Such lovely friends

Well it got to late on Wednesday before I remembered I had to do this update so I'm going to type as fast as I can so it doesn't completely dominate the evening. It has been a brilliant first half of the week though so there's a bit to tell you about.

Friends, and what lovely ones

So the main title of this update was an obvious one based on what has happened so far this week. I'll get right down to it.

The queue in KAT for registering vehicles

On Monday I received the phone call from KAT to say "when you are ready, come down to do your trailer" and so on Tuesday I went, slightly nervous at going on my own, to attempt to complete this process. I had a bit of a nightmare when I first got to the carpark as there was no space at all and I even almost got stuck because of an idiotically parked (UK number plated) car and so I drove off to try and insure Julian. That also didn't work as I was informed he was already insured. I almost went home in a huff but decided to give parking on the street near KAT a try and so I headed back over there. I parked fine and walked in to the main inspection area to try and find Ivan, the big boss who had rung me back. As I made my way towards the office I noticed, standing talking to a crowd of people, our friend Venko the musical policeman. He greeted me as I approached and, to cut a long story slightly shorter, ended up helping me from that point until I drove off with the new number plate on the trailer. This should have been a slightly shorter process than it ended up being but we missed the boss going on his lunch and so had to wait for him to come back. Venko, undeterred, took me home to his house where his wife cooked us lunch and he showed me his guitars and other things. It was a lovely thing and so welcome, considering how nervous I was, and also reinforced the friendship which is so important to us here. Now I hope to see him again soon and have made sure he knows we'll be inviting him over for dinner when he is free next.

The Little Lady about to roll out super thin pastry

Eating the end result, and they were marvelous

The second part of this is about our lovely neighbours. When I got back from KAT yesterday I went out to take the daily photograph (I've still not missed a day, though I've got close a couple of times, including today) and was greeted by the Little Lady with some post for me. She also talked about coffee so, after A finished her file that she was on with, we went over. It slowly dawned on us that I had misunderstood her and she hadn't been inviting us for coffee at all, as they were having their rest period. No matter, they served us a cup each and we had a nice sit there. I asked what she had meant and picked up that she wanted us to come over at about 7pm so we got ourselves ready and presented ourselves again at that time. I'm now pretty sure that I once again misunderstood her however, true to form, they welcomed us and the Little Lady busied herself making some banitchkas which she fried on the stove and served, piping hot and delicious, to us to be washed down with home made ayran. They didn't eat with us so after we finished, and waited a little while, we headed off again. It's so hard with the language sometimes to really grasp what you're being told however the welcome they give, even when we descend unexpectedly, is wonderful.

We are very lucky to have friends like Venko, Lyubo and our neighbours, local and so helpful and generous.

Building stuff

The mornings are growing noticeably brighter, earlier, and this is focusing our minds (well, certainly mine but then I'm the worrier) on the rapidly approaching building season. I've been in touch with the building firm who did the balcony, and who are going to be doing the basketball court and various other things and so that is in hand (I'm actually currently owing them an email back which I need to get done) but we've been doing things ourselves as well to get ready.

A making sure her wine rack will fit

What she did; isn't it awesome!

On Monday A had a very quiet work day and so she spent a fair while playing around with online kitchen design tools to get some ideas for layout. One of the main drivers of this is our thinking about the flooring; we had originally discussed having real slate down and we haven't been able to find any in Bulgaria. While we may be able to get it in the UK and shipped out we need to get this organised sooner rather than later if we're going to. After this process we think we've decided against it and will just use slate-looking tiles instead. It's been a really useful process to go through and we both love the design she came up with. Now I need to work out what sinks I'm having in my washing up zone; again I was thinking I'd need a new Belfast sink but I'm going to try and get away without it by making use of stuff we already have here.

Lots of dust in this scrape

One hoovered out showing how deep she got

All the rubble I removed from the room

Other than this I have continued making progress in Sassy's old room, which will be the temporary (we think) home for my modelling activities. That is model railway and airplanes, not me having photographs taken. As you know I have begun test-laying the suspended floor, and filling the Sassy holes, and on Monday lunchtime I went in with the hoover and finished cleaning out the room, hoovering most of the loose flooring away in two Henry loads of dust. It was very bad in there and in places she had got right through the loose flooring down to the reinforcement layer. What a rabbit.

A making use of the new mixer paddle motor

All the holes (I think) are now filled

With this cleaning done I distracted A to come and do a mix for me as this is one of her jobs. The new paddle mixer I had bought last week went into action for the first time (after the disappointment of finding that the SDS hadn't been fixed I went and bought a specific tool for this) and it proved itself by being much more stable while rotating and mixing the teracol into a super smooth consistency that was perfect for me. There was so much to do that it ended up being two large buckets of the stuff, and two bags of powder, to complete the job and it has been fenced off (to prevent puppy-paw-prints) and left since then to dry. It's nearly dry now so my plan to do the floor on Saturday looks good. The other night I got into bed feeling really tied and then my brain switched on and one of the things I solved was the problem with supporting the chipboard floor successfully. I'll be giving my ideas a try on the currently laid floor before Saturday, to check out if it'll work.

We've another raised bed to put in and today I went to measure it up to start cutting but found that the remaining lengths are just not long enough to create one exactly the same dimensions as before. I'm in the process now of working out whether I can use the same size windows (of which I have many) or if I'll need to use smaller ones for this next one. Either way they'll only be slightly smaller so I'll probably begin digging out the trench for it as my lunch time task tomorrow.

More sky

As per usual there has been a wonderful show put on for us by nature so far this week. I'll go through this chronologically as it makes best sense.

The sun rises behind the ridge and past clouds

A clear moon shot, but you can't really see the clouds glowing

The clouds glowing, but you can't see the moon details

Monday was a really excellent day for my sky photographs. In the morning I was summoned to grab my camera in a hurry as A opened the curtains and saw the sunrise. I snapped a very quick picture from Room 13's window and then legged it onto the balcony in time to capture the blazing sun behind clouds. Stunning. That night the moon rise was just as majestic though far harder to photograph. You'll have to mentally combine the two photographs to get an idea of what we saw. I need to learn how to capture the moon glow on the clouds around a super-bright full moon that just overloads longer exposures. I played with many settings and these are the best two I got to show it off as we saw it.

Tuesday morning dusting on the balcony

Tuesday was taken up with KAT and the neighbours, as already described. It was forecast for about 2cm of snow over night and into the morning but when we woke up it was to just a light dusting and that was about all we got. While I was in town it snowed quite a lot but didn't settle and the slightly sketchy hill descent I survived (with the braked trailer making it even more interesting pushing me down the hill) was completely clear when I came back, The snow didn't even really last the day and was completely now there is almost no snow left anywhere.

Wednesday morning sun appears

No sign of the hotel my parents stayed in

Stunning colour to the mist

The clouds slowly clearing, mid morning

Sunset panorama from the roof terrace

This morning was a frosty start which is something we've not seen for a while due to snow cover. The sunrise was again a beautiful thing to behold and that favourite effect of mine, the glow on the mist, was much in evidence. The cover went a bit higher than it normally does, though it didn't climb to our altitude, and so the hotel my parents stayed in was hidden, and all but the very top of the radio tower up the valley was also behind clouds. A stunning start. It did cloud over after this, however, and so was a bit chilly (the puppies spent almost the whole morning huddled by the fire) but then it cleared and became a really stunning day. The sunset, captured just as it was starting to fade, was also a beautiful one and I'm glad I made the effort to run up to the roof terrace to capture it.

Animals

Again, as usual, the animals have provided us with much joy in the last few days. Today we managed to get back out onto the top bank (thanks to A making the decision and enforcing it) and threw the toys for Rambo and the girls for quite a long time, which we all really enjoyed.

Waiting for their bread

It isn't all play time, though. Every day we feed bread and other kitchen scraps to the chickens and ducks to supplement their corn and grain main feed. The puppies expect to get theirs at the same time and know, at roughly that time of day when either of us goes and stands at the work surface, that they will almost certainly get some bread. They do wait very patiently but sometimes get a little excited. Rambo also gets a chunk though of course he has to wait til we get outside. The birds are the most excited about all of this and cluster by the gate as soon as they hear any movement, whatever time of day, hoping it is feeding time.

A tiny "wind" or "cock" egg one of our chickens produced

Talking of the birds they have continued to give us excellent produce in terms of eggs all through this winter. We've seen many comments on groups on facebook talking about how people's birds have stopped producing so I think we're just lucky. A came in yesterday with something unusual, however, in the form of a "wind egg"; a much smaller egg that looks the same but is less than half the normal size. You can read all about them here and it is a very interesting read so I'd recommend it highly.

Louise barking at the cow outside the fence

The girls have both spent large amounts of time outside playing during this week, so long as the sun has been out, and they have been really good. They do have a bad habit sometimes of running around barking at nothing, though we do think they are looking for each other when they do this, but other than that they just play or explore or lay in the sun or dig and do so without bothering us. Today there was a lot of barking from the top bank and when we looked we saw that Louise was stood barking at a cow. At first they were literally nose to nose through the fence but had moved by the time I got the camera. Brilliant.

And so there it is; completed and without taking up the whole evening as well. Other than what I've talked about I've spent a lot of time reading my railroad magazine and thinking about the layout I am going to be starting soon. My plans are really coming together and I think will work very well. More on that when I actually start to make it.