A new roof

Last summer's epic hailstorm injured Sophie the Honda and damaged the roof. My insurance company reminded me that I have a deadline by which to start repairs on the roof, so earlier this summer I got estimates.

My neighbor recommended a buddy of his who was not licensed but worked cheap. The guy gave me his estimate written in a barbed and illiterate hand on a piece of scribble paper: "Fix roof," with a total that would keep him in beer for months.

The neighbor's ex-wife recommended a guy who is indeed a licensed roofer and maintains office hours at the bar at the VFW.

A friend recommended the guy who fixed her roof. He showed up six hours later than his appointed time, got up on the roof and walked around for a minute in a vague, desultory, poetic manner, promised an estimate by the end of the week, and disappeared. That was mid May.

Finally, I called my neighbor, who is a licensed contractor, and said, "Stan, I need a roofer. I need a reliable roofer. Don't argue with me." So he gave me the name and number of the guy he uses.

Ian showed up at the appointed second, gave me a sample of the material he proposed to use, gave me a detailed description of the structure and a potential problems with Original Western Area roofs, gave me a list of references, drew a diagram of what he proposed to do, got up on the roof and measured and took a core sample (I have two roofs, one of which contains pumice, which absorbs water), and gave me an estimate a couple days later.

Today I came home for lunch to see workers swarming all over the yard and roof and the materials staged in the driveway. And now, after work, they have already removed part of the roof over the bedroom. It sounds as if they're coming right into the house because the sound carries so well down the chimney.

The odor of 20-year-old waterlogged pumice is very sour, like vomit.

Here is the roofing material staged on the lawn. You can see a corner of the roof in the upper right.

Springtime sights and smells

I've been walking to work several times a week, and every day there's something new to see. One of the first flowers of spring is the pasque flower. It was lining the bank above the sidewalk on Canyon Road. (I didn't take this image. I don't normally schlep a camera around. )

The pasque flowers have given way to the yellow peas blooming along the pathway through the woods that parallels Canyon Road. (I didn't take this one either.)

Michele and I saw some mule deer along the path one morning. They were browsing on the bushes in the woods. Here's one of their cousins we saw on the trail in Bandelier National Monument.

Today I was walking past the Bradbury Science Museum and saw that the Class of 2010 had probably struck. Someone had filled the fountain with detergent, and the whole block smelled springtime fresh.

Hailstorms and Hiroshima

Today a customer came into the store with a gift for us: a copy of a catalog of drawings and paintings made by survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima, Zuroku Genbaku No E: Hiroshima O Tsutaeru = A-Bomb Drawings by Survivors. We were certainly grateful for the book as a welcome addition to our atomic history section; it's beautifully done, with text in Japanese and English, and the images are sobering.

The woman, who said she had never been in the store or the Bradbury Science Museum, said that we need at least one book to present the other side of the story in the war with Japan. (If she had browsed only briefly, she would have learned that we do present "the other side," in addition to nonproliferation and peace studies. You can't have a bookstore owned by two left-leaning lesbians and not have representation from "the other side.")

As our conversation continued, it was obvious from the reek of cigarettes on the woman's breath and on her clothes from her raspy voice that she was a heavy smoker. She also had a dandy cough: "I'll tell you why ack-ack-awwrrrgggh! you had that ack-ack hailstorm! It's because of chemtrails. Ack-ack-ack-awwwwrrrggggg! Ack! They're poisoning our lungs with ack-ack-acka-acka-acka chemicals and messing with the environment. If you have chemtrails acka-acka-awwrrrrrgggg! you're going to have violent ack-ack-ack-ack hailstorms. Ack-ack-ack-awwrrrrrrrggggggh!"

My own chemtrails, however, are perfectly ack-ack-awwwrrrrrgggh! harmless.

A Rose by any other mane . . .

Oh, hai. I can haz closeup now, Mr. DeMille?

Today Rosie got a haircut and a bath. She has very cottony fur that mats quickly and solidly, so we get her clipped every few months. She is very pretty now.

"No, you smell. This has an odor."--Dad

Fragrances, scents, and odors are powerful memory triggers for me. Research has shown the link between odor and memory.

Robert Benchley wrote in "Saturday's Smells" (The Benchley Roundup) about his new pipe tobacco that "smells like Saturday, and frequently puts me in a chronic holiday mood." When I smell the scent of the Russian olive blossoms in the spring, for example, I'm transported back to grade school and anticipating the beginning of the Lassie League season. Pair the Russian olive blossoms with the scent of a leather softball glove and you really have something. I smell the odor of unwashed feet and am repelled, but when the same odor comes from a container of feta cheese, I anticipate a great meal of pizza with garlic, spinach, and feta. I used to enjoy the smell of woodsmoke a lot, but after the Cerro Grande Fire, not so much.

And, of course, we have the body odors of people. One of our staffers (no longer with us) at the store exuded a gamy air of oily flatulence that no Febreze could subdue; a colleague at Los Alamos National Laboratory smelled like six quarts of whole milk left on the porch in the summer sun for three weeks.

What odors, scents, fragrances, aromas, and smells bring back memories both good and bad for you?