Author: doug

Yay! Water!

So far, this is the most insufferably hot day of the summer currently reporting 35° C (95% F) in Montevideo. Clouds are piling up, and it has that “this has to break soon” feeling: i.e., rain.

And the little joys — the sudden sound of water filling a toilet tank after several hours without water. We never lack for drinking water; I tend toward stockpiling (horoscope: Cancer) and my wife knows the value of water having experienced the Cyprus coup and invasion of 1974 somewhat intimately.

Regardless, to suddenly lose water on the hottest day of the year is disconcerting. I was reminded, in the heat with no water, of the drought in neighboring Brazil. Even though rain in January here is unusual — except for last year and this year — I can’t complain …

summer clouds promising rain in Uruguay

… as I hear thunder in the distance.

Stuff

A new reader, AJ, commented on an earlier post:

That’s the one thing I would miss about the US. Stuff. Whatever you need, you can usually find it cheap on Craigslist or a yard sale or something. I needed a cement mixer a few years ago, found a really nice one on CL that had been tipped over onto it’s motor, which ruined the motor. Bought it for $50, found a motor in a thrift store for $10. Put it together and still use it. I guess there are trade-offs for everything.

We had lots of stuff. Prior to leaving for Mexico, after several garage sales, we still arrived at in-laws with this (plus a laden minivan and laden pickup truck that pulled the trailer):

2006-12-arrive-vancouver
Yep, I used every bit of it. Regularly. For real. Honest. En serio.

We moved from the USA to Mexico in a pickup truck. A few years later, what we shipped from Mexico to Uruguay fit on one pallet (we also brought lots of luggage).

There are advantages to shipping a container of household goods from the United States — you can bring additional quality furniture scoured from Craigslist or estate sales. But every American’s “household goods” container I’ve seen looks like the photo above. Not a curated collection of carefully-chosen objects — just stuff.

Most of which they weren’t using there, and won’t be using here.

And obtw we do have Mercado Libre. 😉

 

Oopa

oopa

This might have just happened this morning. A few minutes earlier an ambulance calmly went by with its lights flashing. Head hit windshield (doesn’t show in this photo).

The story? Would make a good assignment for a writers’ workshop.

Heat remediation in an uninsulated house

Typically uninsulated Uruguayan house cieling
Adding a little R to the north (sun)-facing side of the bedroom ceiling

On the other side of the aluminum-backed fiberglass insulation I’ve installed, there’s more of the thin tongue-and groove paneling wood (lambriz), a layer of sheet plastic, wood strips, and clay tiles. During the summer, the north-facing roof tiles take the sun all day, radiating heat to make our bedroom the hottest room in the house in summer.

And the coldest in the winter, with nothing but 1 cm of pine for insulation at the peak where the hot (well, warmer anyway) air gathers.

And oh by the way, yes, being up that ladder like that is a little crazy.

Yee haw 2015!

2006-animated-grid

Since my wife posted one of my color grids over here, I thought I’d share an animated version, which, had I more imagination, might somehow find itself linked to an inspirational message about remaining true to yourself, yet adapting in what will — according to the egg-spurts — promise to be a most interesting year.

Может вы живете в интересное время

The color grid dates back to my college days, when I slaved with Prismacolor pencils, getting a few interesting results, and a lot less so. One poorly-chosen color wrecks the overall effect. 30 years later, I created a template in FreeHand, and was able to go through hundreds of iterations in the time it would take to hand-color one grid. This is from 2006.