we'll start off today with a hypothetical. after reading this story about a man growing himself a new jaw bone in his back to replace one he lost to cancer, and that his first meal in NINE YEARS was a bratwurst sandwich, i got to thinking about what my first meal in that situation would be. chocolate, perhaps, though a colleague just suggested that i could have probably been getting my chocolate fix in liquid form. ooooh, cheese! yes! cheese! some red dragon cheese on a bit of crusty bread. or some fresh chevre and spicy pear mustard on a water cracker. what would you have for a first meal in nine years?

in house news, the boys, ming, tang, and tai, called us on wednesday with a problem. they had put up 5 rows of 12x12 tiles on the walls of the shower, and they looked great, but there was a space of 3-4" at the top that needed tiling. cutting the 12x12s didn't look good because then there was a sharp edge that really caught your eye. the tiles didn't come in any other size. so we went to the HouseDepot (again) to see what we could find. i was really pissed at the whole situation because it could have been avoided if they'd just started with a whole tile at the top, like one is supposed to, and ended up with a fractional tile at the bottom, where the sharp edge wouldn't have mattered.

but no. and now, all the tiles were mortared onto the wall, so they couldn't take them down and re-lay them.

at HouseDepot, there was NOTHING that would look good at the top of a field of these particular faux-slate 12x12 tiles. i was unhappy at any of the solutions. we called them and asked if we could get a decorative linear tile that would go between the top row and the 2nd to top row of tiles. though the broken english conversation over the phone was not ideal, ming kept repeating that they couldn't take the tiles off the walls.

after much bitching on my part, we bought a bunch of decorative border tiles that are randomly placed pebbles of varying shades of tan and grey. they absolutely would not look good at the top, but would look great one tile down. we figured they *could* take down the top row of tile, they just didn't want to because it's more work. so we decided we could offer them more money to do it.

next morning, i went by the house to show them the tiles we'd bought, and they assumed they were to go on the top, and i explained that no, they were to go one tile down, and they'd have to move the top row up by 4 inches. after much animated conversation in vietnamese, ming says that they can't do it because the tiles are already stuck to the wall. i had figured that out already from the large gestures tang had been making during their conversation. i asked if they could pry the tiles off, and after more vietnamese, they said they couldn't because that would break the tile. ah ha! i said, that's okay because we bought another box of tiles. we have plenty of tiles. it's okay if you break them! this ended all the arguing and they said they would do it. no problem, ming said, we do this for you. we do it to make you happy. we want you to be happy.

well, at that, i felt guilty. good protestant-upbringing guilt. here are these hard-working guys, they've already agreed to extra work on this bathroom, like re-doing the ceiling and putting in new lights, and i'm insisting they take down tiles already put up and re-do them.

but then, i remembered that if they had put a little forethought into the project, they would have started tiling at the top and wouldn't have had this problem at all. and i felt less guilty.

but not enough less guilty to ask them to please stop chain-smoking in my house.

so yesterday evening we stopped by to take a look (and drop off a bunch of boxes) and it looks great! they've put in the pebble border, which looks great, and tiled the floor. the floor tiles are the same ones as the wall tiles, but while on the wall they're laid out square, on the floor they're on the diagonal. it's beautiful! yay!

they say that today they will grout and clean up, and they'll be done! whoo! we'll be able to use the bathroom on monday (well, karl will. i'll be in st. thomas on vacation). still to do: paint the bathroom and order our new vanity and sink, to be installed in a couple months when it arrives.