Gazebo

We are having a cold spell. The high temp today according to our themometer was 21 C. The last couple of days, we have been having a lot more wind than we have been accustomed to and there has been more clouds. That is what holds the temperatures down. At 7 a.m., the temperature was about 16 C; that is not very cold. Monday night when we went to the Viva la Musica! concert, I wore long pants for the first time since we arrived here in May. It wasn’t cold, but cool enough that I felt that I could ‘dress up’ and not be too hot. By the way , the concert (a brass quintet) was really enjoyable. The guys really hammed it up, while still playing good music. They go much further than the Canadian Brass in their slapstick.

We have decided to go ahead building the gazebo in the patio. We had been thinking about combining it with solar panels. However, the latter are very expensive and since we got the new refrigerator, our consumption has dropped way down below the DAC rates. We had gotten the consumption down to just under 8 kwh/day which is just barely under the 250 kwh/month that is the limit to avoid the DAC. However, with the new frig, our rate seems to be just about 6 kwh/day. That would be about 180 kwh/month--well under. Thus, it is not economic to do the solar cells at this time.

We called Jose, the contractor recommended by Gary and Cathy. We had talked to him in July and got an estimate. However, we did not have the money then. He came over very quickly Monday when I called. I think that he had probably given up any expectation that we would call. He came back today with a revised estimate (we want to make it slightly smaller in order not to cut off the sun shining in the windows in the winter months). We gave the go ahead and some materials were delivered this afternoon; he plans to bring at least one worker tomorrow by noon to start. Barb also saw a wrought iron and glass top table with 3 chairs at a used furniture place. We bought it as he gave us a special price of 2300 pesos (about $230) because there are only 3 chairs. The table is bigger and much more substantial than the plastic one with umbrella that was here when we came. Thus, things are moving along. Jose said maybe 2 weeks to finish, but with the fast start, maybe even sooner.