I’ve been at The Mansion for six days now! Life almost feels normal, even though I’m a thousand miles from home and I still have three months of travel ahead of me. It is a bubble of routine in a bathtub of adventures.

     Since my days have become so normal, I won’t bore you with the details. I wake up, eat, and sleep in normal patterns now; I don’t have to drive in circles looking for a place to park at night. On days like this, where most things are routine, I will just pull out a couple details to share.

Work

     The slope is progressing wonderfully. Marie (Lou’s sister) came over and lent a hand today. Actually, she lent two hands, and they were both greatly appreciated. She used her two hands and a shovel to dig trenches in the slope at the spots we’d spent so long marking out last week. Lou and I came behind to level the dirt in the trenches and to start laying the steps.

Food

     Valli made Colorado Green Chili for lunch. I didn’t ask a whole lot of questions about it, I just know that it was a very good stew and that the dish gets its name from the Colorado Green Chillies used to make it.

     At dinner, I enjoyed my first calzone. We went to a restaurant called Old Chicago, which is a pizza place/brewery that reminds me of BJ’s Pizza back home. My delicious calzone had ham, sausage, and three types of cheeses inside the crispy folded crust. 

Home Video

     When we were working on the steps today, we had to split several stone blocks in half so that our stairs would fit into the spot we had for them. We used a chisel that seemed pretty normal to me, but Lou said that there was a story behind it.

     In the evening, he brought out an old home video that showed the story. When Lou was young, his family lived in Colorado Springs (not in The Mansion though). His dad, Lou Sr., decided that he wanted a basement in his house and that he wanted to construct it himself. So he set up a conveyor belt to carry dirt out to the yard and started digging. When the family finished clearing out the dirt, they started working on the walls. Lou Sr. still had a job during the day, and often went on business trips. That left his wife to keep working on the project in the “spare-time” she had while raising Lou and his siblings. That’s where the chisel comes into the story. After putting the children to bed, she went downstairs and chiseled away at the walls until Lou Sr. called home around 10 P.M. and made sure she stopped for the night.