Hi, Del!!! Happy birthday or something!!! You sound kind of depressed. The birthdays after forty can be difficult, I think, really bringing up mixed emotions. You are right that death sucks--it reminds me of the old comment about the pains of getting older--"Consider the alternative!" I hope you are not totally down with the flu. Did you do something really fun on your birthday? Did your wife bake you a wonderful cake?? And how old are you now, anyway?? Approaching total geezerhood?? (This can be determined by how long the hairs are protruding from your ears.) And from an evolutionary point of view, why do older people grow long hairs in their ears, anyway??
I have never said that old houses were always built better than new ones, although the huge tracks of ugly flat-tops with plaster-board walls that I remember from childhood, now aging rapidly and creating new slums, certainly weren't constructed very well. Obviously, with modern technology a careful, dedicated builder has the knowledge and tools to make vastly superior dwellings. I just like the old ones better, on a totally emotional level. I do remember reading an interesting article about how seventeenth century Irish cottages had simple but very sophisticated chimney design, to draw the smoke out. And ancient sun-worshippers' ruins like Stonehenge provide many good examples of how men understood precisely the movements of the planets and other advanced mathematical concepts, without very sophisticated tools.
I do think old Irish dwellings had really thick walls. Here is one as an example--be sure to click on the second view, the fireplace photo. This cottage is a little too basic for me, incidentally. That ugly grey thing protruding on the side is gross:
iavi.ie
Here is one with definite possibilities, because it seems to be original, and has really nice grounds surrounding it. That paved area in the front needs to be dug up and planted with a brilliantly colored, informal cottage garden, however:
iavi.ie
Well, it's not THAT nice, but it is so inexpensive I could buy it right now, and spend the rest my life pouring money into it and being really chilly all year round, not just in winter!!
In terms of windows, all of the nice Irish houses have double-glazed windows made with teak. My husband says teak is the very best wood for windows, because they will never wear out, although cedar is nice, also, but that aluminum is also very good. And I'm going, aluminum?? Gross!!! Aluminum is simply not pleasing to the eye, or romantic.
You were wrong about the Summer of Love festival, incidentally. It is tomorrow. Why on earth I assumed someone from the Gulf of Texas would have more of an idea on what was happening here than I do I have no clue--perhaps it is something leftover from my primitive brain, that men are always right, but in any event the organizer of the festival is such an old hippie that he was not organized enough to do it right, and the major acts dropped out. So it will just be a really moldy old show. Hey--that sounds like you!!!! Too bad you can't come. How fast do those motorized wheelchairs go now, anyway?? Maybe if you hurry . . . < : ) |
