Domestic Drivel

Get yourself a cup of coffee, you'll need it to get through this one.  

Pat spent some quality time with Gemini AI and found that our kitchen cabinets can be easily retrofitted for sliding shelves.  She made careful measurements and Gemini gave her the Ikea (pronounced that way in Europe) parts list for shelves, rails, and hinges, and even Portuguese installation instructions for our new handyman Marcelo.  We will pick up the Ikea parts on Friday May 29, Marcelo will take a look at the job and parts the following week to give us a quote, and soon we will have the convenience and efficiency of sliding shelves in the kitchen.  Good thing, because Pat is beginning to unpack kitchen stuff from Seattle and she'll need a place to put it.

She is getting pretty serious about this unpacking stuff.  At her direction we are rearranging, storing, and disposing of furniture to turn one bedroom into an unpacking area.  She is opening and unpacking boxes steadily now.  Gerrit hears a delighted "Ah!" or "Oh yeah!" occasionally as she uncovers a choice bit of buried treasure.

Cleaning the barbecue grill in spring has always been a dirty and difficult chore.  In Seattle Gerrit dragged the thing out to the lawn, took it apart, carefully pressure-washed the whole thing, reassembled, and dragged it back onto the deck.  He's got the same model BBQ here, and wasn't looking forward to cleaning it.  One of the great things about moving to an entirely new life, though, is you're always rethinking things.  Here he tried simply spraying on a local kitchen and grill degreasing product, waiting a bit, and hosing it off with a pressure sprayer on the hose.  Done!  This was plenty good enough (which is even better than perfect).  No disassembly, no pressure washer, little movement of the BBQ, quick, and easy.  If necessity is the mother of invention, then getting old is the mother of doing it as easily as possible.  We're ready for grilling now.

Gerrit has been trying to roast duck here.  It's pretty popular in the supermarkets, but his first two tries came out a little tough and rubbery.  So on Monday Jun 1 he got himself out to the BBQ grill at 7:30 AM and slow-roasted one at 150 C (300 F) for FIVE HOURS.  That did it!  Best duck ever, crispy skin and flavorful moist meat falling off the bone.  He made a nice sauce for it with cherries, wine, honey, vinegar, and Portuguese peppers (everything being local but the vinegar), and Pat made a lovely salad of cucumbers, herbs, and tomatoes.  She grew and harvested the herbs and cucumber, so they were as fresh as can be.  It was a delicious lunch, a nice treat.

FedEx is the worst company in the world.  Gerrit has dealt with them many times over the years, and they are always awful.  He is in FedEx hell again trying to get his pressure washer delivered, over a week late.  After hours of effort fighting idiotic website algorithms, links that don't work, a "wrong" address which was perfectly correct, trucks too big to get here, and calling in our Portuguese fixer Rita, the result is that he will have to drive an hour to Porto to pick it up.  Unbelievable.  Some delivery service.

On Wednesday Jun 3 our new handyman Marcelo was here all day installing sliding shelves in three kitchen cabinets.  Pat's and Gemini's Ikea parts were all here and waiting.  Marcelo assembled them all, remounted hinges on the cabinets as required, and installed them all.  He worked around problems and did a superb job.  He even fixed an ugly cabinet misalignment which our dishwasher repairman had left, so the kitchen looks clean and new from the outside too.  Pat re-packed the items from the cabinets and found that the new shelves have given her more usable room.  And check out these amazing hinges! They move the door to the side so the full-width drawers can pull out.

Pat is in full unpacking mode now.  As of Friday Jun 5 she's unloaded about a dozen big boxes.  Still 100-odd to go, but she's at full steam ahead.  She's finding some nice goodies in there too.

At long last, after driving to Porto to pick it up, Gerrit has his new pressure washer.  It's a Scheppack and it's very well designed, smoother and more powerful than his old Karcher with many clever features and attachments.  And it was less than half the price!  So he's back to his spring algae blasting, and hoping this washer will be more reliable than the last.

Pat found a donation place, apparently run by one volunteering household, which helps low-income new immigrants to Ponte de Lima with essential items.  On Sunday Jun 7 we dropped off a couple thick mattress toppers which could be used as beds.  We were hoping to meet the people running the show, but they weren't there so we left our donations next to someone else's bagful.

Gerrit finished serial number 001 of his power converter.  Hey, ugly is in the eye of the beholder, so just look the other way if you don't like it.  At least it works.  We'll hide them out of sight.  Pat has unearthed her sewing machine so she will soon be testing it out with a real load.  A report will appear in the next post.

(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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