Friday, July 18, 2008

Projects over the last week, Chapter 2

The "office" under construction

The Ola Lola Open is only one of the major projects going on right now. The rebuilding of part of the outdoor kitchen is complete. We (I use the term loosely - our wonderful friend and handyman Bartolo did all the work)

La cocina under construction.............................................................The same area now

replaced some rotting wooden cabinets with (gasp!) cement. Okay, we've fallen partial victim to the Puerto Rican obsession with concrete but there are times when it is the best choice.

Now Bartolo is replacing part of a wall in the the "office" part of the house. We found evidence of termites in part of the wall (remember, we live in a wooden house in the tropics; termites are an ever-present threat) so a section of interior wall has to be replaced. We all thought this was going to be easy - take down a couple of shelves, take out a plywood panel, put up new panel and shelves in treated wood, paint, love the new look. What, a day? Two days maybe? But NO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O! Shelves, a whole interior wall and we're now on day four. For now our "office/living" room is in turmoil.

Plus, two nights a week we are taking conversational Spanish with our friend Marisol. She's trying desperately to get us mainlanders to at least be able to order in a restaurant for ourselves. She's doing a really good job. We have all improved tremendously. And Justin (a pilot for an airline that doesn't fly to Aguadilla) has learned a number of good pick-up lines and their proper use in the Latin culture. The rest of us are just happy to know what we're ordering and to get what we think we asked for. But I guess that's true of Justin too.

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