Hello, Anyone There?

Without our own internet connection, I rarely blog. So I'm not sure anybody even bothers to stop by any more.

But since I had to be out here in the garage anyway, to deal with some other internet stuff, I thought I'd go ahead and do a post.

Sometimes I can sit just about anywhere in the garage and access our neighbor's connection, but today it's requiring that I sit right slap dab next to the dryer which is against the back wall, closest to the neighbor's house. 

I've pretty much given up hope that we'll get our own phone/internet this year. Because we'll be heading to the U.S. in May, that really only gives us another four months. Meanwhile I'm grateful for our neighbor's generosity but frustrated by how often his service is down. I thought we had it bad when we lived on Canning Street! But over there we'd have it go down for hours at a time, not days. You might remember that he had no phone or internet for most of November. Well, since then it seems to work one day but not the next, and then there might be a day where it works for an hour or two and that's all.

Really wish there was another internet option for us, but there isn't.

Anyhoo...

Even though we don't have our own internet connection, we do now both have iPhones with 3G capabilities! (Thanks again, Jon and Nat, for gifting us your phones!) That's allowed us to at least keep up with e-mails.

And Words With Friends.

I can even access blogs! But I haven't been commenting much, because it takes so long to type anything on the tiny screen. I must just have really fat fingers or something. 

Not that we've had a lot of time to be online anyway. We spent the first twelve days of the year in Sta. Rosa. The first week we hosted friends and the second week we worked like crazy to finish some projects (but did take time out to have people over for meals several times). Then we came home and jumped right into some projects here.

I spent a good portion of this week sanding, sealing and then painting the hallway in the casita. I think I'm still coughing up grit from the sanding portion of that job! No kidding, I sanded at least 5-6 cups of stuff off the wall. We'd had the walls "fixed" somewhat, in that Guillermo patched in places, making it more even and squared up, but what was already there was probably a very poor cement mixture Ivan said, so it didn't take much pressure at all to sand off gobs of the stuff. I found out after the fact that we had face masks I could have used. At least I'll know for the next time.

The hallway isn't that big, 4' x 5' at the largest, but that's where our washer is and working around it was a bit of a pain. Try maneuvering a ladder around in a space that small with a washer in the way! But I did eventually get it all done, and I cannot believe what a difference it makes. Using white paint made the space brighter, of course, but it also seems so much larger.

Painting the hallway has been on my "to do" list for a long time, but the thing that finally motivated me to actually get it done was buying an air conditioner. What does that have to do with anything, you ask? Well, we decided the best place to mount the a.c. unit was high up on the wall in the hallway. That way the cool air can be dispersed evenly between our two rooms, and I liked that it wouldn't be taking up valuable wall space in either the bedroom or kitchen.

But the walls needed to be painted before we installed the unit -- so much easier when you don't have to paint around things, you know ;). So I'm glad that's done now, and Ivan has mounted both the interior and exterior components of our air conditioning split, so all that's lacking is a little electrician magic. Okay, not magic, just plain old electrician know-how. Hoping our friendly neighborhood electrician might have some time this weekend to help us out!

Thankfully this week hasn't been as hot as previous weeks. It's been in the high 80s/low 90s and cooling down to the 60s at night, so it's been bearable. But I don't expect it to last, so the sooner we can get the a.c. working, the better!

Between coats of sealer, and then paint, I worked on a photo book of our first year of construction. Finished it this afternoon and just got it uploaded and sent for publication. I bought one of those amazon "local" deals for a photo book last January, back when I naively thought we'd be able to get both the garage and house up in one year.

hahahahahahahahahahaha

And with all that we've had going on in the months since then, I'd completely forgotten about it. Until the kind folks at amazon sent me a friendly reminder last Saturday: one week before the deal expired. So glad they give you a whole week and not just a day or two. 'Cause I needed every bit of that week! It took a lot of time to weed through photos, then write the text, and finally edit the thing to death. Am I the only one who spends way more time editing than creating?

But anyway, it's done now. Which means I get to check two big projects off my "to do" list this week.

I get an inordinate amount of pleasure checking things off my lists. I just wish the lists would actually get shorter when that happens, but it seems every time we check one thing off, we add two or three. Does that happen to you?

I'd much rather look back at all that we've accomplished, rather than think about what remains to be done. Which is why it was so satisfying to put the photo book together. It was fun to see the progress as the months went by. So maybe we didn't get a house built. But we have a garage! And a casita! And in due time, we'll have a house too.

I know we will, because it's on my list.