Playing with cameras...

Okay, now for something different: a mini-post with absolutely NO updates on the house, landscaping, or water management issues. No photos of workshop projects. This one is only going to be about some images we recorded last night just before sundown.

It all started while we were sitting on the patio (discussing the logistics of knee replacements, and my anxiety about needing them, of all things) and we were watching as this "cute" little thunderstorm start developing right before our eyes. It was pretty cool to watch the whole thing. So we started taking photos of it:



It was only maybe a mile or two away, moving to the right (Southwest) and we could watch the processes of all of those thunderstorm/cumulous things going on right in front of us. Ringside seats. Or maybe 'front row, balcony' would be more accurate. So even though we knew the light was quickly failing, we picked up a couple cameras and snapped some images. The light was quickly going, and the clouds were quickly blocking what was left, so we did not have time to get a lot. But we got a few.

Right after taking that first one we noticed that the sun was beginning to touch the top of the thunderstorm and La Gringa walked to the other side of the house and yelled at me "You need to come look at this sunset!" So I did....and it was shaping up pretty well:




So we relocated from the patio to the deck. We had sunset effects in both directions. The light started painting the top of the thunderstorm:



and of course it continued to grow and blend in with a suddenly developing line of similar small storms.

Our heads were swivelling back and forth, between the sunset on one side of the house:



And this little painted thunderstorm on the other:



As the sun sank behind the horizon the rays started touching the clouds in every direction...



and it started raining a little. Well, it was raining a lot just a half a mile away on the ocean, but it got too dark in that direction to get good photos. We started getting lightning and thunder to the south along the squall front.

The dog, of course, was going through all his phases of canine anxiety attack. First he dashes under a table, or chair, or just generally underfoot, and tries to hide. Second phase is when he starts shivering uncontrollably. This is usually around the third thunderclap. Final stage is when his tongue hangs out and he starts panting and drooling. That's when we know he is in full-bore anxiety and useless as a dog or much of anything else for that matter. Just becomes a spineless blob of slavering, quivering, pitiful protoplasm.

Trying to see if we could record everything going on above us, La Gringa took a little video. There is a lightning flash right at the end of it:

Sometimes just living here feels like being in the middle of a surround sound Imax movie.

And No, I was most certainly not picking my nose!! I was wiping rain off my face...

Since the dog was going through a mental collapse over being exposed there on the deck, and it was starting to rain, we moved to the sheltered area in front of the house and managed to get a few more photos. This one looked okay:

But I think I prefer the same view with the flash enabled:

We get a lot of comments and emails about this blog. Several a day, usually. We post the comments as they come in, and the emails we usually just reply to directly. A lot of the comments are from people who really seem to like the photographs. We are not professional photographers, just a couple amateurs who like to take photos and are lucky enough to live in a very photogenic place. We have several cameras, and just returned my favorite one to service after finally locating some batteries for it. After we posted some photos taken with it this week "LiteracyLady" asked a question about the cameras:

"The camera-comparison shots are really interesting! What kind of cameras are the two cameras? Specs, I mean, I think you said the new one is a waterproof Olympus.
Julie "

Yep, last summer the underwater housing I was using with a small Sony Cybershot P-93 (obsolete now) broke, and I bought an Olympus Stylus 770SW. I bought it because it was advertised as shockproof and waterproof to 30 ft. The specs for that one are at: http://www.digicamreview.com/olympus_mju_770sw_stylus_review.htm

Of course it got great reviews. That's why I bought it. Now I have had it for almost ten months, and I would not buy another one. It completely failed on me due to moisture getting into it while we were snorkelling. Olympus was not much help, and I managed to save it by baking it with all the little waterproof doors open. (170 degrees F, one hour, close the doors, let cool, and then repeat) Resurrected it.

It doesn't do well with low light or fast subjects, which is understandable with the small lens. It definitely IS rugged. I drop it into my front pocket every time I leave the house. While it is still a good choice for the boat and beach, I would be nervous about taking it underwater again. I still need an underwater camera.

I also do not much like the Olympus software with it. The menu structure is complicated, awkward, and not intuitive. But my biggest complaint is that it seems incapable of taking a decent telephoto shot. Maybe its because it does not have a manual focus mode and never seems to handle the concept of 'infinity'. The lack of a viewfinder is also an aggravation. In bright sunlight, it's not so much a 'point-and-shoot" camera as it is a 'point-and-pray'.

Now my favorite digital camera is my old Sony DSC F707. It was discontinued around 03 I think. But the specs for it are at: http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001_reviews/f707.html

Its big, clunky, slow, with limited memory. But I like the camera a lot, and wish Sony had continued with that line. It uses an InfoLithium battery,and the original one quit taking a charge about three years ago. I bought two replacements online from a company that guaranteed compatibility. I was very disappointed to find out that they lied. They also don't answer emails from irate customers who want their money back or a battery that works. Another Chinese product, by the way.

So on this last trip to Colorado I had two new Sony batteries sent to where I was staying, and so far the camera is (touch wood) working as well as it did when I bought it seven years ago.In general, I have had bad luck with Olympus and Kodak cameras. Conversely I have nothing but good things to say about Sony products. I have also had great luck with Canon and Nikon products.

La Gringa took the Olympus, and I my old Sony, and we stood side by side and snapped the same photo at the same time. The Olympus image is the first one, and the Sony the second:

I don't know if you can see the difference on these reduced images, but I can sure see it on the originals. The Sony is 5 mp, and the Olympus is 7.1. The optics are what matter, not the megapix.

We did not use the zoom on either one, but I am totally confident that the old Sony would have taken a good usable telephoto image there, and I would have ended up just deleting the Olympus one. Done it a thousand times.

So that's what was going on around here last night. And I managed to get a blog post out of it without mentioning the house (well except for the places where I mentioned that I was not going to mention it...)

Didn't talk about the landscaping either, you'll notice. Not even the bougainvilla:

Monday, Monday..

We have been back on island now for a week, and things are back to normal. Which is chaotic. We have settled back into our schedule, being awoken at dawn by the sun sliding up through the sea:



We have been keeping a lookout for a good sunrise to photograph, but lately it seems that the mornings are clear and the afternoons are so cloudy with thunderstorms that the sunsets are totally hidden. We'll keep trying though.

We are tuned back into the comings and goings of the local boat traffic, which seems to have settled down a bit. Some of the boats here operate on a regular schedule, including the dive boats and of course the Marine Police. I know I have posted a few photos of them leaving late afternoon and returning early morning, but now I got enough lens to get a little "closer":



Hmm...the boat is pointed to the right, which means it's late afternoon...

Out for another 12-14 hours chugging around in the dark looking for small wooden sloops full of desperate Haitians.

Today the landscapers arrived in force again, and started hacking holes in old rocky-top. The foreman, Junior (heard that name here before a time or twenty) tells me they hope to be finished by the end of the week. We hope so, too. So today was a cacophony of pick axes and yeah, electric jackhammers:



Junior the Foreman and I had a nice conversation about where the rest of these plants are going to go. And how much cleanup we can expect from them. We don't mind the odd dead branch, but the five (that I can see without digging) automobile tires that got delivered in the "topsoil" have definitely got to go.



I guess it could be worse. At least I didn't find any femurs, clavicles, or molars in the pile. Junior assures me it will all be cleaned up. By the end of the week. This week. I guess stranger things have happened.

I know I have already explained that the recent rains have turned dust from the gutters into silt in the cisterns. I have had to clean out that little pre-filter I put in almost daily. (And no, I am not going to bore you with another photo of my plumbing. Not MY plumbing...I mean...but plumbing I have done in the pump room....)

So anyhow, in the spirit of DIY, I decided to see if I could clean up the cistern water a bit, because it will be some time before I can install the first flush diverters. We have to let the cisterns get down to half full so that I can pump one of them empty into the other one. Then I can climb down in there and work on things. In the meantime, I took a five gallon bucket and drilled a bunch of holes in the bottom:



(kinda looks like the top of a white Croc shoe, doesn't it..)

I was doing this in the garage, and Dooley the Demented Dog was down there with me, happily watching the world go by. Or so I thought. I really wasn't paying him much attention. I kinda get all caught up in what I am doing when power tools are involved. Then I suddenly felt a change of air-pressure in my ears. Then I saw the flash, and heard the thunder. But the atmospheric change was not due to the lightning, it happened just milliseconds before the flash.

Then I figured it out. The sudden change in air pressure was caused by a certain Jack Russell Terrierist instantly teleporting himself up the hill, into the living room, and under a chair. I don't know how he did this. It was too fast for the human eye. I looked out the open garage door, and this is what he had been watching as it approached us from the East:



I don't know what it is about these squalls that causes a normally fearless dog to fall completely apart, but fall apart he does. He has no problem biting barracudas that weigh twice as much as he does. And they have fearsome teeth. He will take on not one but several dogs that each outweigh him by a factor of three. And he usually chases them all off. He doesn't give a whit about jumping overboard two miles offshore for a swim. But the second he suspects some impending ionization....he's history. Turns into Jello Dog. It's embarassing. .

Eventually the squall blew apart, as they always do, and I was able to continue my home-made cistern cleaner-upper. I have a small electric pump pulling water out of one cistern into the bucket with the holes in the bottom. For a filter I borrowed one of La Gringas pillow cases....she had a nice one with a high thread count. I don't know how to convert that into microns, but it's doing a pretty good job filtering the silt out of the cistern. I suspect it won't be gracing a pillow again. It was white when I started...



And yes, after he realized that the squall was not going to personally attack and shred him, Mr.Dooley the Dangerous Dog, aka Fearless Fosdick, returned to help, and to inquire about just what the heck I was messing with now...

He was okay once the storm blew out. I even caught him relaxing on one of his favorite vantage points, and I tried to get the rainbow behind him but it was too faint to show up very well:



I realized the auto-exposure on the camera was concentrating on the near field ( i.e. the dog) so took another shot without the critter in the foreground:



Still not very good, as far as rainbows go. But it seemed to calm old Toto...

Now, in that photo, notice the waves slapping against the rocks there in the right foreground. About a half hour later while I was fine tuning my new DIY cistern water cleaner, I heard a SeaDoo engine make that quick lack of noise caused by a sudden stop and I looked up to see what had happened. Well, one of the jetski rental riders had made too sharp of a turn and managed to throw himself off the SeaDoo. This happens a lot, but this time it happened about 20 yards from those very same rocks.



I don't know if you can tell from this second photo, but the wind was pushing the rented jetski toward the rocks faster than the jetski renter could swim to catch up with it:



We get reminded from time to time that not everybody who lives in these islands can swim. La Gringa and I both swam competitively in our respective younger days and either of us would have just shucked the life jacket and caught up with the drifting jet ski. This guy wouldn't do it, and so could only bob up and down and watch. I suspect he was mentally reviewing all the clauses of the damage contract that he had nonchalantly signed before taking this expensive toy out for a spin..

La Gringa ran to the phone to call the jetski rental folks and tell them one of their customers might be in trouble, while I stood by with the camera. Just in case it got interesting. It had some potential.

Alas, oh wait, I mean Fortunately, he made it into water shallow enough to touch bottom, and managed to catch the boat maybe a minute or two before it turned into an expensively splintered cloud of colorful flotsam...



Good old SeaDoo started right up for him, and he actually sprayed water onto the rocks getting out of there. I noticed he took it right back to the marina and turned it in after this. Guess he had enough excitement for one day.

If that had happened twenty yards further out, he would not have caught it.

So, that's how our first Monday in June went. Just more of the same old stuff. We DO have a trip over to Pine Cay in the boat planned, we are just waiting for a good weather day. It'll come. And then I should be able to talk about something other than the house for a change.

Oh, before I forget, I want to thank everyone who voted for us in that "Best of Blog" contest. I realize that many of you were actually voting for the dog, but we do appreciate it. Dooley says "arf".

Back to abnormal...

We have been home from the Rockies for five days now, and life is settling back into what now resembles normal for us. It felt really good to step off the plane onto this sunny, friendly little island nation that we call home. Strange how much I missed this place after only a few days.

Actually, I guess it was three and a half days enjoying Colorado and several life sentences spent hanging around the Miami Airport.

I have been playing with my old obsolete digital camera now that I finally found some batteries for it. I had not been able to uses it for three years. It's slow, it only has 5 mp resolution (Gasp!) but it has some decent Zeiss optics and a 10x zoom. I think the better glass is eventually going to capture some good shots. So I have been stalking around, camera in hand, looking for something interesting to take a photo of. Alas, the views here lately have been pretty humdrum. Other than all the stuff regular readers already know about, nothing much has been happening. Kind of sad, we had hoped that a lot of things would happen in our absence. Ha.

I had taken a photo of the old stranded and falling-apart freighter "La Familia" early this month. A friend on Pine Cay was thinking about putting a small WiFi relay station on it so that he could tap into our internet connection. Here is that view taken with my new camera:



It's still sitting there slowly falling apart on the Caicos Bank. I snapped another photo of it this morning with my old camera for comparison:



That's 4.35 miles (about 7 km) away. And the older camera's image is certainly an improvement over the little pocket digital. Both mornings were hazy, and both photos taken from the same spot on the patio at max zoom on each camera. I am coming to realize that, with digital cameras, at some point optics are more important than more pixels. I am still new at this photography stuff, but having a lot of fun with it. Of course I was hoping for some electrical storms..a dazzling sunrise or sunset...maybe a half dozen waterspouts. ANYthing that would make an interesting photo. Nada.

One of us, of course, has absolutely NO use for electrical storms, and that would be Dooley the Dastardly Dog. He can't relax if he hears thunder. He cringes at his memories of thunders of years past. He gets nervous just contemplating thunders to come. Yesterday he was out working on his tan. I think he feels conspicuous with his 'jail-house pallor' after spending five days in cages while we were gone...



He gives me a dirty look if he even hears me mention storms. He gets all slitty-eyed if he suspects that I am hoping for some good lightning displays. We are getting into the time of the year. I can't wait. Dooley, well, he says he definitley can wait. In fact I am pretty sure he would be perfectly happy to live out the remainder of his life on this planet without ever experiencing another thunderclap. Little wimp.

With the house located near one of the major marinas here on the island we get to watch a lot of boat traffic in and out. Some come to take on fuel and water. Many come here for repairs. Being boat-lovers ourselves we watch all of them with interest. Still playing with the recently resurrected camera I was snapping some photos today.

This boat left and headed South, and that's a little unusual this time of the year:



(the local atmosphere has been hazy lately, so the photos are not the best. Sorry.)

Most of the sailing cruisers seem to like to be either way North, or way South (Trinidad) before hurricane season. Which starts tomorrow,by the way. We are pretty much in the middle of the hurricane belt here, of course. And while I am sure they might be interesting blog fodder, those are some photos I don't really want to be taking. If given my 'druthers', I mean.

At one point this morning we had two of the local live-aboard dive boats sitting at anchor waiting for space at the fuel dock. Here are the Explorer II, and I think the Agressor:



Here is another view of the Explorer II.



The marine archaeology group that is coming to the TCI this summer to investigate some old shipwrecks has chartered this boat for essentially the whole month of July. La Gringa and I have been invited to participate in their search. I think we might take them up on it, and lend them a hand with the survey work. That kind of stuff is extremely familiar to me. We have also offered to show the researchers some of the shipwrecks that we have discovered on our own. Fun stuff.

I took a lot more boat photos than that, but this is probably enough boat pix for one post. I might slip another one in later.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....we returned from our trip to find Munn and Patrick completely stripping the paint off the deck over the garage....sigh...



Seems like every time we get a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel with this house construction....somebody builds more tunnel.

They had originally rolled on this FlexTec coating. Rolled it on flat. It wasn't supposed to be applied with a roller. Our architect hit the roof over it. We really didn't think we much cared whether it was rolled on or daubed on with a trowel. We didn't think it should make much difference. Actually we just wanted it finished and to not have to deal with workers in our house six days a week while we are living here. We know our builder tried to save a few bucks by having his own guys apply it instead of hiring a subcontractor who specializes in this stuff. Despite the fact that the spec for the house clearly states that the application of this stuff was to be done by someone familiar with the product and finish. We were actually going to let it slide. Just finish the house. And then in frustration at our lack of concern, the architect brought over a sample of what the deck floor was supposed to look like:



Oh yeah, now we understand why he was hot under the collar about it. The texture looks so much better than the smooth painted-on finish. It will be safer with wet feet. It will drain better because it's thicker. We had to agree with the architect. Of course this will add more time to finishing the house. Nobody has stated it yet, but I am thinking three weeks sounds about right...

I guess it must have been windy while we were away. The new palm trees on the windward side of the house all have little support straps holding them upright now:



The dirt pile that will eventually be the second driveway is slowly taking shape. Although absolutely NOTHING got done during the time we were gone.



Today four more loads of fill were delivered. Dumped on the road in front of the house. The guy running the Bobcat (Jesus prounounced "Hey Seus" of course) apparently is pretty particular about his hair, and this stuff produces a ton of dust in this wind. So Jesus wraps up like a terrorist to transfer the piles from the road to the future driveway:



Most of the plants seem to be making the adjustment from their pampered nursery beginnings to life in the real world:



Now if we can just get that sat dish to do a palm tree or cactus impersonation...

We are having torrential downpours at the moment...or I guess I can accurately say tropical downpours. But before the rain started Jesus was busily transporting bucket loads of fill from the pile to the driveway:



(you can just see the approaching squall line behind him. Hey, didn't we used to have a dog around here somewhere?)

I was paying a lot of attention to this, me now being among the brotherhood of Bobcat drivers, of course. Well, really I was watching him more because he has already chewed up an expensive new garden watering hose with that thing.

I pointed out to him, with gestures and my pidgin Spanish, that his left front tire was completely out of air and trying to work it's way off the rim:



He shut the machine off for a moment, looked at the tire, fired off a shrug and a stream of what sounded to me like extremely fluent Spanish, and went back to work. I suppose it's not realistic of me to expect him to avoid driving this thing over my garden hose. Reminds me of the old phrase..."beaten like a rented mule.."

Yesterday the upholstery lady started bringing the furniture back. La Gringa has arranged to get just about every piece re-covered and it completely transforms the way it looks. Looking at the outside of this house we decided that it looks like the kind of place that would have black, white, and chrome inside. Well, we decided to make the inside a riot of color. This is a good start, with the rest of it due back by early next week:



And she just put that coffee table on my growing list of things that need re-finishing.

We hauled a 5 inch diameter green limb from a Casurinas tree (also called Australian Pine, although it's nothing like pine at all) back in the boat with us from another island last week. I finally sawed it into a small pile of planks this week:



I sealed the end grain up with glue, and will stack it where it can dry for a few months while I think of what I want to do with it.



I am limited to 3" widths since I am using a table saw to cut the planks. Eventually I hope to pick up a decent bandsaw and I set up the workbenches so that I can support and re-saw much wider planks. This wood has a lot of potential.

I am very interested in the concept of working with local hardwoods and this stuff is looking pretty good so far. It's hard, dense, with a close grain. Now I just need to see how stable it is when it dries. I suspect it would be good for turning with a lathe. So there will definitely be some DIY posts coming up.

Speaking of DIY...the beginning of the rainy season is pressuring me to finally do something about the cistern "first-flush" situation. When we were buying water by the tankload we really didn't have a silt problem. The Reverse Osmosis desalinated water is clean. No dust in it at all, and the filters I installed handle it just fine. But now that we are getting rain every few days the dust that accumulates on the roof between storms is getting washed into the cisterns. I tried to find a commercially viable device to install, but am giving up. The only things I could find online are Australian-made. They could be modified for what we need, but unfortunately for me they only come in metric PVC sizes. And I have to deal with inches. So, bottom line is that once again I am going to have to invent my own. Keeping in mind that local availability of materials is good, I have come up with this re-modified modification of an earlier modified design:



I have calculated how much water we need to divert, and I can store that with a six foot length of 6" PVC on each cistern. The little floating ball is not as critical as with my earlier idea. The water will get diverted into the cistern when the dirty water tube is filled whether or not I have the ball in there as a check valve. I think it will work. It's cheap. And of course, simplicity is a real good design criteria.

So, that's the situation here, on this last day of May in 2008. We are back on our little hilltop on this little island, where men still go out early in small boats to make a living from the sea...



And where I am now better equipped photographically to snap some good sunset photos. If the sunsets will just cooperate. So far this week, they have been just our ordinary sunsets:



But I am sure some colorful ones will be forthcoming during thunderstorm season.

A DIY lifestyle

First off, I am going to try to write a post that does NOT ramble on and on about the landscaping. Nor the water filtration system. And I have already shut up about building the pantry shelves. (They are finished and installed, anyhow.) I am not going to post another one of those repetitious sunrise photos. At least, not right now. In fact, since I haven't posted a photo of this part of the house in a while, I will use a pergola photo for a change:



And it is taking a lot of self control not to discuss the landscaping going on around the pergola or that row of outside lights I had to fix. Already.

We are once again back to thinking about what to do with that opening in the end there. Maybe a custom wrought-iron gate, or I might build something funky and unique out of driftwood. Heck, most of what I build turns out funky and unique anyhow. Not usually on purpose, unfortunately.

I was just looking over our past few blog posts here. I wanted to add another photo to that previous post about having to fix the lights after they spent just four months in this climate. I was also a bit interested in how we got selected for this "Best of Blogger" thing, and how we got into the "finals" in the DIY (Do It Yourself) category. I am a little surprised at that, because I really did not intend for this blog to be about DIY projects. Heck, it is supposed to be about living in the tropics. You know...sunshine, beautiful beaches, coral reefs, diving, fishing....all that tropical island type stuff.

But.....looking back at what I have been posting lately I realized that there probably is a bit more of the do-it-yourself aspect of life inherent in living here than there is in almost any other place I have ever lived. Basically, it's pretty much a necessity. Being able to be somewhat of an all around handyman is pretty important to living in a small remote country. When something breaks (not "if" it breaks, here, it's definitely "when" it breaks) the choices are to fix it yourself with materials already here, or hire someone to fix it, or replace it or just learn to live without it. We have experienced elements of all of those choices.

If you hire someone else to fix it....well...that doesn't mean it's really fixed. "Fixed" is a very nebulous term here. Some of us consider "fixed" to mean returned to full functionality. Repaired. Problem solved. And then there are others who consider "fixed" to mean that some small bit of the original functionality has been restored. This can lead to misunderstandings when you get the bill from whomever you hired to fix the problem in question. If what was once a coffee table can be made to stand on three legs by adding weight to one corner....is it fixed?

You can, of course, simply replace whatever has most recently failed. This is usually only slightly more expensive than fixing it, but at least you will get something that works for a while. And if you keep the original failed item you end up with an almost complete set of spare parts. Which you can use to fix it when it, also, fails. And it will.

And of course in many cases when something fails you can just learn to live without it. This is the most cost effective solution by far. But it just doesn't work in every case. It's pretty much up to the individual (and his spouse) to decide how many creature comforts one can live without. If you can get by living under palm fronds and spearing fish with a sharp stick, you've probably got what it takes to adapt to life here. Ah, but you will need to sharpen the stick. Knives, whet-stones, 3-in-1 oil....it starts getting complicated fairly quickly.

So, becoming your own home repairman is the logical solution. Not everyone seems to have the genes or chromosones or whatever it is in human DNA that makes some people naturally understand mechanical things. I am lucky in that I do seem to have that particular genetic bend. I struggle with quantum physics and chaos theories that others find to be simple concepts, but I can remove a rusted bolt or re-gap a spark plug in my sleep. There are places for all of us, I guess. Fortunately for me, I think I finally found mine.

Being able to fix things requires at least some access to materials. That is the major gripe about life as a homeowner here. There is just no way that an infrastructure this small can stock and supply all the bits and pieces that a homeowner would like to be available.

For example, there is obviously just not enough local demand for 6-32 stainless acorn nuts in order for the local hardware people to stock them. I am sure I could ask them to order some, but the usual answer when you do that here is "three weeks". Need a new water-heater? Three weeks. Need a starter motor ? Three weeks.

The other stock answer is that "it's on order, maybe it's in the next container from Miami which will be clearing customs on Monday".

Well, for a few months after first moving here one will tend to start counting off those three weeks. As though the part in question is actually going to arrive 21 days later. That is SO "North American" thinking..... Eventually, after enough experiences, one wises up and guess what? It's not going to be here in three weeks. When you call three weeks and a day after you thought it was ordered, you are most likely to hear something along the lines of "Oh, it takes three weeks after we order it. Did you want to order it?" You can forget all about the arm waving and shouting and showing people credit card receipts dated three weeks earlier. Waste of time. If it didn't get ordered, it just didn't get ordered. Take a deep breath. Do whatever mantra works for you. Put a smile on your face, and see if you can get it ordered. And be ready to hear the phrase "it should be here in about three weeks".

I am not joking about this, incidentally. We have been "Three-Weeked" for months on items including kitchen sinks, water heaters, storm shutters (11 months), louvered window cranks (six months and still counting)....the list goes on.

I actually did not intend to get onto a rant about how long it takes things to happen here. That's just a fact of tropical life. It takes some time to order whatever it is. It has to be shipped to Miami. Then it gets loaded into a container, and then onto a boat. It takes a while to get here. Then it has to be cleared through customs. These are all real factors.

What generated this particular post was thinking about the DIY livestyle. Some people choose to live like that, and some of us are forced to. We are a little of both. The other factor that generated this post was a brief visit to the USA over Memorial Day weekend. We had not been in the US since August of last year. And every time we visit up there, the contrast just knocks us silly. It's a different world. And seeing it again brings that home in big ways.

For example, this was part of the view from where we were staying, and it's nothing like where we live:

We were 2,400 miles NW and two miles above our new home. (And YES we were freezing our butts off. I had to actually put shoes on.)

Two miles above sea level. Wow. I don't think you can even get two miles from the sea anywhere on this 17 x 3 mile island we call home.

The area where we stayed has a population of around 10,000 people. About a third as big as the entire population of the TCI. But in contrast to the TCI, for example, I saw a professional installation truck with "Solar Systems " on the side of it. I couldn't find anyone who installs solar systems in the TCI. I had to reseach all that myself. I saw a building supply company here that specializes in "Green" homebuilding supplies. Here, I am happy to be able to just find a straight 2x4. We went into a Wal-Mart store , and I realized that if one were to take every single item off the shelves and out of the storage buildings of every single store in the entire TCI and made a big pile of it.....that total pile would not fill half the floor space of one medium-sized Wal-Mart in the USA. We tend to forget the differences between where we come from and where we now live. We have gotten used to the island life I guess. Living in the TCI, we have become accustomed to dealing with it. It's our life. Visiting the US even briefly sure resets the old perspective, I can tell you that.

And while in the US we walked into the tool department of a Sears and Roebuck. La Gringa had to drag me out by the scruff of the neck, with a set of taps and dies in one hand, an 80 tooth table-saw blade and stabilizer in the other, and a spray of drool on the floor marking where I apparently made a desperate lunge for the power tool display.

I have jokingly referred to the TCI as the "Land of Make Do" from time to time. I don't mean that in a derrogatory manner at all. Most vacationing visitors to the TCI will never see the small day-to-day McGyverisms needed to keep things functioning here. All of the resorts have their own repair people. They have backup generators for power. Some of them make their own fresh water...but for someone living here one constantly must be thinking in terms of Plan B, C, and D on the almost certain knowledge that Plan A isn't going to work out the way one might have anticipated. Oh, it will usually be something small, like a specific tool or part that does not exist here. Or an expertise or service that just has not materialized here yet. And 'yet' is the operative word there. It's all coming. We have seen huge changes just in three years. I wish we could slow it down, in fact. We like it the way it is. Warts and all.

It can be frustrating, for sure. The TCI is NO place for a "Type A" personality to settle. Those people will not be happy here. The pace is different. The life is different. Up in the USA there is always a choice of suppliers. There is competition for overnight delivery services to anywhere in the country. There is a Yellow Pages phone book an inch or two thick. Not here, amigo. Not here.
The small size and remote nature of these islands dictates that one adjust to the local pace and realities. It's all part of it. And it is definitely not for everyone.

So, maybe the DIY aspect of these posts is more about us leading a DIY life, as opposed to being used to buying a life off-the-shelf in the USA.

Back to the TCI...well this week we saw, for example, what at first looked like one of the Marine Police boats following one of the small local "conch" boats:



Then we took a closer look, because I noticed that the outboard motor on the Police boat is not fully down....



And we discovered that in fact the small local boat was towing the disabled Police boat...
I don't think you would see that too often in the USA. But here, it's a pretty sure bet that the Marine Police officers in the disabled boat are blood relatives of the fishermen in the conch boat.

As for new developments at the house, they are still going on. Here's a look at the electric water heater that we have been using for the past three months:



Notice how it pretty much fills the closet that it's installed in? That's pretty convenient, wouldn't you say? Well, maybe not if you understood that this was supposed to be a linen closet. Nothing to do with hot water. The electric water heater was supposed to be in the little attic above the closet. See, the idea is that the solar heated water from outside would feed the electric water heater. Then we would only need to use electricity to slightly (if at all) heat the water in the tank. The tank is very well insulated, and our idea was that it was more for heated storage of solar heated water, than to be the primary source of hot water. It needed to be installed higher than the solar collector for some simple reasons having to do with physics.

Well, the contractor somehow did not notice that little part of the plan. And he was not too happy about us insisting that he make it right. But we did. And he did. Well, almost.

The electric water heater he installed in our linen closet was too tall to fit into the attic. And the correct model is too wide to go up the pull-down attic stairs. So the solution was for him to buy the correctly sized water heater, and cut a hole in the wall above this linen closet in order to be able to fit it into the attic.

In the US, this would have taken maybe two days. Here, it has been about four months, so far. And it's not completed YET...!!

Here is the new short,fat water heater up in the attic, as seen through our new hole-in-the-wall:

That was a blank wall last week. Now it will have a louvered door in it. Oh well. We rescued our linen closet, at least.

Oh, and after hooking up the solar collector to the new electric water heater, the sub-contractor left without hooking up the electricity to it. On a Friday afternoon. Well, we went for an entire week (so far) without a "functioning" electric water heater. It's not wired in at all. And we took hot showers not only at night, but the next morning as well. And the solar heated water being stored in the non-functioning electric water heater tank was piping hot. I guess that speaks pretty well for the whole concept. The plumber was so impressed, I think he is planning to do future installations the same way. It's a pretty simple concept, using the insulated tank to store the solar heated water. Put the tank above the level of the solar collector. Heat rises. Makes perfect sense, right?

Totally new concept to several people here. This took four months to sort out.

The landscaping continues to progress. They are about half-way done. When we signed the contract for it a month ago from start to finish was supposed to take......three weeks.

I do have some more DIY stuff planned for the very near future. La Gringa has been keeping her eye out for driftwood and similar building materials when she takes Dooley the Devious Dog on his daily beach walk. She found this dead hardwood tree, which is pretty common here. (See our previous posts on the Christmas Stumps):

She says it is about three feet tall. I am thinking this might make a good first project using local wood for furniture. I can see this becoming an outdoor patio table. I just need to go back at low tide and dig it out of there. Fun project coming up!! Funny, it doesn't LOOK like patio furniture, now does it. Yet...

Hmm..Would that qualify as a DIY project? I can see it now..."Building a patio table, Step 1. Search the local beaches and mangrove swamps for a suitable dead tree. Step 2: figure out a way to cut the roots and retrieve the dead tree at low tide....Step 3, transport the dead tree home...."

This ought to be good for a blog post. Too bad the voting on the "Best of Blog" contest will be over by then...

We just got back home to the TCI last night. It was a short trip, but we did manage to hit a few stores while we were there. We came home with tools, camera and music stuff, new Crocs, and a renewed aversion to the Miami airport.

This trip should have some impact on the blog, by the way. La Gringa picked up a new web-cam, and we should be able to get that going for those who want to watch sunsets. And I managed to buy some of the special batteries for my old, obsolete Sony F707 camera. It's ancient by digital camera standards. It's slow. It's only got 5 mp resolution...limited image storage, but it's got optics way superior to any of our newer cams. I was checking it out this morning, and now I can, for example, get photos of that marina that is 900 yards away if you are a bird (10.2 miles of bad road if you are driving):

I can get closer photos of the "ironshore" from the patio than I could before:

And we should be able to get better photos of boats, the moon reflecting on the ocean, waterspouts, and other distant subjects that the little pocket digital just couldn't handle.

This is the house we tried our best to purchase back in 2005, as seen from our new patio:

We got overbid by someone who offered MORE than the asking price, sight unseen. We just could not compete with that. So, we started driving around, banging the rental car off the rocks...depressed, frustrated, looking for another house we liked as much, when La Gringa found this desolate hilltop lot ....and said "hey, why don't we just buy some land and build our OWN house?"...and if you follow the blog you pretty much know how that story is going.

We bailed old Dooley the Delusional Dog out of re-hab first thing this morning, since we got in too late last night to spring him....

("I want my lawyer. I want DNA testing. I want some sleep.....it was NOISY on D-Block last night....")

And we are all extremely glad to be home and back to our DIY life, right here at our own little timberline... only 50 feet above sea level.

We like our ice to stay on the inside of the glass. Ahhhhhh