Hi,
Denise and I sprinted the 65 or 70 kilometers to El Limon on Friday to the lumber yard (“WOOD, ONLY WOOD!”) to get some treated lumber to replace the porch on the bungalow and a few of the elevated walkways over the uneven lava terrain in the garden.
It turns out that our jeepeta, which is huge, could carry only about 1/3 of the required material. This was not a surprise, but was something of a disappointment, since I did not want to spend Monday traveling back and forth to El Limon, preferring to make progress on the porch, which is also the route to the bathroom in the Bungalow. I’m sure that Heather and Chad would concur with this prioritizing of tasks.
Alternative to returning to El Limon on Monday, I checked with our local hardware store, the Ferreteria Virginia, to see if they had the lumber that I wanted and if they could deliver in to our house later on Saturday.
Turns out that they could supply some wood–not exactly what I wanted, but close enough. They would have to get it from Samana and claimed that they could accomplish that all on the same day. These are the same folks who, to my growing amusement had been going through the exercise of getting some additional roof coating from Samana for weeks.
I’ve actually SEEN the roof material in their Ferreteria in Samana, more than once, during this period, and so was not overly optimistic about their capacity to deliver the wood at all, let alone the same day.
Nevertheless, we made out a draft bill of sale and specified the delivery address: “Memo Anderson; above the farm of Quiningo, near to the house of Christian Cabon” and I agreed to pay the driver upon delivery.
I figured that, at worst, I would cancel on Monday on my way to El Limon.
Lo, yesterday at around 4:30 PM I saw the truck from Virginia coming up the road alongside the farm of Quiningo! They found us with no troubles, had all of the lumber in satisfactory condition and at the agreed-upon price, unloaded and stacked it, and were gone before 5 PM.
I’m pretty optimistic that the carpenter (who shall remain nameless) can complete this work before Heather and Chad arrive on Thursday. If not, I am quite sure that I can.
We had some friends over for dinner and a really good time was had by all. We were awake well past midnight, extremely unusual for us, in either location.
Today is dawning sunny and the sea is once again calm. The hummingbirds and butterflies are hard at work in the garden and the mockingbird is trilling his heart out from his perch atop a tree out front.
Today my sympathies are with the mockingbird.
Bill
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
Tags: Denise Hanna, Dominican Republic, Heather Wilton, Las Galeras, Living in the Dominican Republic, Retire, Retirement, Samana