Things you learn tiling bathrooms

Putting up the backer board for the new tile.  In the old days they used plain old drywall, but, when a leak in the tile lets water thru the tile and into the drywall, it becomes wetwall and just dissolves.   This job is being done with state-of-the-art  Hardiebacker pure concrete board.  It's so waterproof you can immerse it in water for 20 years without trouble. 
  Being pure concrete, how do you cut it?  Two ways.  Score it with a box cutter knife and snap it.  Or cut it with a diamond blade in a skilsaw.  Score and snap is the way to go for most cuts.  For real thin cuts, you gotta use the saw.  Seven inch diamond blade was cheaper than you might think, only $13 at the local Big Box.  Use the skilsaw out of doors, it makes a dense cloud of cement saw dust that is nasty stuff to clean up.  Bad for the lungs too.    Holes for pipes get cut with an ordinary hole saw in an electric drill. 

Battle Cry, Movie based upon Leon Uris Novel

It's in Technicolor, it's made in 1955.  I rented it largely to see how things came out.  I started reading the novel way back when (grade school) and the folks objected and made the paperback disappear.  They figured I might learn bad language or something.  Anyhow I thought the flick would be a quick answer to "how-it-comes-out" for a book I never finished in childhood.
  It's the standard WWII movie, we follow the men leaving home, doing boot camp, and into combat.  Trouble is, the flick is just one long, long soap opera centering upon the love lives of our heroes.  They fall in love, some of 'em get married, others get Dear Johnned.  The romantic entanglements are right out of "Days of our Lives" or any other TV soap.  We the audience can guess how it's going to turn out long before anything happens on screen.
   They do get into combat.  We see they marching in formation down the dock to board ship.  And after a very brief and bloodless fight, they are back on board ship heading back to New Zealand to pick up the romances where they left off. 

Bathroom Tile Project

 The bathroom.  The tile around the shower had been getting soft for years.  Two or three go rounds with silicone bathtub caulk hadn't done much.  Crud and water was dripping downstairs.  Time to do some thing about it.
  Step A is getting the old tile out.  This is youngest son, Jonathan, going at it
This is the original tile that came with the house in 1962.  The insulation batts are fiberglass and original too.  They are in fair shape considering their age and the water that has leaked onto them over the years.
 

 Water leaking behind the tile has done a number on the studs.  We flushed out a big carpenter ant's nest when we pulled out the last piece of soggy dry wall.  Concrete board or blue board hadn't been inventing in 1962, the tile was laid on plain old paper covered drywall. 
  When the ant's were discovered, I handed Jon a can of bug bomb.  "But this says for flying insects" he objected.   "Give it to 'em anyhow."
And the ants curled up and died in a very satisfactory fashion.

Whacking old tile. 

Hummingbird Feeder

Hummingbird Feeder. End of Season 

This plant was hung up to dry in June. It gets a quart of water every day (except rainy days) and that's all. It brings in hummingbirds every day. The season, for both plants and hummingbirds, is just about over now. But Plant has been fun to have.  I'll probably get another one for next summer.

Sunday Pundits

Good old David Gregory on Meet the Press.  He is interviewing Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel.  Gregory asks Netanyahu "Aren't you trying to interfere in US elections when you advocate establishing "red lines" for Iran?" 
   Netanyahu politely changes the subject.
Gregory then asks "Don't you think Mitt Romney would make a better president than Obama?"
   Netanyahu politely changes the subject.
Gregory then asks  "Didn't Obama throw Israel under the bus?"
   Netanyahu politely changes the subject.
Far as I am concerned, Gregory was baiting the Israeli Prime Minister, hoping he would say something damaging to Israel on American TV.  Netanyahu is old enough and wise enough to avoid sticking his foot in his mouth, but it was not a friendly interview.  And Gregory is not a trustworthy newsman.  He is partisan, out grinding his axes.  Apparently Gregory is on an anti Semitic kick this Sunday.

Making Trouble

According to the Wall St Journal:
"In Eqypt, some journalists translated some of the footage into Arabic and broadcast it on national television. Several popular preachers in conservative Islamic channels urged people to turn out Tuesday at the US Embassy in Cairo, protestors there said."

   In other words, some Egyptians decided to stir up trouble by dredging an inflammatory bit of film off the Internet and playing it on Egyptian TV.  They got themselves a fine peck of trouble.  For cheap. 

Retaliation

I'd like some.  Burning American consulates and killing American ambassadors just frosts me.
Trouble is, I don't see anyone worth retaliating against.
We have fifty to a hundred thugs who did the actual assault.  We have maybe the same number of Arab mayors, police chiefs, and infantry officers who failed to disperse the mobs, either thru malice or incompetence.  We have the entire population of the country who didn't participate, but who like the idea of kicking Americans.  We have brand new national governments who probably didn't know this was going down and would have stopped it if they had known it was coming.
   Somehow it doesn't feel right to go to war against a third world country over the vicious acts of a very few mutants.