'nuther house update

I thought people would be weary of seeing our house photos by now, but apparantly not. We keep getting emailed questions. And that's GREAT!! As long as people are interested, that means we have some 'blog material' for a long time to come. So, for those who asked, here is a brief house update as of yesterday afternoon, stuck in here between the Turtle Cove boat photo posts.

We have been discussing the idea of actually having an "arch cam" setup, linked to this blog. So people who needed a tropical ocean fix could click on a link and get live video feed looking out across the Caicos Bank. But we are not sure where a good spot would be. Here's a slightly different angle on that pergola area:



The patio is to the left around the corner. This is a nice area for views, but I am thinking it would be boring for most of the time. It just wouldnt change that much, unless you like tranquil, uninterrupted views. But we also have an angle to watch the sun rise out of the ocean to the east, and we have an angle that lets us watch the sun set over the small cays to the west. That's all on purpose, by the way. We grabbed this building lot for the views.

I am thinking that setting a camera up to get the daily sunset view might be a better idea, but am open for suggestions. It would be something like this almost every day of the year:



Not that this is a particularly spectacular sunset...hey they can't ALL be spectacular. But this view has some other things going for it. Some action throughout the day. For example, in that area in the foreground we quite often see people stopping their car to wade out and bonefish. Just beyond the road is a great place for kite-boarding and we see those colorful kites a lot. There would be action up and down the road, and the occasional boat off in the distance. And a sunset every day. What do you think, is that a good idea?

Back to the house yesterday, we were excited. The crew finally started closing in the glass block walls for the inside shower:



This is a good thing. Closing in these two walls and the little louvered window to the right in this photo means the house will shortly be capable of being locked up:



(the distortion in the photo is because that is a pano of three photos, only way I could get it all in one image)

The ability to lock the house up means that the cabinets and appliances can now go in. Yahoo. Yippee. Ohboy ohboy, oh boy. Real progress.

Of course this is pretty exciting for us. We have been living in other people's houses now for two and a half years. All our major belongings have been sitting in storage, basically unaccessible since August of 2005. And now we are within just a few weeks of being in our own home once again.

Here's another view of that pergola, just a different angle:



And the now-standardized image that I somehow cannot keep my eye away from:



But there's something a little different in that image this time that you cannot easily see unless I zoom in. Which of course is going to mess the resolution up but here it is anyhow:



And that is one really PO'd little dog who deeply resents having to stay in the Land Rover while we traipse around the house. HIS house, if you please. On HIS hilltop, by the way. But the problem is that the crew eat lunch up here daily, of course. And they fling their chicken bones, ribs, and other unconsumables into the bushes. And Dooley the dysfunctional demon does not suscribe to the theory of "unconsumable organics". He will unerringly seek out and devour chicken bones, ribs, and other portions of what once were lunches. And it doesn't really matter how long they have been lying there in the underbrush. It could be days, or weeks, or months. Dooley also does not believe in expiration dates. If HE thinks he can safely eat it, he will. Unfortunately, his digestive track was apparantly not based upon the same ancestral DNA that gave him his hyena's sense of culinary discretion. And it comes back to bite us. Big time. And he doesn't seem to ever associate yesterday's exotic gourmet meal with today's alimentary anguish.

Or maybe he does. And is willing to pay gastrointestinal prices that La Gringa and I are not willing to underwrite.