Busy Week

Well it's been another busy week.

Thursday I had a half day at work so I got home early and started working around the house. The cable guy had dug a trench the day before and he tried to cover up his destruction. So when I turned on my sprinklers for the front lawn and nothing happened I walked to the side of the house where I had a geyser shooting up. The idiot had cut my sprinkler line and instead of fixing it he tried to just cover it with dirt like I wouldn't notice. So I called the cable company and they said someone would call me back on Christmas. Right.... I called them again yesterday and I was expecting a call back today that never came so I had to call and leave a voicemail with threats of disconnecting service and legal action if they don't fix my damaged property immediately. I could fix it, but I won't. I already fixed the line I cut myself last week and I'm not going to fix something that some moron broke and tried to cover up. That is just bad business.

Anyways other than that the week was good. Our neighbor brought us cookies Thursday :)

Thursday I was also able to get over to the pool store and get some chemicals and get an education on pools. When I got home I figured out why my barracuda wasn't working. This guy didn't ever do anything himself on his house. He paid a pool guy 50bucks a month to do his pool. Normal is about 90 so people have been telling me that he's probably not doing a good job. So I went to the filter and pulled out the cartridge and there was two inches of sand in the bottom. I washed out the filter cartridge and all this milky white and orange stuff was coming out. After cleaning that up my barracuda is running fine my pool is looking a lot better.

Thursday night we went to Natalie's Aunt's house for Christmas. The Dominican way of doing things is to open presents at midnight. Well all us younger people wanted to go home so I tried to convince the older adults that we should do it at 11 because 11here is midnight in Santo Domingo. They tried to lie to me and tell me that they don't celebrate Christmas in Dominican Republic. How can all the Dominicans have the midnight tradition if they don't celebrate it in the DR? On top of that at midnight they all started singing Jingle Bells in Spanish. I told them how can they have Jingle Bells in Spanish if they don't celebrate Christmas. Suegrita tried to tell me it's because Jingle Bells is there song and we stole it. But Jingle Bells is a Christmas song so that argument made no sense. So basically they all got caught with their hands in the cookie jar!

So we finally got home around 2am and Natalie wanted to open her present. I got her a PS3. While Jahiri and I were setting it up Natalie fell asleep on the couch (two minutes to setup). So Jahiri and I played PS3 until 4:30. I got up around 9ish and decided it was time for some yard work. Suegrita got me a Sambac Jasmine for Christmas and I have a bunch of flowers coming in the mail that Natalie got me as well. So I ripped out the bush by the front door and put my Jasmine there. Then I planted a bunch of flowers that we had purchased the day before. I put in a bunch of flowers in the front in my butterfly garden and realized that we have hundreds of caterpillars on one of our bushes, they look like Monarch butterfly caterpillars. Then I took out all the white rocks by our bench in the front and put in purple and blue flowers there. The previous owner had someone do all his yard work and it shows. It's simple and it needed a makeover. There just wasn't enough color. I also did some work on my veggie garden. So far my red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers, cucumbers, roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, watermelon, and summer squash have sprouted. I'm still waiting on my green bell peppers, jalepenos, cantelope, and kiwis.

So I spent until 2:30 Christmas afternoon working on the yard. After that we went to a neighbor's Christmas party for a bit. We found out that the neighbor is a delivery nurse at the hospital Natalie wants to have the baby at. These people had an atrium in between their dining room and their living room with big palm trees in it, I thought that was pretty cool.

Saturday.... Another trip to the pool store and Home Depot. Did more flowers, cleaned my garage, cut back some over grown plants, fixed the kitchen sink, and started a vine to cover my bathroom window. The bathroom window in the master bathroom can be seen from the side of the house. It's blurry but you can still see through. So I got a bunch of bamboo stakes and bought two jasmine plants to run up it. In a couple weeks that should cover my window. I also bought a lychee tree which I planted in the back yard next to the navel orange tree I bought last week. The kitchen sink was a lot of fun. This guy knew the sink was leaking at least since inspection but he didn't fix it. Of course since he doesn't do anything himself, he would have had to hire someone. I tried to just change the gaskets and the nut but it was still leaking. Then I cut my hand pretty bad when I slipped working on it. So I got some more supplies and changed the strainer. Another check off the to do list. I also cleaned up my pool/patio area and pulled all the weeds out of the cracks and siliconed them so more weeds won't grow. Weeds = pushed up dirt and dirty pool.

Natalie and Jahiri managed to unpack nearly the whole house. Now I just gotta get everything out to the curb tonight so they can pick it up tomorrow. Still a lot to do never enough time to do it all. I still haven't connected my home pc! I have more flowers coming this week and a house full of people for New Years Eve so it's gonna be a busy week. Still haven't uploaded pictures, coming soon...

So yeah, I had a busy week.