29 March 2010

Only three workers this morning. It quite surprised us as usually any workers who have traveled home over the weekend return by Monday morning. These three workers worked hard though. They got the last column for the kitchen poured and will be ready to back fill behind the wall in preparation for the floor.

We hired a local maestro to move dirt that had been excavated out for the swimming pool to another location. Martin came out, bid the job and finalized the deal with the architect. He was to begin Saturday morning. Well, he never showed up. Apparantly, he was involved on a job in Vichayito with the topographer so wasn't available. So he said he would start Monday. We saw him in town of Saturday and he assured us he would start Monday at 7:30. At about noon on Monday, Sanchez came by to tell us that Martin wouldn't be able to start until 2:30 in the afternoon. About 4:30, Sanchez returns to say he didn't think Martin would show up. He commented on how Martin liked his cerveza over the weekend and was probably hung over. Still no word from Martin.

Doug and I bought a fan from the local market here in Los Organos back in January. The stall owner told us it had a year's warranty. As soon as we got it back to the room at Jay's, we found out one of the switches didn't function. So, we took it back to the market. The owner tried to tell us that that was how it was supposed to work and the off switch and #1 were wired to do the same thing. With our limited Spanish, it took us a while to convince him that this wasn't right. He finally agreed to order us a new one. We went back in several times over the next few weeks and he didn't have the replacement. We had just about given up when Jay appeared at his house with the exact same fan. I think our replacement fan went to the first customer! Any way, we decided not to pursue it as the fan worked adequately, even if we didn't have one of the speeds. In the last couple of days, the fan quit altogether. So, we took it back. As soon as we appeared, he started to tell us our warranty was out of date; we couln't return it.... He finally agreed to see if he could repair it. When we picked it up, he demonstrated that it did indeed work, other than #1 button, and we took it home. Yeah, now it will run for about 9 minutes and then quit.

My friend Daniella from the Yukon left me in charge of her spice can. This can is about the size of those Christmas cans you get filled with caramel popcorn. She has a treasure trove of spices; some I've never heard of before. One such was tandoori masala. A bit of research on the internet resulted in a recipe for Tandoori chicken which I tried out. It was excellent! It was supposed to be cooked on a grill; but since we didn't have one available, we did it in a frying pan. The flavor was excellent. I'm anxious to try it again on Jay's grill. Thanks Dani!

As we were enjoying our dinner, we were visited by this pair of geckos. I haven't often seen two of the together like this and soon discovered that this was a lovers encounter. They mated, on the wall, in plain sight with no thoughts of anything else or anyone's sensibilities. The mating included the thrusts and contortions of other species. Curious...and then they were soon on their way!