Life without a kitchen

We are currently living without a kitchen as part of the transition form the old to the new. We gave the old cabinets and appliances to the daughter of one of the construction people, who took them all away for free, which was not a bad deal. We might have sold them, but that would have taken time, which has become a far more precious commodity.

That happened 9 days ago. In this last week the floor was retiled, electric work was substantially redone, the plumbing for the new appliances was readied, drywall was added to cover pipes, and the old radiator was removed.

The latter took some negotiating. The janitor did not want to sink the water in the building to let us cut out the old radiator. His arguments (both reasonable) were that it was well into the heating season and that the heating system has the quirks one might expect from a 1950s plant and ought not be tampered with. Our contractor persuaded the building's management company that it would be OK, however, and in fact all went well. Good thing the work took place last week, though. Today we have snow.

Part of this week I spent in Heidelberg giving a talk.

While I was going back to my hotel, some tourists came up and asked if I knew the town. I exlained that was my first visit to Heidelberg in 37 years (I spent about a month there improving my German in 1970), but they asked their question anyway: how could they get to the old town. Since I had just come from there, I could answer and they professed amazment at my marvelous memory. ... Ah yes, even I can remember where I was in the past 5 minutes.