Moving In Again

Welcome to June.  Everyone says it is going to be really hot this summer.  The forecasts say we'll reach 40 this summer.  40 C equals 104 F, so I hope they're wrong.  I don't know how they know, if this is some sort of computer modeling like the hurricane forecasts I'm used to, or maybe the antithesis of the wooly caterpillar.  All I can say is that the jackets and sweaters are stowed and the tee shirts and sandals are out.

I spent the weekend babysitting two guys who ripped up the parquet floor we had in two rooms and replaced it with tile.  The parquet was not put down good and kept coming up.  Over the past several months a big bubble would appear and I'd pull up two or three or four squares of hopelessly warped parquet and fill the resulting hole with a tile and newspaper and cover it with a carpet.  More bubbles were appearing and we'd run out of our appetite for throw rugs, so when the embassy renewed the lease they added that the floor had to be replaced.  They worked Friday and Saturday and left late Saturday night with the floor finished, new baseboards down, and the heavy furniture back in place.  I spend Sunday reconnecting computers and TVs and dusting furniture.  I tried to help some but they didn't want my assistance.  The thinset mortar they used came in bags of powder, and you added water and mixed it in a bucket with an electric drill with a mixer paddle on it.  The tile guy was pretty good, and it wasn't nearly as dusty an event as it could potentially have been, but it raised some dust nevertheless, all of which settled, of course, in the living room/kitchen.  By the time final cleanup came around there was a thin film of white dust on everything.  I was sweeping the floor, so imagine my shock when they told me to quit because I was making dust because the broom bristles were too coarse.  So I went back to drinking scotch and watching.  During the process of putting the furniture back in place, every time they'd lift something it would reveal the clean outline surrounded by a film of dust.  I couldn't resist pointing out to Samir that he must have used the wrong broom.  He doesn't always appreciate my refined sense of humor.  Anyway, Taylor and I went out to eat Sunday evening to celebrate having just moved in again.

Samir is an interesting fellow.  He lived in London ten or so years and did construction work, which is how he learned what he learned about the trade.  He built this house in a combined Albanian/English style, meaning that to look at it it is not a totally typical Albanian house for Tirana.  Houses here are built the way office buildings are in the U.S. -- a basement and/or foundation is poured, and then each floor is formed and poured to the desired number of floors.  Concrete pumper rental is a big business here.  After that the perimeter walls are made with orange tiles that look sort of like dwarf cinder blocks. Then they're stuccoed inside and out and painted.   All the features like stairs, balconies, roof overhangs, are all poured.  Samir put up some stud walls with sheetrock in this house, and has told me that the neighbors kept telling him it was no way to build a house, that it would fall down during the first earthquake.  I hope I'm not here during the structural testing an earthquake provides.