Little Bit of Tuesday

It's Tuesday, 29 November, 2016.

Great Big Hole In the Fence

Wouldn't you know it. They've knocked a great big hole in our fence. Actually, it sort of looks like a painting in a way. They have to tear it down to the footings and then some, in order to repair and build it back up.

Footing Offers Resistance

Endher and Danny busy breaking up the concrete footing. Tough stuff and seems to be a lot of it. Surprised the fence failed there. Well, no, I'm not. Considering all the damage we had with the pool.

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Here's the metalwork from the fence that was taken out till the concrete work gets redone. This was originally made (as were all the fence pieces) by our Godson, Isiael Pech, over in Guinea Grass.

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The painter was here today. He even got a start on painting the inside of the pump house. That will really brighten up the interior.

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Rene is working on replacing an awkward curb and stair arrangement that had no reason other than it grew because of several other projects, into what it was. Soon to be replaced with a small ramp so Dianna can go up that way as well.

Whatzit Has A Name

I had a devil of a time getting pictures and a description of this little critter to post to the Creatures of Belize Facebook page. Finally managed it around 2:15 PM or so this afternoon.

Papi Thomas wins the prize for the quickest response in answering my query, as well as being pretty much right - a Moray and mentioning that there are over 700 species of eel.

Next was Bob Lazell. He nailed it when he said it was one of the 'swamp eels.' Bob and I go back about 40-some years, huddled around the radar scopes and Dead Reckoning Tracer in the USCGC Boutwell's Combat Information Center (CIC). We'd 'lost contact' with each other until just recently, thanks to Facebook. The 'lost contact' is kind of an inside joke as we were Radarmen (now called Operations Specialists). Leave it to Bob to know about my swamp eel. He should. His wife has a PhD in Marine Biology.

Russell Gray wins the accuracy in reporting prize by providing the nomenclature and link. It's name is Ophisternon aenigmaticum, much classier than Whatzit. The common name is: Obscure Swamp Eel. Here's the link: (http://www.fishbase.org/summary/27762). He's what you call an expert.

Regina Allen was next with her suggestion of a salamander. Probably pretty close. I think there are some legless salamanders out and about. I don't know if there are any in Belize.

Ed Lamar came next. He commented about us having weird critters down here. Ed's up in Washington State, where Dianna and I came from. Ed and I worked together at the Washington Emergency Management Division for many years. He was one of our Emergency Operations Officers, helping to run the State Alert and Warning Center at the Washington State Emergency Operations Center (EOC). There's a link to the Division on the right side of this page, if you're curious.

Kristina Nadreau suggested another critter expert in Punta Gorda. I never could make contact with him however.

Gillian Kirkwood via Zoe Walker suggested that Paul Walker might know. Is there a relationship there? I never contacted Paul either. Sounds like Zoe might be an expert too. She agreed with Russell's comment. I know Gillian because when Dianna broke her hip, Gillian and her husband Gordon, most generously allowed me to share their home in Belize City for the ten days that Dianna was at Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. I don't think you'd find two people more dedicated to animal rights and helping rescue animals (and the occasional stray student) throughout Belize. It was a pleasure to have stayed with Gillian and Gordon, the most wonderful and caring people you'd ever want to meet.

Last of the list was Colleen Steege, our soon to be almost neighbor, across the highway a bit, in Ranchito, the neighboring village to Corozal. She wanted details, and right now! Colleen was over here doing some bead crafting with Dianna (they were drinking wine too). She helped me finally get the photos and my description posted to the Creatures of Belize Facebook page. I owe you, Colleen.

Thanks everyone for your efforts. I appreciate each of you providing input. Your prizes are in the mail.
                                                                                            

Pool House Expansion Project, Day 109 - 14/02/16

Valentine's Day, Isaiel and Welding, Burglar Bars and Doors

Days One Hundred Nine, 14 February, 2016

Happy Valentine's Day.

What a way to spend the day - installing burglar bars. Still, this is one more thing that lets you know that the project is nearing the end.

Isaiel Pech, our Godson, lives with his wife, Amarilly and their son, Joshua, in Guinea Grass, a few miles south of Orange Walk. He has his workshop there as well.

Isaiel works as a custom art welder. He works for an art-welding firm in Orange Walk and also has a small art-welding business of his own. He has done all of our outdoor hose hangers. You can see pictures of them elsewhere on the blog. He also did some nesting, glass-topped tables for us.

One of the projects he's working on is a custom, curved stair railing, down in Cayo. That piece is costing around $13,000, just for the stair railing.

Our project was nowhere near that extravagant. Just some straight forward burglar bars, and a burglar bar screen door of our design.

Here's our burglar bar screen door waiting for installation.

Burglar Bar Door Waiting to be Mounted

 But first, the burglar bars need to be installed. We had them mounted using screws and metal shields in holes bored into the concrete block walls.

Drilling A Bolt Hole

 Isaiel's brother, Romelio, came along with Isaiel and Joshua. Here Romelio is holding the Shop Vac to capture the drilling dust. Joshua spent most of the day entertaining Bela our youngest dog, and playing games on his tablet.

Drilling Another hole

 After drilling, the bars are mounted, and the screws tightened.

Mounting Burglar Bar to Wall

 Our first burglar bar, mounted. We call them burglar bars, and they do serve that purpose very well. But they also have another purpose, and that's hurricane preparedness. If you look closely, you can see there's a half-inch channel  on both the top and bottom. That's so we can slide a prepared piece of plywood into the channel, and then lock it down with a threaded bolt in the lower channel. They fit close and do a great job of protecting the louvers and stopping the intrusion of storm-driven water.

First Burglar Bar Mounted

 Here the east side is almost done.

Almost A Whole Side Done

Looking at the action from inside the house.

Bars From the Inside

South side is all done.

Bars On the South Side

As is the east side.

Bars On the East Side

Back to the west side. This time showing the burglar bars for the water heater, making it less susceptible to theft. This bar was originally protecting a window air-conditioner unit we had installed in the pool house. Both of those units have gone bye-bye. It seemed sensible to re-purpose the bars to their new task.

Even One For the Water Heater

Last part of the project is installing the burglar bar screen door. We sort of screwed up by mounting the regular entry door first, but Isaiel was able to work around that difficulty and get it installed nicely.

Burglar Bar Door Getting Mounted

Here's a detail of the door. The design is supposed to be an art-deco lily, but it more resembles an olympic-style torch. Whatever, it still looks cool. We've got the same design on all  of our burglar bar screen doors. We have four others - two upstairs for the Mennonite house and two downstairs for the 'basement'.

Burglar Bar Door Detail

Part of the process is spent modifying the frame to take the lockset. Here Isaiel has been drilling holes to make a hole for the deadbolt and knob latch.

Cutting Openings for the locks

Several trial openings and closings later, Isaiel declared it a good fit, and the job was done.

Making Sure the Locks Fit

A little final touch-up by Romelio, and we could kick back and relax for a bit.

Romelio Touching Up Paint

Admiring the work. It is one fine looking door.

Pretty Cool Looking Door

There's many more photos than appear in each posting. You can see all the photos of the construction project on Flickr at: https://www.flickr.com/gp/winjama/0wVc3s. There will be new photos added each day of the project.   

Carnival's Comin' To Town

Guess what we saw this morning on the daily "pack-walk"? A carnival trailer. This is the first one I've seen since we've been living here.

Early Morning Carny Sighting

I really have no idea if it's planning to set up here in Corozal, or if they're just passing through. But still, pretty cool to see it on your walk early in the morning.

It'd be nice to see a carnival here. I haven't seen one here in the little more than a year that we've been living here.

I can't say that the girls (Cindy and Secret) got very excited about it. As I took the picture, they both - like the good doggies they are, sat then lay down as I fumbled around with the phone camera again. This picture is the result. My big problem with using it, is that I have been leaving my glasses at home, in favor of wearing my shades. Of course, the phone screen is too small for me to read anything on it without my glasses. I guess I'm going to have to start bringing them as well as my little pocket Nikon and use the phone camera just for those situations when I don't have a better camera with me. Which means I'm going to have to start wearing my fanny-pack (or bum-bag for those of you of the British persuasion).

Pretty soon, it'll be a full-fledged back pack, cause I'll have to drag along water for me and water for the girls, and Lord only knows what else.

Oh, yes. It was a good walk today. About three miles and a bit of a new route. I took a left as we came to the Mirador Hotel and we went up to 5th Avenue and back through downtown. Lot's of new dogs to bark at us. Big German Shepards too.

We ran into Doug at Cannon Corners (well, it used to be called that before remodeling occurred). He was on his way into town for something (breakfast?). We later ran into him and Twyla at their new place as we were heading back to our hacienda.

It was a nice walk. The girls were completely tuckered out when we finally crossed the gate into our place.

Totally unrelated, but Isaiel and his helper came by today. He's installing doors and burglar bars for Doug's place. His generator wasn't big enough to handle Isaiel's welding machine, so Doug asked if Isaiel could come down here to do his welding. Not a problem.

Then the next visitor showed up about an hour later. A Belize Electricity worker there to cut off our current for being a deadbeat. I had screwed up the date on the Scotiabank automatic payment from our account. I used the Belizean-style date (9/8/2008 instead of the US-style - 8/9/2008). Which meant the computer wasn't going to pay till next month. I knew about it because I had gotten another bill with arrears showing. Once I checked it out, I realized what had happened. I was going to pay it when I paid the upcoming month's payment, but no. I had to hotfoot it into Courts Furniture and pay my "arrears" this morning. Whew! No cutoff.

Then came John Harris, a Brit contractor, to talk to us about our pool plans. I had mentioned to him we wanted to see about him doing a pool for us sometime as we liked Gail and Earl's pool that he's building. So, we sat and talked with him and gave him a drawing of a pool that we liked. He's going to work up an estimate and get back to us in a few days. The earliest he could start construction is the end of September. Fine with us. I gave up on being my own GC for the pool - just a little too technical for me. Maybe next time, after I see John do this one.

That was all the excitement for the day. It's hot. We're jumping into the round pool this afternoon. Don't try to stop us either. We're going to ride our floaties and nurse a cold beer or three.

Cheers