Reef Madness

Part III: Now what? page5

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
Lewis Carroll

July 16, 2007

We received some more pictures from Lewis. This one was taken on Friday. As we have said in the past, we love getting pictures - particularly pictures of people working - particularly pictures of stonemasons working. One thing stands out in the picture, the stonework is beautiful. Here is a picture of Johnson acid washing the inside walls of the great room. The stones are coming alive.

July 17, 2007

Just when you think its safe… More wonderful news. Yesterday we were told we have no grout. We picked out a grout color months ago. We went with nothing fancy just the stuff that Home Depot carries. Being the fat, dumb, and happy people that we are, we believed what we were told and Home Depot told us, “Yes, this is the grout that all the Home Depots carry”. All Home Depots except St Thomas as we just found out! What is worse, there is nothing that comes remotely close to the color we need at the St Thomas Home Depot or at Paradise Lumber. So we have the tile people on site, we are getting kitchen cabinets installed this week and our furniture is showing up in two weeks, no grout. We can’t just grout around the furniture once it shows up and furthermore the cabinet maker says that he is not happy about installing the cabinets before the grouting has occurred. Could Sunnyrock not have seen this coming several months ago, you know like when the tile showed up? No, that’s not the island way. Let’s not check on anything until the day before it is needed. Hey, if there is no crisis one will be created just so you can lose weight by puking up your breakfast. How thoughtful. Now it appears that grout will have to be special ordered from Miami and air-shipped to St Thomas/St John. What part of we are out of money do they not understand? Furthermore the cabinet maker might have to come back a second time to finish the rest of the installation after all the grout work has been completed. He is on St Croix and I know he won’t be returning on his dime. Yes we are overwhelmed with good news. WAPA (soon come) didn’t (come soon) as they promised. No surprise there. It appears as if Friday the 13th came on a Monday this month!

July 18, 2007

Bought some faucets last night. I need to FedEx them to St John. Apparently the cabinet maker is going to install them and he wants them yesterday. This is so archetypal of the way things have happened over the entire path of this project. If you ship too early, things get misplaced, damaged, or frequently grow feet. If you ship too late, you have costly work delays or pricey air freight fees. One of the things that we love about St John is how easily we get caught up in the balance of the island, the harmony, the holistic approach to life and land. We fall willingly under the sweet island Siren song. Building on St John is a dichotomy of separate realities: third world versus Americana, honesty and integrity versus greed and corruption, tolerance and justice versus bias and nepotistic partiality. It is an imperfect island in an imperfect world. For all its faults, I still believe in the fundamental spirituality of this place, but this project has tested the limits of our faith. The Caribe gods are laughing at us. So, I suppose if you ask me today, I would have to say, if you wish to stay under the island enchantment, do not build on St John. Perhaps you should ask me again tomorrow. Better yet, make it this time next year. Oh sweet ignorance!

July 19, 2007

Well, it’s time to start looking at the great things that are going on at our villa. Do you hear that very long pregnant pause? So much is happening right now and so much of it is crucial to the final product (oh gawd, our much treasured Reef Madness has turned into a product!) that we are feeling a tad bit overwhelmed. Looking at other old building blog sites and chatting with others who have walked this path before us, it is clear that all of our newly acquired insights are old news to villa building veterans. Right now we are the walking wounded, still trudging forward and once we see the end, it will all be worth while… I hope. Our trustworthy friends at WAPA will be there today. They promised. I am sure they are busy stringing those power lines as we speak (oink/flap). The one person who has kept his word on everything (so far) is Jack Bishop, the cabinet maker from St. Croix . He is on island. He has had the cabinets delivered and he is in the process of installing them, whether we are ready or not. We are scheduled to leave for St John in 13 days. Since my optimism level is somewhere under my left arch, we have pretty much decided to rent a place on St John rather than risk a villa unprepared for its first guests. Of course we will wait until the 11th hour to make this decision, but the current odds at our favorite Las Vegas casino says el-cheapo-rento here we come! As for the great things happening at RM… soon come!

July 20, 2007

What a surprise. WAPA did not show up yesterday! It seems that there is some equipment that needs to come over from St. Thomas in order to complete the job. What kind of equipment? Oh, a truck, and a spool of power cable. Evidently they realized just yesterday that these items are essential to installing our lines. (I’m beginning to realize that there is a dire need for Project Managers throughout the islands.) Oh never mind. We do have some shots of the brickwork going around our windows (very cool) and some kitchen cabinets that are about ready to be installed (also very cool). We heard that the air conditioning units have arrived on-site (which gets us one step closer to being able to stay there in two weeks – as always, contingent on WAPA) and although the grout for most of the floors is missing, we do have grout for the bathrooms and the bathroom floors are done. YIPPEEEEE!!! If the bathrooms get finished, we are yet one tiny step closer to staying at RM in two weeks. Of course our favorite ‘Vegas bookie has given us some very disappointing odds. WAPA!!!!! WHERE ARE YOU?????

July 23, 2007

So how was your weekend? We lost lots of sleep. Both Saturday and Sunday mornings we were awake between about 2AM & 4AM. Not even the roosters are awake on St. John at that hour. But up north we were, with visions of tile, cabinets, plumbing fixtures and invoices dancing in our heads. Mostly the invoices. How many credit card accounts can we open? Oh yeah I forgot - then we have to pay it all back. Bummer. Sunnyrock called every day, all weekend and sent pictures every day. They had questions about the tile layout, and the light switch color, and the kitchen light placement, and, and, and… We don’t hear from anyone for ages (except for the monthly bill and the mandatory frantic follow-up calls we place after our hearts re-start) and then, wham, they are in our faces. No, it’s OK, really. Questions are good – assumptions bad. So right now is an emotional time – we’re excited, and we’re nervous. In the middle of the night, like between 2 and 4 in the morning, we’re really nervous, no actually we’re down right panic stricken. Then in the light of day the pictures arrive and optimism resurfaces. On a positive note, the kitchen cabinets look great so far! We can now see the look of the simple Shaker style with added simple touches to tie in with a somewhat rustic theme. That is, a somewhat rustic, African, Caribbean, transitional, modern - oh yeah, I left out Gothic - look (no we haven’t forgotten that comment). I prefer the term eclectic. It allows us to zig while the rest of the decorous aesthetes zag. With our TVs disguised as turtles and the proudly placed Rasta Donkey end table, well what could be cooler than that? (Just kidding…maybe) Oh and by the way, where’s Waldo… ah… WAPA? Soon come!

July 24, 2007

Well it’s time to look for a little good news beneath the blanket of bad news. Or maybe it’s just rumors of good news we’re looking for – just about anything of that nature will make us happy now. We received an e-mail from a couple of readers of the Reef Madness Blog offering us their unfinished Coral Bay villa to camp-out in next week. And unlike Reef Madness, theirs has electricity and running water! How cool is that (and what did they do right that we’re not?)! There’s definitely a brotherhood of St. John landowners, villa in progress owners and just plain dreamers of that magnificent, near impossible St John dream out there and it’s been a lot of fun sharing war stories with those that have written us. But offering the use of their villa – WOW – that’s just extremely generous! With our arrival just a week away or so and only a rumor of WAPA being nearby (stay tuned), we’re going to take them up on their offer. On another front, we had the latest in a series of money-budget-crunching sessions with Sunnyrock this morning and there’s a possibility that MAYBE we might be able to finish this project if we use all the money we set aside for everything outside the Sunnyrock building process. Sorry Josephine, we need to scale back your beautiful landscaping design. Of course, they have led us down that Optimism Road before only to sink us yet lower when the next invoice appears. If this time they are closer to the money mark than all the other times (oink/flap) then we’ll just load up our newly acquired/sky ‘s the limit, credit cards to pay for the gas grill, outdoor furniture, televisions, wireless internet, satellite dish, landscaping, and everything else that comes after our builder is gone. But isn’t that the American Way? In debt to the max! Geez, all of a sudden I feel extremely patriotic…

July 25, 2007

More pictures! More pictures! Our kitchen is coming to life (minus the tiling, appliances, paint and other small details!) At any rate, I am very pleased with our cabinets. They look amazing. The tile work is moving along nicely in the baths. Everyone is busy, busy, busy, everyone except - well you know, “They-who-must-not-be-named”. A little flying porcine birdie told me, “Soon come”!

July 26, 2007

“Good Morning, Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority”
“Good Morning, this is Randy Kiser again. Can you tell me the status of our power line installation?”
“Certainly Mr. Kiser, hold one moment………Mr. Kiser, I’m sorry but there’s been a problem with our truck and you’re now on the schedule for late next week.”
SILENCE
“Great! I’ll be on-island late next week, maybe I can help! I can bring my own truck!”
“That would be fine Mr. Kiser, we’ll see you then.”
QUEUE LAUGH TRACK

This is beginning to sound suspiciously like an old Bob Newhart routine. However for any of you old enough to remember old Bob Newhart routines you’ll recall that he was much funnier…

On the positive side today, we got a picture from Lewis showing the progress of the bathroom tile work and so far, not only is the tile guy following our directions, but it looks pretty good! We can even see that little shelf we asked for to put our soap and shampoo bottle. I can’t wait to lather up! Now all we need is water and… kilowatts…

July 27, 2007

We have no pictures of RM that have not already been posted. SUCKS! Lewis, Stephen, you are not helping us out here. As a result, we are all stuck with more animal pictures. This time, we thought we would feature that lovable, wild, and crazy lizard, the Green Iguana. Ta-dah. We have lots of photos of the prehistoric Green Iguana. But the most exciting picture we have was taken a couple of years ago when we and a group of four other couples stayed at a great villa called Eden's Whim in Chocolate Hole. All ten of us were hanging out by the pool catching some rays, when this gregarious iguana decides to take a dip in the pool. He quietly slipped down from the wall where he too was catching some rays and surreptitiously slid into the pool. After swimming about for several minutes, he slowly exited the pool on the opposite side. Our friend Craig was half asleep in the recliner when this guy decided to pay him a visit. Up into Craig’s chair he climbed and onto his lap much as a pet pooch would do. He sat in Craig’s lap for several more minutes before he ambled up his chest went over his shoulder and leaped to the back wall to make his escape. By the way, just ask Craig, those Green Iguanas have some sharp nails. I wonder if that guy puts on a show like that for all the renters staying at Eden’s Whim. I wonder if we could borrow him for a few performances at Reef Madness. Just a thought.

July 30, 2007

Those animal posts get them every time. We have fresh PICTURES! Plan A for tile grout went by the wayside, as did plan B and plan C. This is the island way. Never get your heart set on anything that you can’t control, which in RM’s case has been most everything. The Home Depot grout fell through, as did the grout coming from Miami, and the tile guy, Rudett, was not comfortable in matching a color by hand, on site, so, off to St Thomas went Lewis to seek out the perfect tile grout at various retail dealers. Well… he failed, but he did try very hard. In fact, he made a “seat of his pants” decision for us (because he knew it HAD TO BE DONE before our furniture arrives) and the color is not very close to the one we had in mind but, so what, it works. Time to move on to the next crisis. Speaking of WAPA…

July 31, 2007

We are getting ready to leave for our dash down to the islands to meet up with our furniture (you remember the furniture that we purchased late enough for a guaranteed February move in date, which still is a tad bit premature in its August arrival?). But before we go, we thought we would take a moment to talk about some of the fine people we have been in touch with over the past year or more who have given us moral support, laughs, and shared some of their own hard won island wisdom. It seems that when Reef Madness hands us more than we can stand, someone (frequently someone we have never even met) comes through with a knee slapping comment that kicks us out of our morbidity, or shares a similar anecdote reminding us that we are not alone on the receiving end of the island gods’ merciless sense of humor. There is a lot of caring and sharing among us St John devotees. There are some not to be forgotten (or forgiven) people whom we will embarrass in upcoming entries but for now, here are just a few of the great people who have encouraged us. First and foremost we need to mention the most famous builders of St John blogs and rental villas, the proud parents of Bongo Bongo, Russ and Jeff. We sat in their charming DuPont Circle home, drank wine, ate chips and salsa, and talked island building strategy at the time when we had broken ground and just started on the cistern level while they were just about where we are right now – older and much, much wiser! Try as they might they could not shake our wide eyed naivety of what was to come. Oh what fools we were! Jeff, Russ, I am forever humbled. We have learned from their experiences and have taken their advice and yet, still today, we are exactly in the same place they were despite all our preventive measures. Go figure! We find there is a lot of commonality among us devotees. Eric has taken many great photos of Reef Madness when he visits his own Coral Bay work-in-progress, and we have used his shots on some of our blog entries. Eric informed us that not only is he a kindred spirit in building on St John, but shared a photo of his two very fine Scottish Canine Americans (Westie terriers) when he noticed on our blog awhile back that we had two very similar fine Scottish Canine Americans. Eileen and Gene are the wonderful couple who are allowing us to stay at their villa on this trip. They too have spent way more doubloons and pieces of eight on their villa venture than ever anticipated. Hummmmm, no surprise there! How gracious and thoughtful. They truly empathize with our plight. Before I start getting maudlin (sniff) I just want to say, ST JOHN DEVOTEES ROCK!

So off we go! We’ll update again on Monday, after our return. In the meantime, here are a few more pictures from yesterday, giving us yet another taste of what’s in store for us and for Reef Madness. TTFN

August 6, 2007

I do not know actually what to say about this last whirlwind trip to St John. Did we get everything done we had planned? Yes…and no. Was it what we expected? Yes…and no. How very typical St John. We had an ugly trip down, getting to the villa at 11:30 PM instead of the anticipated 7:30. Weather is often an issue when you fly out of Miami, as it was this time, causing us to miss our connection in San Juan. Have I ever mentioned how awful the Miami Airport is? It is laid out like urban sprawl with no quick or easy way to get from one terminal to the next. It is a Murphy designed airport which assures you of arriving at Terminal A and departing from Terminal E. One becomes disheartened to see the little informative signs indicating (after you have already walked for ten minutes schlepping some serious carry-on luggage) that you still have an estimated 15 more minutes to walk to your terminal – but I digress. On Thursday, we got our furniture and delivered it to Reef Madness – sort of. As the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for Sunnyrock, the work that should have been done well ahead of our arrival, wasn’t. We, yet again, showed up bright eyed and bushy tailed (much like the mongoose) and the tile workers were still madly trying to finish the grouting in the great room. All the tile was laid, but only the grout in the lower bedroom (sans bath) was completed. There was dirt and dust everywhere. This is not conducive to laying out high-end furniture, or even low end for that matter! The trailer (actually 1/2 a container) could not make it up our steep, snaky, paved community road (let alone the rocky even steeper unpaved access road) so Stephen got permission to park the container on some guy's property located behind the Love City Mini Market where we could shuttle back and fourth with a smaller more agile flatbed truck. We showed up at the container about ten minutes ahead of the flatbed and a woman in a gray Volvo followed us in. She was chatting on a cell phone and we assumed she was pulling over to concentrate on her intense conversation. Wrong! We moved to get out of her way and she blocked us in with no intention of letting us back out. I leaned out the window and asked her if we could get by and after ignoring us for a short time she got out of her car and in her best island/Gestapo accent demanded to know why we were here, was that our container, who did we think we were, “vee hab vays of making you talk”, and something about waking up with a dead donkey head in our bed (I think she had some Mampoo Society connections!). She was one intimidating woman! Heck, I was ready to tell her anything she wanted to know, please, just don’t ram another of my rental cars with your Gestapomobile!!! Phew, we were lucky to make it out of there with our flip-flops still attached! So after 3 trips in the flatbed, up that long and winding road, and shoving furniture any and everywhere, we emptied the container and quickly got off Gestapo lady’s imagined turf. Oh by the way, did I mention… WAPA… soon come…

August 7, 2007

In my imagination, I see a beautiful villa wrapped in rich warm colors, island stone, mahogany wood, all accompanied by the music of island breezes and soft exotic bird calls. The feathery soft chairs, sofa, and beds cradle us as we read, rest, or converse. The vista is endless, the tranquility, timeless. OK, I can open my eyes now. Arrrgggggghhhhh!!! The reality stabs me in the heart, oh callous murderer of fantasy! Nothing is as it should be. Where is my beautiful little villa? Soon come? Upon getting the flatbed truck up to the main floor of Reef Madness, it was then a matter of brute strength to maneuver the huge boxes to their temporarily appointed storage spots. Here we were, FDH (fat, dumb and happy), actually believing there was a real possibility of us actually staying in our villa high atop Seagrape Hill. What a bunch of dopes we were! Even had WAPA shown up (in my wildest of dreams), there was no way anyone but a hard core homeless person impervious to heat, dirt, bugs, and building paraphernalia lethally strewn about, let alone pansy, wussy (no blender) us, could spend a night at RM last weekend. It was our great fortune that we were able to stay at an amazingly comfortable, stylish, and did I mention, affordable villa, Blue Caribe (did I mention we are out of money - thank you Eileen and Gene). This villa, also under construction but much closer to completion than we are, is located in Coral Bay (my favorite spot on earth) and is on the same road as several other villas we have stayed at in the past. While we were at Blue Caribe, who should show up to install a watering system but our very own favorite horticulturalist, Josephine! It was during this accidental meeting with Josephine that we gave her the bad news - that we were going to have to cut back on our own RM landscape design and employ an “as can be funded over time” strategy. This is an old story to Josephine. Landscaping comes near the end of a project. Everyone runs out of money, most long before the end. Did I mention we have had better trips to the islands? As for my beautiful island home high atop Seagrape Hill, here’s reality…

August 8, 2007

So we left our freshly delivered but jumbled furniture behind. We were hot, tired, sweaty, and in a most foul disposition. Despising the world at large and humanity in general, we grabbed our swimsuits and headed for Maho. Ah….. Maho….. There is simply no other place that restores a tired, burnt-out soul like Maho. We walked into the water and spent the next hour paddling around with the turtles. We came out refreshed – and thirsty. So after christening the new blender back at Blue Caribe (I believe this was the first appliance to ever be used at Blue Caribe – appropriately so) we then headed down to Island Blues for an evening of food, drink and wonderful music. The tide was beginning to turn a bit. The magic of St. John was still alive, if buried a bit like our beautiful villa floors beneath the thick powdery grout and concrete dust permeating Reef Madness. Friday would be another day – a day of business meetings and a search for lost articles at Sunnyrock… Over the months, we’ve been asked by our builder to ship him “right away!” things like our shower fixtures, the knobs for our kitchen cabinets, and curiously – our wall sconces. “We need them as soon as you can get them shipped!” This was in 2006! On Thursday we got a confession – they lost them, all of them, or maybe they just misplaced them. No matter, shower heads, pedestal and sink, cabinet knobs, light fixtures – all missing. So while one of us headed to Cruz Bay to attend to bank and other head banging island business, the other took a tour of the Sunnyrock storeroom. “Well, here are the shower heads, where’s the rest of our stuff?” They responded with “Let’s go and look at the Sunnyrock container”. Yes, they use a container for their major storage. It’s smelly, dark, wet, dank, and full of all sorts of stuff in no particular order. Did I mention that that place smelled? There was stuff leftover from other building projects, broken stuff, stuff to fix broken stuff, stuff that might possibly be needed some day, stuff that will never ever be needed, and your general garden variety of junk (you know, the gee we might need that dried up goo some day so better stick with the rest of the container stuff). Everything smelled. I was not sure whether we wanted to find our “stuff” in there or not! It was like looking for needles in a wet haystack, but lo and behold, the Caribe gods were looking down on us, shining a light and pointing in the direction of everything that was missing. What’s happening here??? A reversal of fortunes? Our builder said we owed him a drink for finding them until we reminded him that they misplaced them in the first place and we, their customer, were the ones who crawled into the stinky container and found them. Oh yeah… So what about those business meetings downtown – what was that all about??? I’ll give you a hint. Soon come…

August 9, 2007

I’m pretty proud of myself. On Friday morning I opened my first St. John bank account, a business account where we can put all the money from all the renters who visit Reef Madness – but mostly it’s an account from which VIVA can pay all of our bills. The object will be to keep enough money in the account to pay all the bills. That’s all. I brought with me all the required paperwork and figured I’d be there for a half hour. Two hours later I emerged dazed and confused with a list of items the bank still needed from me. The things that weren’t on the list they provided me ahead of time: a character reference? I’ll ask one of my fellow characters for that one. So after a break to run back to Coral Bay to deliver the storage/smelly container items to RM, we went back into town and into the jaws of the beast – you know –WAPA. There they all were, the nice folks on the phone that I’ve begged and pleaded with for the last several months. I smiled and introduced myself. And then I begged and pleaded in person. “One moment please, Mr. Kiser”. One of the ladies at the front counter disappeared into the office behind her and came out with a gentleman whom she introduced to me as: “Mr. Smith”!!! Mr. Smith!!! He really exists? The man who holds the fate of all things voltage at Reef Madness? He was very nice – everyone was very nice – just like on the telephone! I looked around to see if anyone was peeing on my leg and saw nothing. So Mr. Smith apologized to me in person and promised us that they would put in our power lines on Wednesday or at the very latest – Thursday. Now that’s yesterday, or today. I called WAPA this morning and those very nice people told me that yesterday there was a “transformer problem”. But – today, Mr. Smith and his crew are in Coral Bay. TODAY. So the media has been alerted and all available eyes are trained on Seagrape Hill for the approach of Mr. Smith and crew. Will he keep his promise to us? Do pigs really fly? We’ll soon know…

August 10, 2007

So, let’s sum up this last RM trip. Like an old spaghetti western, it was good, bad, and ugly. We have covered the bad and ugly (and smelly as well), but how about the good? There was good. We already mentioned Maho, soul soothing Maho. We mentioned Island Blues… but not nearly enough. There was a band at Island Blues. I can’t remember their name. Did they have a name? Anna (Banana) told me these guys in the band were all waiters and cooks from local Coral Bay restaurants. These guys were amazing! They sing, they play guitar, and they cook! True renaissance men! They did the Steve Winwood/Eric Clapton/Blind Faith song “Can’t Find My Way Home” and either I was one mango daiquiri over the line (Sweet Jesus) or these guys were very good! I have heard many levels of music quality on St John, and I have to say these guys rank right up there as among the best. I also might add I was drinking my frustrations away as well. Reminds me of the pricey reggae CD I purchased on Tortola some years back, after listening to some local band playing in their local bar. That band was terrific - after several house specialty, rum punch drinks. Tossed that CD in the round file when I listened to it back home. Ah, so it goes. Now where was I? Oh yes, the good… One never knows what most granite is going to look like when it is ordered. Being a product of nature, colors can vary dramatically and in the case of our chosen granite, there are a lot of different colors competing for supremacy. If the wrong color takes center stage, well… it would suck! It doesn’t (suck that is). It looks fabulous! We saw our kitchen cabinets up close and personal. WOW! I was a bit nervous when I ordered them. There were no displays of either the style or the color I was going for, but, it worked! And just wait until those beautiful, formerly missing turtle knobs are installed on them. Speaking of turtle knobs, there are some folks who might think that we stole the idea for knobs shaped like little turtles from the Bongo Boys, but NO!!!! We purchased these ages ago (got a really good deal on them) and thought it was a cool and innovative idea. Then those two blogging trend setters actually stole our idea! Well not actually stole our idea as they didn’t know we existed at the time, but I assure you we were first, no, really!!! I also am very pleased with how our doors look. We were somewhat dismayed having seen the over-priced mahogany French doors looking a bit the worse for wear after facing the tropical island climate for so long without any protective coating. Our wonderful lady painter/stainer fixed it all, sanded and stained all the doors and matched the stain beautifully to our kitchen cabinets. OK, I am running out of good here…Did I mention how great Maho is?

As for WAPA? No, silly; pigs can’t fly…

Granite

August 13, 2007

Here we are again, at another Monday, the day that seems to foster the maximum degree of pessimism on our blurry minds. The days on the calendar are getting crossed off a bit too rapidly. We have a concern that our overly cautious availability start date for Reef Madness is, yet again, pushing the envelope. This concern is over a villa that was supposed to be completed by September of last year. We knew we needed to be patient, but who knew the patience of Job was a requirement (or is it the patience of Penelope?). Whatever… We’re ready to paint, we’re ready to decorate – we have several trips planned in the next 2 months to do just that! All we need is for our builder to finish and get out. Well there’s still one more thing we need. When we stopped off at WAPA on our last trip down, Mr. Smith (or whatever his real name is) promised that without fail, our power would be in on Wednesday or, at the latest, Thursday of last week. So much for the up-close-and-personal WAPA promises. So now what do we do? I guess we wait some more and listen to more promises and get an even wetter leg. Damn, my leg is starting to smell really bad. Happy Monday…

August 14, 2007

In the spirit of optimism, we decided to behave as if RM will in fact be completed some day and some person with exquisite taste and deportment will want to stay there and they might actually want to hang out beside the pool in the warm tropical sun. In other words, we decided to buy patio furniture. We have preached balance to ourselves in the decision making of Reef Madness. We decided to go with quality stuff with an eye on the budget. But on occasion, we have behaved in less than a balanced fashion. I guess that makes us unbalanced doesn’t it? (this is becoming frightfully truer by the day). We got a tad bit crazy with our indoor furniture. Balance went right out the window on that one. What about the outside spaces? How does one integrate quality with the reality that this island and its weather are going to kick the crap out of most anything we get? Forget wrought iron. It is beautiful, but not practical for the islands, unless you are into the gritty rusted look or enjoy painting a great deal. Aluminum? I think of falling apart beach chairs. Wicker? That would last about three minutes. Technology, ain’t it great? We now have PVC wicker furniture. It looks like wicker but hangs around a lot longer than its plant based cousin. Patio furniture also comes in a high grade, light weight, sturdy very un-beach chair like, cast aluminum which looks very nice and is easier to move around than either wicker or wrought iron. Both options can get pricey. So off we go to find the bargains of the century (did I mention we are out of money?). First stop, the bargain hunter’s primary weapon, the internet. We need to get some sort of baseline on what this stuff costs. Second, end of summer clearance sales. Right now the furniture world is ridding itself of spring and summer 2007 patio furniture. Perhaps the prices will fall as we get closer to Labor Day, but then the selection could suck as well. In the end, we found some great stuff both at a local garden center and off the internet. The only bad thing about the internet is, what will it really look like up close and personal? We can’t afford to be too picky at this point. We hope what we picked out looks great and it appears to be practical. This is our feeble attempt at pretending that we are behaving logically and have control over something…anything...anything at all…

August 14, 2007

We’re scrambling in about five different directions today. Tomorrow morning we’re boarding another airplane, but this time we’re heading away from St. John, not to avoid the approaching tropical storm (which forecasters now say will stay south of our as-yet-unprotected Reef Madness – WHEW!), but to attend a reunion in Seattle, Washington. Before we go we are madly looking for electronics to put in the great room and bedrooms, racking our collective brains for everything a well appointed villa might possibly require, and trying to work out the timing & logistics for shipping all this stuff in a 20 foot container to St. John that will coincide with a scheduled RM trip we have booked for late September. Tropical Shipping will bring the container to our driveway and then we’ll have 2 hours to load it all securely in the container before the driver hauls it off to a train station for the first part of its trip to the Caribbean. 2 hours! Any experienced freight packers out there want to come to our container party? (We seem to be looking for lots of help lately). All this makes the normal turmoil of the day before getaway day seem quite tame in comparison. Leaving for Seattle and planning for Coral Bay. Who wants to bet I unpack a snorkel tomorrow afternoon? Snorkeling in Puget Sound? Face to face with a geoduck? It could happen… Damn that water’s cold!!! So off we go again, and so does our blog for a few days. We’ll be back early next week to fill you in on the latest from our friends at WAPA. Did I mention I spoke to them again this morning? And that they were very nice. And that they told me that nice Mr. Smith and his crew will be putting in our power lines today. Why am I running away to the Pacific Northwest for a few days? To forget about WAPA, to relax…and because we already paid for it.

August 16, 2007!!!!!

August 21, 2007 ]

Once upon a time there were two wide eyed innocents who dreamt of building a house on St John. They did not want much, just the barest of necessities to make their drab existence tolerable. No Amish they, felt that perhaps the introduction of that modern convenience, electricity, would lighten their burden and comfort them in their old age. Alas, the Caribe gods decreed that all the magical power of electricity would be held by that lesser god, WAPA. The innocents sacrificed chickens and goats at the WAPA alter, but to no avail. They then went to the WAPA Smith god on bended knee, but were cast out of the inner WAPA circle being the mere mortals that they were. Their hopes dashed, their desperation beyond knowing, they made one last attempt at the alter of the Leona goddess, who legend tells us has the ear of the Smith god. It was to her that their final prayers were directed and low, in a market place, in a far off land known as Seattle, Washington, a sign was sent forth for the innocents to witness.

WAPA came through. On Thursday we called our contractor from Seattle and he told us we have power. Thank you goddess Leona for whispering in the Smith god’s ear.

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