Mary's in Wonderland

I've heard that Mary from South of Zero is in Cuenca this week. Everyone can meet her at the California Kitchen on Friday this week - everyone but me. There has been so much rain this year that the driveway in La Paz is totally washed out. I made arrangements a couple of weeks ago for a bull dozer to regrade the driveway and he's coming on guess what day. I'll never be able to get his equipment back out there if I stand him up. So to Mary from South of Zero - I hope you have a great time in Ecuador, I know you are in good hands.

Digger has been really busy this week.  As soon as I find out what tools and clothing items she has taken and where she has been hanging out, I'll let you know. She has a degenerative hip disorder, which is the main reason we adopted her, to give her a good quality of life for as long as she can stand it. She's 6 months old; I kinda expected her to be dragging her butt by now but so far it is just affecting her left hip and she is doing pretty good as a 3 legged dog.

The east wall of the bedroom is finally at sill plate level for the roof rafters. On the north end of the wall, where the loose brick is sitting on a notched block at the 5 foot level, is where the 4 foot arch will go as an entrance to the front porch. There will be a total of 4 arches in the front porch. I think that is too hard to visualize - I'll just show you when I get it done.

The value of real estate along the newly paved Panamerican South Highway has really gotten pretty expensive. I didn't pay to much attention to it until recently when 80 acres went up for sale to our south and I can see new construction about 1/2 mile to the north. When I went to pay my property taxes a couple weeks ago and had to redo a bunch of paperwork, I decided to calculate the increase from when I bought the property a year ago. 3000% - that is three thousand percent in official pay taxes on appraised value. When I bought it I knew I paid too much but Barb wanted it. Now it appears it's worth about twice what I paid for it, I guess I should pay more attention to what Barb has to say - I wonder how her stock picks are doing ?