adventures of a gay geek in paradise
Gay geek from Ohio. 12 years in San Francisco doing eLearning work. Former .com CTO. Now enjoying life a little slower in Vieques, Puerto Rico with my husband.
social media & sugar mill ruins
Wow, my previous post on the Playa Grande sugar mill ruins is currently the top retult on Google for "Vieques sugar mill". Between this blog and Twitter I'm becoming a little bit of a part time tour guide. This week Chris from Chicago got in touch with me through the sugar mill post and Suzanne from Philadelphia through Twitter, both to get advice on Vieques. We ended up having a fun time with Chris and his boyfriend and Suzanne and her sister for sunset coctails at Al's Mar Azul the other night. Nice to actually get to meet people in person that I've been interacting with virtually.
Yesterday I took Chris and Parker out to the sugar mill. The mill only closed about 70 years ago, so it's amazing to see how much the jungle has reclaimed it already. It's always humbling and a little creepy to walk out there among the ghosts of Vieques past. I was a bit remiss in my guide duties by not thinking to bring/recommend bug spray. The mosquitos were crazy out there, as you can tell from Parker's reaction in the photo where the mosquitos are trying to fly away with his arm.
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Sugar Mill
Vieques
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pool update week 6.5
I missed the most exciting day of pool work so far. They poured the finish coat for the deck on Friday while I was back in San Francisco, so Chris had to deal with the drama all by himself: one contractor early, the other late; running out of concrete three (?!?) times, etc. But the final results look great.
This week so far they've done the finish plaster on the new pump house roof and inside. I'm really glad we added the glass blocks. It brings in a ton of light. And they're working on the steps, both from the deck to the pump house and in the pool.
Our pool guy had the idea of reorienting the steps so that we have broad steps all the way across the shallow end where the new deck is. There will also be a bench on the one side where the old steps were at the level of the top step. I think it's going to look amazing and be a really nice place to sit and chill out and take in the view.
The wood framing you see in a couple shots shows where the wooden deck is going to go.
With any luck, we might have water in the pool again next week!
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pool
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pool update week 5
This week has been an interesting one with the pool. The concrete for the new pump house roof and base layer of the new deck were poured at the end of last week and now they're starting on the prep work to do the finish layer. So do you like the blue color we've chosen to paint the deck?? Just kidding, this is a bonding agent that help the top coat stick.
On Tuesday we went with our pool contractor on the ferry to Puerto Rico to pick out tile for the top edge of the pool, buy a new skimmer, and order the finish plaster (Diamond Brite in Tahoe Blue) 
We took the first (6:30) ferry and made it to the pool place, Costco, and the tile place all in time to make it back for the 1:00 return. (The next ferry to Vieques isn't until 4:30, so missing the 1:00 makes a big difference!)
We actually have two contractors working on the project. The one doing most of the work is really a few guys that work together more than a real building contractor firm. We thought that was fine for this scale of project and they've been doing good work, are easy to deal with, and actually show up for the job consistently. But none of them was experienced in doing the pool surface and since we've heard many nightmare stories of botched jobs on this, we have another guy who's doing that part of the work.
The edge of the pool will have a slight overhang that's being poured as part of the finish coat of the deck, so this is the point where the work of the the main contractor and the pool contractor intersect, and setting up the forms for that has been a major point of contension this week. The pool contractor is VERY fussy about how this needs to be set up, which is appropriate because this edge is the most visible thing in the project and any imperfection will be clearly noticable. The other guys had been approaching this more like the form for the outside of the deck where things can be less perfect. After several rounds of the pool contractor trying to get the other guys to get it up to his standards, we finally all agreed that it would be better for him to do it himself. So the other contractor ripped out their previous work and the pool contractor has just started over now.
They're saying they'll be ready to do the pour for the finish layer on Monday, but I seriously doubt that's going to happen. Current forecatsts are putting tropical storm Ana right about on top of us at that point (with Bill following behind), so I think the pool is going to have to wait a bit. (Stormpulse is a great place to see what's going on with this.)
Unrelated Bonus: While I was up on the roof of the house to snap the first pic, I took the last one of our flamboyan tree with Mosquito Bay and the Caribbean in the background. Last year we cut the tree WAY back, so this is the first time we've seen it be flamboyant. Pretty!
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pool
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Three weeks with Oliver the puppy
Well, Oliver has been with us for almost three weeks now. I can't belive how quickly he's grown!! Compare these pics to when he first got here. It's sad to contrast him to his siblings still down the hill with the mother. They are still so much smaller than he is now. Chris has given them a couple doses of worm medication the vet gave us for them at least. We're working with the vet and the Vieques Humane Society to get them fixed and possibly adopted.
Charlotte is starting to play with him more and more. She's a little bipolar on the whole thing though, sometimes very friendly and sometimes doesn't want him near at all. Chris got him a cat collar which he adapted to pretty quickly. (After spending half a day walking around backward now and then trying to back his way out of it.) The collar has a little bell, so it's quite helpful to keep track of where he is. The fur is slowly starting to grow back on his side from the mange he had there (the white crescent you see on his side is his skin showing through) and otherwise is seeming very healthy. He's been great a house breaking and very rarely pees inside.
I think these first 2 pics are about the cutest ever. In the last one, he was afraid of the camera flash and went to hide under the couch.
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Oliver
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pool update week 4
Wow, things have really moved along since last week!
The first pics are from Thursday when everything was ready to pour the cement and the last are from Friday afternoon after the pour. We decided to add 4 glass blocks to the pump house roof to let in more light which should brighten it up in there. (This is also our laundry room, so we're not just trying to cheer up the pool equipment.)
The old cement and new cement along the formerly curved wall make an interesting Yin/Yang effect, but that's only temporary. This pour brought the new deck area up the the level of the old. There will be a new finish layer poured over the whole thing. (Hopefully next week!)
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lobster time!
Chris was inspired to stop by the pescaderia today to see what they had. It's kinda hit or miss sometimes, but today they had a pretty decent selection of fish and LOTS of lobsters. We got 2 small ones (1.5 lbs each) for dinner. Yea!! We'll steam them and then lightly grill with rum butter sauce. (See my previous post for details & yummy pics of that whole process.)
We needed butter to go with the lobster and stopped in at the Morales grocery in Isabel II, but in true Morales style they had more than 30 different varieties of margerine, but NO butter. We were at least able to get some at a colmado on the way home.
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Vieques
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pool update week 3
Well, we're now 3 weeks into the pool project and have continued to make good progress since last week.
The cement roof of the pump house had been poorly constructed and has been leaking profusely, so it had to come off to be replaced. And the surfaces of the existing deck and the pool both had to be chipped off. So this week has been all about attacking cement with little pneumatic hammers (think mini jack hammer) and the noise has been driving us (and I'm sure our poor neighbors) insane. In fact, Chris is currently at the little cafe at the airport to get away from the noise for a conference call. Thankfully I think there's probably only a half day of that left before moving on to relatively silent rebar
work.
All the rubble has been used to fill in where the new deck will go, so not only will we not have to haul anything away, but we're going to need hardly any additional fill.
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update on Oliver the puppy
OK, we've named the puppy. Went with Oliver (after Oliver Twist) since he presented himself to us as an orphan (or at least outcast from his family) and it seemed to fit.
He got a good flea bath in the kitchen sink that made a very immediate improvement. And has since been to the vet with a good bill of health. (Except the worms that we knew he'd have.) He weighs in at a scrappy 3.8 pounds. The vet gave us extra worm medication that Chris has been trying to give to the rest of Oliver's family in little meatballs of wet dog food.[There are several more pups. If anyone wants to adpot, let us know!!]
Today he picked up his bowl to carry around and do his spot-on imitation of his namesake's famous "Please sir, can I have some more?" scene. (Sorry for the crappy pics, but only
handy camera was the phone.)
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Oliver
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starting on the pool
We knew when we bought the house that we were going to have to resurface the pool. And only 21 months later we're actually getting around for it.
Since things were going to be torn up, we decided to enlarge the deck too. There was only deck on 3 sides of the pool and none of it was very wide. So we're expanding the cement deck on 2 sides and adding a wooden deck angled off the far corner toward the great view of the bioluminescent bay and the Caribbean.
They started 2 weeks ago on the day I left for a week and a half business trip to San Francisco and this is the state when I got back. I'm pretty pleased with the progress!
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