Days in the Lives

Dear reader, our posts here are going to become fewer and farther between.  This is because we're not doing much which is blogworthy!  Who wants to read about shopping, yard maintenance, and household repairs?  Bleah.  We will continue to take notes when something interesting happens and make a post when we have enough verbiage, but don't worry if they're no so frequent.  Rest assured that we remain happy as clams, asking each other every few days "how did we get so lucky?"

On Wednesday March 12 Pat put together the rowing machine and Gerrit installed the window film in the bathroom.  Both projects went well, and now we can shower off after a workout without any neighbors with telescopes peering in.  In the evening we went to a new (to us) English-speaking expat get-together, in a cool craft-beer bar right in the lovely heart of historic Ponte de Lima.  Our friends Maayan and Dan were there, and we met some new and interesting people too.

A couple weeks ago Pat found a walnut counter top plank for sale in Porto, and a few days ago we bought some suitable legs for it at a hardware store.  Thursday 3/13 Gerrit screwed the legs to the plank (which turned out to be a bigger job than it sounds like) and now we have a new coffee table.

On Friday 3/14 our Portuguese housekeeper Inês was here doing her normal fabulous job.  We also had the nicest, longest conversation yet; we're all becoming more comfortable with our first-grader speech in the other's language.  We asked her some specific things, and she asked us if we would like some of the oranges from her big tree.  The next morning she showed up with a huge bag of oranges!  What a sweetheart.  Gerrit played her some of the text-to-speech Portuguese audio he is using to learn vocabulary (and to create the audio in the blog here), and she agreed that it sounded fine.  We love the way she occasionally rolls her r's like the Spanish.  It's apparently a north Portugal accent.

This second day Inês was here to do some weeding and we invited her for lunch.  It was more stressful this time, we hardly understood a word.  She is pretty high-energy, talks quickly, and doesn't slow down much for us.  There were a few moments of clarity, but we were both pretty exhausted afterward.  Just when you think you're getting it...

Sunday 3/16 our handyman came by and weed-whacked the lower acreage, the possible future home of the bungalow.  Brambles and gorse take over down there, and it needs a regular haircut.  About 45 minutes before he arrived, Gerrit discovered we had no gas or two-stroke oil for the weed-whacker.  He ran off to a nearby gas station and got some, after asking haltingly about the two-stroke oil.  He and the gas station attendant, an older guy, had an animated discussion, and with some gestures and simple words they managed to communicate.  They both smiled broadly and Gerrit zipped back home in time for the handyman.  After the weeds were whacked we took a drive northeast of here again, through the beautiful countryside in the clear afternoon sunshine.

We discovered an excellent wine called Periquita, from the Setúbal peninsula just south of Lisbon.  It has dignified tasting notes in English: "...renowned for being the first red wine bottled in Portugal... celebrates the Portuguese way of life... relaxed, warm, fruity and with a spicy nose... what Portugal is all about" bla bla bla, but we wondered what "periquita" meant so we asked the Reverso translator.  It's a vulgar slang term for female genitalia!  WHAT??  You can't put that on a wine label!!  But there it was.  A little more research revealed that it also means "parakeet", but sources seem to all acknowledge its slang meaning too.  Holy cow.  Gerrit will have to be careful not to ask a female wine shop clerk for "some of her Periquita".  He might get a wine bottle cracked over his head.  Unless periquita truly is "what Portugal is all about", like the label says.

On Wednesday 3/19 some representatives from a prefab log cabin supplier visited to look at our possible bungalow site.  They made some measurements and we discussed some options, but we're not sure we want to go with them.  In fact, we're thinking now we might enhance the living quarters already off the garage to make a nice guest room instead of adding a bungalow.  The garage needs a normal human door besides the existing car door anyway, so we could take care of that at the same time.

This online shopping stuff really takes it out of you.  We've been looking for linens and blankets, electric brush cutters and crampons (for standing on the steep hill while working), and, oh my gosh, where did the day go?

Sunday 3/23 the weather had been quite stormy for several days, including a brief power failure, but it began to clear.  We took a drive to nearby Serra da Arga, the highest region in the area at 730 m (2400 ft) and home to a windfarm along with some villages on the way.  Along the road we saw a fence, stair railing, and house all built from rocks of random sizes fit cleverly together.  On the way home we had a beautiful view of Ponte de Lima and its surrounding villages.

On Tuesday 3/25 a technician came out to look at our solar water pre-heater system and found it wasn't working at all!  It required a bit of TLC, draining and re-pressurizing the glycol heat-exchange fluid, and now it's great to see the 285 l (75 gal) tank heating up by 10 C (18 F) after most of a mostly sunny day on solar only.  This should certainly help keep the electric bills down.

And here is a serene image of morning fog over Ponte de Lima, seen from our front room.

(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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