Sedentary Life

Well, this is getting really sedentary.  Feel free to unsubscribe if you were hoping for hang gliding and motocross.  

On Monday Feb. 17 Gerrit assembled the wood chipper, and on Tuesday and Wednesday he gave it a workout.  He chipped up a pile of branches which had resulted from some extensive pruning.  The chipper is electric, nice and quiet, chews up pruned branches just fine, and reduces their volume considerably.  The result is a finely-chopped mash which can be spread in an unused section of the lot or composted.  Everyone burns their yard waste in Portugal, but we're going to buck the trend.  Burning is too smoky.

We went for a drive to explore some of the surrounding area not far from home.  Here are a couple beautiful scenes.

Castle on a hill surrounded by vineyards

Nearby village

Pat has been trying to order a washing machine and a wine cooler.  First there was no confirmation of the order or whether it was going to be delivered.  She contacted Rita, our smart and fully bi-cultural all-purpose Portuguese fixer, who found that the wine cooler was out of stock for a month so they were holding the whole order.  Without telling us.  What?  So Pat tried to cancel the cooler order, specifically saying that, and got the question back whether she wanted to cancel the entire order.  Huh?  Why?  When Pat explained all this to Rita, Rita said well, that's just the Portuguese way.  Pat said she was trying not to go there, to that stereotype, and Rita responded "hope is the last to go".  Hah!  That ironic pessimism is kind of a Portuguese stereotype too.

Pat ordered the cooler from another store.

On Thursday we thought we would visit a swimming pool supply place not far from here.  We need a new pool cover, plus we really don't know what we're doing and we're hoping to get some general maintenance advice.  The website is bilingual and we were hoping to speak to someone in English.  When we got there we found a woman who seemed kind of sad and only spoke Portuguese, and with some difficulty we gathered that the owner was not at work that day.  Or something like that.  So we bade her farewell and made a mental note to call first next time.

Friday was another delivery day: a washing machine and a curling iron.  Gerrit also built a little shelf for the bedroom alarm clock out of materials he'd been accumulating.  Later we went to the regular Friday expat gathering at the Margen bar and met some more interesting people with fascinating stories.  We got a possible connection for a plumber too.

Sunday we made the 1 hour drive back to Porto for some errands and shopping.  When we moved here to Ponte de Lima we got leftover boxes and packing material from some fellow expats who had recently moved, and Sunday we took them to the next users, a nice couple from Texas.  We hope the boxes get passed along like this as long as they hold up.  Also, Pat had found a gorgeous thick walnut counter top for sale by another expat which we picked up.  It will make a beautiful coffee table.  And last but not least we paid another visit to the El Corte Inglés department store for lunch, a chef's knife, and some of their specialty grocery stuff.

Monday was a reminder of Seattle: steady, non-stop rain all day long.  We stayed totally at home, cleaning and putting things away.  Online shopping too, for bungalows and knife blocks.  Did we mention we're thinking of putting a bungalow in the lower part of the property?

Tuesday was a beautiful day, after all that rain the day before, so we spent some time in the morning doing some pruning and branch chipping.  About noon the wine cooler arrived and we set it up.  Most of the year it won't be doing much, but during the hot summer months coming up it will keep the wine from getting "cooked".  Yes, that's the term for it, and it ruins the wine.  Pat also harvested a couple dozen lemons, started a batch of limoncello with the zest, and froze the juice in ice cube trays for lemonade or cooking.  Here is the lemon tree before the harvest, but there are plenty of lemons left.  Next up: lemon curd!

Wednesday was another nice day, but we had both slept poorly the night before.  A large neighbor dog sounded like he was ticked off at some predators which were after his goats between about 3:00 and 4:30 AM, barking incessantly.  Ah, country life.  We went grocery shopping in the morning (also picking up a computer printer and a cheap little single-shot espresso machine), and in the afternoon we measured and photographed the potential bungalow area.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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