Garage Insulation Part 1, The Attic

As a break from Thailand I'll tell you about this week's project: the garage. My parents are here. My dad and I made a plan to insulate the garage. The point of the garage is to have a nice, comfortable car when you decide to leave the house.  Our garage gets too cold in the Winter and too hot in the Summer. When it is cold out my laundry soap gels up!

We bought some AttiCat insulation and brought it home with my dad's car.

The crazy hose and box comprise the blower machine. My dad fed the insulation into the blower and I waddled around the attic to spread out the insulation.

Here is how it looked at the end. Nice and fluffy--and pink, but the flash washed out the color.

Uh, at the very start I put my foot through the dry wall in the ceiling. I just wasn't thinking. Thankfully, just my leg went through.

It took us longer to go get the supplies and return the blower than it did to actually put in the insulation. I was only up in the attic for an hour. I sure did feel sore the next day though!

Now I just have to cover up the hole.

Tiger Temple Part 6, The Largest Tigers

So we had an opportunity to pose with a four year old male tiger. The hands in this photo are because I decided to lean over. I wasn't going to touch his head, but they freaked (and rightly so). No matter how many times they gave us safety instructions I think my brain had melted with those baby tigers and I just wanted to cuddle 'em all.

So after our final posed photos they corralled us in with a rickety chain link fence and the crazy tiger man pictured above exercised the tigers. He yelled at them. He rode them. He chased them. He hung boxes over their heads to get them to jump. One tiger would jump off the rock structure in the middle of the water area down into the water. Sometimes the volunteers also wedged a stick with a dangling "toy" on the top of the mushroom structure. One tiger jumped up, grabbed at the toy, but it didn't budge. He ended up falling and smacking the packed dirt--on his side. It was loud and looked painful.

When the crazy tiger guy declared exercise time over the tigers ran out of the area and were led away.

We endured the blazing sun to walk along the sky path to see more tigers. They have 128 tigers in all. We did not see the 2 lions they have. They also now have two rescue baby moon bears. They have a lot of hoofstock and an aviary on the property as well. We heard the tigers roaring. That seemed to trigger the peacocks. We made our way back toward the exit and found Jackie. He loaded us up and took us on our next adventure.

Tiger Temple Part 5, The Bigger Guys

Trying to get the tigers to play with our "toys" was my least favorite part of the experience. Most of the cats were uninterested. The volunteers/handlers with the plastic bag covered boxes had the most luck getting the tigers to actually jump up.

If we wanted to we could get into the water. Ross and I declined. It was plenty fun to watch from a bit higher up. At one point two of the tigers decided to walk behind us. They had told us not to turn your back on a tiger, so Ross and I turned around. The volunteers instantly formed a human shield between us and the tigers. It was impressive.

After that we got to walk a big tiger. I think this tiger was 3 years old. It was really dirty, covered in red dirt, so it didn't quite look orange.

Tiger Temple Part 4, Bath Time

 Ross finally got to be first at something--scrubbing the tiger.

I got a turn scrubbing too--can't forget the bum, and then we rinsed him off.

After bath time we gave the tiger a snack of boiled chicken.

The chicken was falling off the bone, so I just held it in my hands and the tiger ate it up.

Tiger Temple Part 3, Tiger Walking

So they told us that the tiger walks you, not the other way around. If the tiger walks, you walk. If he stops, you stop. If he runs, you run. Well, my tiger must have known I don't like to run, because he stopped a lot.

The tiger (about seven months old I think) did a big down dog stretch for us. Check out those claws!

So here he is, stopping again.

Our handler, Nun, was awesome. To get the tiger to move along she picked up this piece of tree and let me pull him along.

Then it turned into a game. Tug of war. I lost. That's Nun smiling in the background.

Tiger Temple, Baby Tiger Video

You can hear the baby squeals throughout. I just loved how she (I'm declaring it a she) rubbed on my head. I tried to trim the video, but blogger couldn't process it, so you have to watch some blurriness at the start.

Tiger Temple Part 2

After feeding the three month old tiger I got to hold and cuddle a one month old tiger. There were only two one month old tigers there. We weren't supposed to pick them up and carry them or drag them around. If you did, they would squeal. One of the handlers handed me the baby and I headbutted it as long as it would tolerate me. The tiger gave me a little bath, licking at my hand, but of course (just like Bailey), wouldn't lick Ross.

This is our guide, Jackie. He was super cool and the tiger knew him, so wanted to be with him instead of me.
After we cuddled the baby(est) tiger, the monks said prayers. We sat quietly and pet the tigers if they came around. After prayers we had breakfast. They brought out the stuff we had presented as offerings, except for what the monks had kept for themselves. The monks only eat once a day, and apparently they likes they shugga. Only a couple of the chocolate wafer cookies made it out front, and the Dunkin Donuts were gone. Yeah, one group brought donuts. The tourists were allowed to eat first. I was first in line, and actually Ross, Jackie and I were the only ones in our group who ate--the rest of the food went to the volunteers and staff. Ross had rice with green curry. I had rice and vegetables, and some noodles.

Oh, our group. As a bonus, lucky unbirthday present there were only 8 tourists that morning. One of the guides said that the last couple of days had been crazy, with over 30 tourists. The limit is supposed to be 20, but you know how that goes. With only 8 tourists we weren't fighting over the tigers. Each couple got their own 3 month old to feed.

After breakfast we continued playing with the tigers. The female on the right was a jerk. She kept waking up her sister, and then she was biting the baby--and the poor baby cried. Here I am telling the older tiger to quit being a jerk and to leave the baby alone. The lady in the white shirt in the background was crazy. She totally played with the jerk and let it bite her repeatedly.

After temple time with the youngest tigers we moved on to some bigger ones.