Over the Fire

Your correspondent took the night off to participate in a quintessentially Iranian custom called Chaharshanbei Suri (literally, "Red Wednesday"). This is a traditional prelude to the Iranian new year or Norooz that begins on the first day of spring each year. The Chaharshanbeh Suri celebration involves gathering with family and friends, having a really nice dinner, and then lighting up a bunch of bonfires and jumping over them and reciting "I give you my yellow pallor, and you give me your red glow" (as I usually say to Jenn, it sounds more lyrical in Farsi.)

Here's a video of a recent celebration from Canada:



And here's some pictures from our celebration:




With all this symbolic cleansing and renewal going on, the house plods ahead towards its own spring blossoming.

In the master bedroom, the fireplace is now working and providing a beautiful soothing blue flame as well as prodigious heat -- just in time for the summer:



In case we need to keep the fire in check, the tub filler in the ceiling is fully operational:



and so is the small swimming pool under it pretending to be a bath tub.



and the view from the bathtub is not too bad either:



If we can't decide between fire and water, we can put them together and get steam to fill up the shower enclosure to help us relax:





If we want privacy, there's always the other piece of bathroom hardware that was recently brought on line: the world's most complex toilet:



and its equally complex wireless remote control:



Not wanting to fall behind, the second floor bathroom, (aka the Blue Bathroom)shows off its own water message jets in the tub.



If all this upstairs, downstairs business is getting too tiring, we can always catch a ride in the newly painted elevator cab:



To stay in touch during all the up-and-down, the house's data network went on line at full Gigabit speed.



As the house draws closer and closer to completion, all the paper covering the floors are removed, and for the first time we can actually see the Teak floors basking in the cold San Francisco sun:






The simple wooden handrails in the last couple of photos are temporary, to be replaced later with the permanent rails or nothing at all. We have not really decided yet.

Next week: hot water, alarm, and maybe a few numbers.