4 September 2008 - Thursday

If you take a look at the photo, you can see what I've been up to! We decided to work on the carport area first... because it was a small area that we could actually complete to get an idea of what the whole house will look like. The top photo shows the mess around the eaves that is part of the reason why we need to paint. This is all the result of replacing the roof. (And the inside of the house is the same way!) We still need to finish the screen door on this entrance... and we plan to paint (or re-stain) the bench near the steps. Scott added the shelves above the sink... they were originally in the bedroom I just painted. And he built a new base for the propane tanks. The tanks, by the way are for our gas stove.

Re-using the shelves is typical of how things are done down here... anything can be "re-cycled"! Because things are so expensive, you don't just throw things away. Instead of buying plastic trash bags for the small wastebaskets, we use the shopping bags from groceries. We wash out the frozen food baggies & use them again. If something gets broken, you try to have it repaired... instead of running out to buy new. That's just the way it is here! We are even so happy to have empty gallon paint buckets that we can use for other things! And of course, we re-use our water bottles.

A funny thing happened today, but first I have to tell you about a gift we received a few years ago. One time we were talking with friends about how we thought those motion-detector frogs (& similar items) were silly... and who would want one? So one of them gave us a fake rooster (with real feathers). The bird has batteries (in the rear) and crows when loud sounds startle it. Well, Joey figured out how to get the thing to crow all the time so we moved it to an area where it was on display but wouldn't be disturbed. We brought the rooster with us (but took the batteries out... or so we thought). This afternoon we were sitting outside & heard a rooster crowing. This is not an unusual sound around here since there are chickens roaming everywhere. But the crowing continued... until we realized we changed the ringer on our cellphone to "Rooster"! Of course, by that time we missed the call.

So the other part of the story is that I returned the call & it turned out to be the local electric company looking for Scott. They were concerned that our electric bill was so LOW and wanted to know why! Scott was shocked at how low it was (and I'm now dancing about it, thinking I don't have to turn everything off all the time), and they're trying to figure out the reasons for it. Well, our tenant had a lot of computer equipment that was on all the time, and there were 4 in the family... plus the fact that the house was empty for a month. Anyway, the way things get messed up down here, we're not exactly dancing for joy just yet! We'll wait & see what the bill looks like NEXT month!

Well... guess that's all for now! Tonight's Quiz Night at the Gem! Hopefully Hanna won't mess up any weekend plans at home!