Our Domestic Adventure

More home improvements are underway here at Pat & Gerrit's Domestic Adventure.  We have our garage door on a battery backup system now so we'll be able to get into the garage even in a total blackout, and we ordered a keypad to mount on the outside so workers can get in there any time too.  We ordered a pool cleaner robot to liberate Gerrit from that big vacuuming job.  It is a little rotary brush tread-driven thing like MO (Microbe Obliterator) in the Pixar movie WALL-E.  MO's favorite expression was "foreign contaminant!" as he scrubbed furiously, and it's what we're naming our robot.  It is battery powered, and crawls around on the pool bottom (and walls!) scrubbing the surfaces and scooping up junk.  And we have our painter and construction guy Rui lined up to replace skylights and re-do a low part in the roof.  That will happen late this summer.

We were so busy nesting that we forgot about the Feiras Novas 200th anniversary celebration in Ponte de Lima on Tuesday May 5!  There were fireworks and a live band, and we slept right through the whole thing.  Here is a post about last year's actual Feiras Novas festival, a huge party and the 199th anniversary, and we plan to attend this year's event this fall too.

Rachel, our furniture sales contact and interior decorator, paid us a visit on Thursday May 7 to take photos and measurements for a couple more pieces of custom furniture.  She did a great job with the main beds, which are now installed, so it will be great to see what she comes up with for the bookshelf and fold-up beds.  We drew up some sketches and dimensions for a couple chests of drawers too.

Pat has had a bad right knee since a serious mountain climbing fall in high school.  She's been putting up with it and reinjuring it ever since, but now she is preparing for a knee replacement procedure this winter.  She went to our favorite hospital in nearby Viana do Castelo on Thursday May 7 for an MRI and X-rays.  High quality modern imaging equipment, both knees, both exams, total €180 ($212) out of pocket, paid for there at the hospital with a credit card just after the procedure.  Health care done right.

As of the 12th it has been rainy and cloudy for most of May.  April was beautiful and clear but May so far has mostly been wet and dark.  We're eager to get to our projects outside, but not in the rain.

On Wednesday May 13 we celebrated our anniversary at an elegant Ponte de Lima restaurant called Pimm's.  (We've never been very good at celebrating our anniversary on our actual anniversary.)  The restaurant is in a renovated farmhouse with thick dark timbers, a huge fireplace, and thick stone walls.  The grounds are beautiful, tasteful and park-like.  They have an extensive Portuguese menu and an even more extensive fine wine list.  We ordered Pernil de Porco no Forno (roast leg of pork) for two, with a bottle of Touriga Nacional wine (a Portuguese grape, a favorite of ours).  The pork was carved at our table by one of the friendly and attentive wait staff, and it was delicious.  By the time our mixed fresh fruit dessert arrived we could hardly eat another bite.  We went home happy.

Earlier that day we had heard a chainsaw nearby, sounding like it was in the grove of eucalyptus trees which our property borders on.  We were hoping the owners weren't cutting the grove down; it's a lovely part of our view.  After a couple dead trees on the end came down, the logging stopped.  They had removed the only obstacle to our view of the medieval Ponte de Lima bridge from our living room!  It was our anniversary gift from the neighbors.  The photo here is the new view from our living room, zoomed 2x, and you can see the bridge and the river Lima serenely off in the distance.

(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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