How many rooms do we have in the house? Enough.
LOL, OK. At the moment we're at about 6,500 square feet, not counting the training room which is a converted pole barn. Six bedrooms, the three workrooms, and 6 1/2 baths, not counting the humongous one that's connected to the training room and the main hallway. We also have a few unfinished rooms that we haven't decided what to do with yet.
Big? Yep, pretty much. After living in a string of fairly grimy apartments for 13 years, I felt an urge to have space, lots of space, when we moved here. Besides it was a bargain. A short-sale foreclosure. Pretty sad for whoever lost the property, but a great deal for us. It took three months for the bank to accept our offer, but we weren't in any particular hurry. One of the best things about the house is that, being in the woods, you can't see how big it is unless you're in the air.
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Oh. Where exactly did we settle down? We're in the hills to the southwest of Salem, outside the Urban Growth Boundary.
What's an Urban Growth Boundary? Basically a line in the sand. Nothing other than single family homes and agricultural operations are allowed outside the line. No property can be subdivided. Why? A lot of the state is farm country. Orchards, vineyards, nurseries, various crops. Also a very rare pig raising operation, a few dairies. No cattle feedlots that I've ever heard of though.
The farm lobby is strong here, and it's good thing in my book. Pave over enough farms and you're in deep doo-doo if something shuts down the infrastructure that delivers food from other regions.
While the zoning regs only allow single family homes, it doesn't restrict their size. There are some at least twice as big as ours.
When we put on the first expansion, we left space for more in the design so not much demolition will be needed if we decide to add more rooms. That and we remodeled the kitchen so it would be big enough to feed 10 or 12 people regularly. Why? It seemed like a good idea at the time.
More rooms? Maybe. All I know is that it's better to be prepared for everything than to be caught with your panties down around your knees when someone breaks down the door.
Getting back to where I was before a certain someone interrupted me.
I went into my jewelry workroom and took the little dragon that Master Oh had given me out of my pocket. If I was supposed to have it with me all the time, I needed something better to do with it than just shoving it into whatever pocket I could find when I went out.
Such a strange little piece. It really did feel heavier than it looked. No idea what it's made of either. The first thing I needed to do was to find out.
Back on my feet and went down to Jane's workroom.
"Janie, do you still have that infrared spectrometer buried in here somewhere?"
"Sure Mama, you need something checked?"
"Yep. Is it still working?"
Got myself a glare AND eye-rolling as a response to that question. Kids....
"Master Oh gave me this, and it seems heavier than it should for its size. I'd like to know what it's made of."
She didn't answer, but held her hand out, rather imperiously I might add, and waited.
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I stretched my hand toward her and she snatched the dragon. Then she looked down and saw what she was holding, and she cooed at it. "Oh, aren't you a little beauty! Auntie Jane needs to find out what you're made of, so I need just a tiny bit of you to put in my spectrometer."
"Let's see...ah...right there!
"Mama, there's one area on the back that's a little rough. If you polish it smooth, I can use the dust from that for the test."
Held out my hand and had the dragon deposited in it, very carefully this time.
Back down the hall to my workroom. Found the spot Jane mentioned and got out a fine diamond polishing wheel for my Dremel tool. Carefully collected the resulting dust. Then back down to see Jane again. At least I was getting a bit of exercise this afternoon.
(Our rooms are at opposite ends of the house. When we want to be together, we go to the living room or breakfast nook. Otherwise we both prize our privacy.)
"Perfect. That'll work just fine Mama. Let me just get this sample prepped and in the right slot...."
She did some esoteric things involving two glass disks and some sort of oily liquid from a bottle that she handled rather carefully. Then she put the resulting assemblage into a slot on the spectrometer.
"There, ready."
She plugged a USB cable into the spectrometer and then into one of her smaller computers, which she then booted up. Once the main screen was up, she ran through various menus faster than I could track. Then she gave a final flick to a key and turned back to me.
"It'll only take about 30 seconds now. The computer will automatically compare the spectrum against the database, and we'll have our answer."
"That's all Janie?"
"Yeah, IR is pretty fast. Not like a mass spectrometer, but we shouldn't need that here, I hope. And speaking of which, here we go."
"Ah ha, no wonder it feels heavy. It's made of rhenium diboride. It's the 2nd densest mineral on the planet. Naturally black in color, or sometimes silver, depending on whether or not other elements are mixed in. Also there are only 4 things on earth that are stronger, and 2 of them are forms of diamond. Did you know that there's one naturally occurring material stronger than diamond? It's called wurtzite boron nitri..."
She stopped when she saw the look on my face.
"Ah...be that as it may Mama, that doesn't explain why it felt hot when I held it."
"Hot? That's odd Jane. It doesn't feel hot to me, though it does seem a bit warmer than the room. No biggie. It's probably because I had it in my hand for several minutes before I brought it to you."
"That's probably it Mama. Is there anything else you need right now? I'd sorta like to get back to what I was doing."
"That's about it honey, thanks. I'll see you at dinner."
"Mmmph." She'd already turned back to her primary computer and was immersed in all three monitors at once as best I could tell.
Back to the workroom again.
The answer to the question of how to carry it had answered itself when I turned it over to polish the rough spot. There was a small tunnel from side to side in the back, obviously meant for a chain. And I had just the right thing on hand.
I pulled out one of the smaller gold chains and checked it for size -- perfect.
The gold and black combination looked very exotic and beautiful. Unfortunately beautiful wouldn't work if someone should grab at it and try to pull it off me. Gold breaks pretty easily when it's stretched. So what I needed to do was reinforce it.
And speaking of which... Ah ha! Now if I could just find it. Jane isn't the only packrat in the family.
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Eventually I found what I was looking for: Some fine titanium 11 wire. It took me 20 minutes to weave the wire through the chain, but with that there too, it would be almost impossible to break the chain, without breaking me too, in which case I wouldn't be in any condition to care about the dragon any more. Plus the bluish metallic color of the wire looked good with the gold.
Then I affixed a heavy duty screw clasp to the ends and tried it on. Perfect fit. It'd hang down just above my breasts where nobody would see it.
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What's that? You didn't say a word? I thought not.
You have a question? A serious one? Ok. shoot.
Why do I have so many odd metals in my workshop? Not just silver, gold, and platinum?
Well, basically they can all be very pretty with a proper design. And it's fun when someone admires a piece and asks what it is and they have no idea what mean when I say that it's made of silver and iridium or platinum and titanium.
Not to mention the challenge of making all those wires work together.
What do you mean I have a twisted sense of humor? After all this time you hadn't realized that? You're slower than I thought.
OW! I told you before not to hit me!>>