26 February 2010

We did our usual run out to the property to deliver food and water for the workers. They were also going to complete the concrete pour for the swimming pool which has been at least a week's worth of pouring. Traditionally, after a large pour in the air, meaning a roof, our second story, the worker's are given a portion of Chicha (fermented corn mash). We decided that the pouring of the pool was equally worthy of Chicha, so arranged for them to get their portions this afternoon.
We also spent about three hours at Jim and Daniella's at noon into the afternoon. Daniella fixed us a great eggplant casserole for lunch. We spent most of the three hours picking Jim's brain about solar energy and implementing it for our house. He has used solar panels for years running his mining camp in the Yukon and has the knowledge we need to make sure our system fits our needs. We will now have to do some research as to the wattage usage of our various appliances and come up with a daily need. We do have a solar engineer working on this in Lima, but we wanted to be able to have a handle on it ourselves. Hopefully now we will be able to discuss the system more intelligently.
This afternoon we moved some of our stuff back out to Georg's vacation home, next door to our property. This will give us much more living space and will allow us to be on top of the construction as it happens. We weren't up here for more than 15 minutes and Doug was sitting on the patio just looking out over the ocean. We were able to watch the sunset and felt so relaxed.

I bought a squeaky toy for our dog, Stormy, in December in anticipation of her arrival in January. When first introduced, she loved the toy and spent the better part of an afternoon making it squeak. She absolutely adored it. However, it quit squeaking within a few days. She still seemed to enjoy it, but....darn, the squeak was gone. That was in January. At the end of February, that toy started to squeak again. And that toy has become magical! It will occupy her for hours. We have taught her to fetch with it, although she is sometimes reluctant to give it up. Doug plays with her in the truck by making it squeak, making her crazy, and then tossing it into the back seat. But, the best thing of all, we can let her loose on the property and when we need her to come...all we have to do is squeak the toy and she is at our feet.