for repairing the faulty pipes, which have failed several times in recent months.

The city came and fixed the water main break in front of my house pretty quickly. This break seems much worse than mine which might be part of the problem. Perhaps the city should do a better job of communicating to the residents the problems in fixing this and how long it’s going to take so it doesn’t end up on the news. Just sayin’.

Here’s a follow up to the dog attack that happened near my house and showed up on national TV.

A police report concerning the dog that apparently bit off a man’s genitals says that the man may have been using force against the animal. Rudolfo Ramirez, 25, might have been trying to forcibly open the pit bull’s mouth. The report also said Ramirez was wandering the neighborhood in only in boxer shorts. … “As soon as he hit the dog, the dog yelped and the guy got up,” Chacon remembers. “He was still alive but his inner thighs, genitalia, and lower stomach was all ripped away.” … The dog at the focus of the story remains at an animal shelter, as the search for its owner continues.

There was a point in which we thought the guy was sexually assaulting the dog.

The 4th of July was pretty uneventful for me. This year I sat on my roof and watched whatever fireworks were going off. The best display was at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta grounds, which I got on video.

Because of the recent fires in the Bosqe, there has been a big crack down on illegal fireworks. Didn’t stop people in my neighborhood though as I saw several fireworks going off that exceeded the requirements. They were fun to watch, I was just worried that someone was going to catch something on fire. Luckily there were no fires around my house.

What does Bosque mean, I found the following:

Early Spanish explorers bestowed the name Bosque (pronounced boss-kee) meaning “wooded.”

So there you have it, it means a woods.