Vesuvio part 12

I'd call this a rare Friday off from school, but we will be off the next few as well, with the college closing the campus against the virus and all classes switching to remote learning (internet in other words).  But I hate to waste time, and wanted to get to town to check on my new show there, so I included a Studio stop in my day's schedule.

Today's music was the album Algiers by Calexico.  Not a huge hit album by any standards, but the weird atmosphere created by this virus thing had me thinking of Hurricane Sandy and I associate this album with that time. The storm destroyed the local electrical system, and we were without power for over 10 days.  I suppose the whole experience could have been a lot worse.  My brick apartment building had no damage, and we're up on a ridge, so no flooding.  We have gas for everything, so a gas stove that lit with a pilot light, let the water run for a few minutes and the warm water came up, and the pipes running under the floor meant that it was always warm.  So like an easy form of camping.  No electricity meant no tv or internet all that time, but I had a good supply of candles, and my transistor/short wave radio, which was my only entertainment in that time. The station at Brookdale stayed on the air, and the program director must have really liked that album because it was in heavy rotation, and the songs got played a lot.  Got to liking it, too.   Ended up putting it on my Christmas list.  A band from the southwest, mixing rock, folk, latin styles, all in a very acoustic mellow way.  I believe that the two main guys were part of Giant Sand at one point, but pretty much everyone in that part of the country played for Giant Sand at some point.

The easiest thing to tackle today was the upholstered banquettes, so that was my first goal, cutting all those out.  Also did the curtains on either side of the window, having drawn in the pattern of them a few days earlier.  Cut out that window and what could be seen through it, and that took all the time I had, so I ended things right there.  For the ceiling fan and light I want to look at photos again on the internet, so that had to wait.  Getting close though, maybe a week or so away from finishing it.