It's a house, all right!

Hey, it's a real house, with real rooms, windows, doors, staircases--just like in the photos (only larger and three-dimensional). My first thought was, "This is going to be a fun project!"

We arrived last Saturday night--our buddy Chris drove us down Thursday evening from Eureka (actually sideways and down, 101 was blocked by the usual Confusion Hill landslide, so 299 to Redding and zip down I-5), had a great day mostly playing with Chris in Oakland on Friday, and he got us to Oakland airport bright and early Saturday morning. (OAK is SO much calmer, happier than SFO, smaller airport, less flights, less stress.) To Dallas, four hour wait, and on to BJX = Guanajuato airport = Leon airport, take your pick. Where Julio met us with the Casa de Constancia limo.

OK, it's actually an old VW beetle. We stayed at Julio and Lupita's guest house earlier this year, OK room with an amazing view over the city (the photo of us to the right of this entry was taken on our balcony), and just the friendliest staff of two, we get to use the kitchen, perfect spot to base ourselves for this trip.

And more or less per plan, we rendezvoused with David, "our" architect (true, he works for others, but he's been SUCH a pal that we think of him as exclusively our personal architect) and Rosa (the house owner) and Francisco and Sebastian (her brother and 6-year old son).

And I got to see the place. Three hours later (most of which time L and I were alone in the house), we were exhausted with discussing, planning, talking about---

* removing the roof from one bedroom
* creating a second bathroom and kitchen on the upper floor
* building a studio on the roof
* making window openings larger
* converting the downstairs 'sala' into a beautiful guest suite
* adding a second stairway to the roof

---and much more. Now we're relaxing in the best way we know how--wireless internet. Coffee. She with her laptop, me with mine. And all's well with the world.