Housing and Urban Blight

This afternoon I worked on ideas for a house some more, plus I put some time in working on a surprise. For the house I had gotten a hold of some mega-tools that I thought might help me and played with them. The first iteration turned out to be a little larger that I wanted. After Isobela got home I popped over to her house to show her and the first thing she said was "Wow that's big". Several snide comments later she helped me finish up the surprise.

As we were there on her patio I heard this deep rumbling, the ground started shaking a bit and the air started smelling all sulphery. Isobela said "Look, the volcano is erupting!" Apparently this is a festive occasion for her because she was jumping up and down and pointing and having a grand old time. It made me kinda nervous.


After the eruption Isobela took me on a tour of the property for sale near her. As always, she wants more land. We saw several beach-front lots just down the hill from her place, plus one that was listed for sale in the directory but had no for sale sign and a house still on it.

Isobela wanted to "help me" work on my sky-house, so we headed back to hers and I set it up again. It had two levels, plus a roof-top patio. She started working on flooring and paneling for the upper floor while I decided to turn the lower level into an indoor swimming pool. I sealed everything up and filled it with water to a comfortable height, just below my chin.

Isobela came down to see how things were going and I noticed a potential issue with the pool; even though the water level was below my chin it was above her head, especially since she had kicked off her heels as she was laying tile. I held her above the water while I drained enough off to be below her chin.

She had done a very good job with the tile that I had picked out. It had a white background with blue in it and some black/brown highlights, named after some city in Mexico. For the paneling she had used what I had on hand, much better than bare walls but would have to be replaced in the long-term.

We took a break, sat back and looked at how things were progressing, and decided to start over. It was just too big. I hadn't had a chance to look over other skyboxes to see how they were done so I did that a bit, but didn't get any good ideas. I came back and we talked it over some; I figured I'd give my house in a tube another try, but a shortened version.

I was about to leave when Iso got a call; apparently there was some sort of riot at the Bushy Beard. Normally I would be up to go see what was going on, but I was exhausted and needed to get to sleep. I asked her if she went there to take pictures for me. I arrived home as Hy was calling me with the same message; I asked him, too, to take pictures. I wonder what in the world that was all about?