Two months on island flew by. In some respects it's good that the flights take all day otherwise the transition would be too fast. You would think after having done this close to twenty times it would be no big deal. It still is. From a 12x12 shack, with a 20mph speed limit driving on the left, it still takes an adjustment stepping to the curb waiting for Denise. I don't even drive, that says it all, until the next day. Hoping on a freeway at night with everyone barreling along at 80 is rather daunting, especially when you are half asleep. Instead, I fasten my seatbelt and white knuckle it all the way home--20 minutes of pure terror! I'm not a good passenger.
The western span is still my favorite, right up there with it's famous cousin, the Golden Gate.
Like all thing bureaucratic the new bridge is decades late and billions over budget. We won't even talk about all the defects they are finding already. A skeptic might say we have made no progress in 85 years. The original bridge and the Golden Gate came in under budget and took less than three years including the drawings. Now 15-20 years at extraordinary costs. Still to be determined--will they last?
Taken from inside Macy's at Union Square.
Xmas is when we pretend it's winter by putting up an ice rink! This one by the Ferry building.
Just like the flights, the month in SF is on an auto pilot of sorts. Movies, museums, a few dinners out with friends, and the walks to get to them.
One of the six we crammed in. I found it hilarious. Not for everyone--that is for sure.
We have friends that live just outside of Napa so taking the ferry to Vallejo is the best way to go. How else would we find ourselves at Pier 39. I love these guys. They moved in and took over the whole marina!
Winter is our rainy season. Everything turns green and blooms. Like I said, we pretend it's winter. Originally this conservatory was destined for a private residence back in the 1870's. James Lick died and the crates were later bought and given to the city. Added bonus--the deYoung museum is just a short stroll away. It's a twofer for us. We are always there several times a year. This time it was the Bulgari Collection. You actually know it even though you may not. It's that big bling Liz Taylor always seemed to have around her neck or hanging from her ears. The piece below was one of hers.
One of the best parts of going to the movies are the walks to get there. It makes the fattening popcorn not so decadent.
The park at the top of Octavia looking put towards Angel island.
Some years this is the extent of our xmas decorations! Truth is we leave it there all year minus the red ones. lol.
Had some more stitches added to my collection. This time on the back of my neck. My eye/nose is healing nicely but the nerves haven't returned yet. If I ever end up on the wall of the Post Office my defining feature will be one eyebrow. Thank god I'm old now otherwise this could be tragic!
It follows us wherever we go...lol
One last walk in the park, this time the Legion of Honor for Anders Zorn. Who? Sweden's greatest painter.
Out front of the museum. If you walk forward and turn right past the statue the Golden Gate looms not to mention the city off to the other side. If the museum wasn't here it is safe to say I would visit this incredible spot as much as I go to the top of Twin Peaks---which is twice! Thank god they plan the museums layouts here for peeps like me otherwise I would miss so much.
Finally in my desperate attempt not to gain 15 pounds when I'm here, our daily walk of sorts--the Presidio.
the pier off the Warming Hut
The red eye to New York. It's always a little strange flying into NY. Having grown up there for eighteen years, yet never really returning after college, it feels like home but It's not. I know all the people yet I don't know anyone. But it is home in some bizarre way. I guess the formative years do put a stamp on you.
Going and coming sometimes seems like a dream. If I didn't have the healing scars on my face, did I actually leave? Leaving in October was risky to begin with. The hurricane season runs July through November with September and October being noteworthy. Now it is true there's really nothing I can do during a hurricane if the house were to suffer any damage but there is a lot I can do to mitigate the damage immediately afterwards. It may simply be putting a tarp over a hole in the roof. The point, not being there prompts close weather watching every few days. During the season the storms are constantly forming off of Africa/Cape Verde islands and barreling across the Atlantic. Thankfully, tiny islands are hard to hit in the vastness of the ocean. It does happen however. When it does the survivors never forget. Some peeps move. One is enough. Akin to tornadoes, I would imagine.
First chore, cleaning the mold and mildew that builds up when the house is closed for more than a month and it rains. I can do the whole house in an hour. I spray and use a sponge mop. The trim is all painted in oil so it instantly disappears. I'm currently testing paint additives. None have worked so far.
Poor guy. Only the second one in all these years. They are not like city rats. In a different time and place they would be a pet like a white rat that so many people have. If they ate crumbs, wore diapers and generally slept at night I probably could live with them. With Lizzy, my feral cat patrolling I just don't have any. He moved in, I was gone a month, who can blame him?
Back to the punch list. With only two months before I leave again I'll do some things that will give a sense of completion. Most of the jobs never get truly finished as I'm usually waiting for something missing. With Roger's jackhammer above it was for one of the handles. I gave up waiting and used it as it was to relocate the downstairs toilet drain. Why move the drain? Because I changed the closet and utility room dimensions by a couple of inches throwing the toilet placement to far from the wall and too close to the shower. Then I had to order a 45 degree offset flange or some such from Amazon, trans ship via SF, hammer down through 6" of concrete, make it all fit, and pray like hell that the toilet would flush properly when it was done!
Done!
Days like this make it all worth while.
On the way back from Cruz after returning the jackhammer to Roger.
The cabinet arrives, crushed a bit but undamaged. With the drain moved, I jumped upstairs to finish the cabinet installation, left since August. Made other changes also. I did not like the cabinet on top of the refrigerator. Took it down and rehung it. We had this idea that we would make everything be flush with the refrig profile but it was out of the question. The more I looked at the ginormous footprint I couldn't handle it. When we purchased our appliances counter depth refrigs were not available at reasonable prices. Compound that with my using the wrong dimension on the refrig and I had an aesthetic nightmare--self induced of course.
This gives you the machinations I tried to go through to have the top of the refrig be flush with the bottom of the cabinet. The frig/cabinet are forcing me to shrink the size of the arch by four inches. Like I said previously, if I could have afforded a new refrig I would have bought one to fit rather than doing all these modifications.
For us armchair scuba peeps, full screen mandatory
Next on the agenda teaching myself to put up the copper gutters. Back in SF I bought an "opened" Bernzomatic torch head for $20 which I brought down in my carryon along with several rolls of silver soldering. The hose and tank I bought on St Thomas.
The nozzle, along with the small 20 gallon propane tank, made the practice soldering very easy. Applying it to the gutters was a whole different story. The fun was just starting. I don't even know where to begin. Years before, yes it's been that long, the drain pipes to the cistern were each to the side of the front porch columns. I figured the downspouts would come down and with a 2" offset, disappearing into the underground pipes laid in the concrete slab. Congratulating myself that everything was on spot on I started to snap lines for the gutters. Then the problems started. To avoid the normal look of gutters draining into gutters with small downspouts, I wanted to hang them seamlessly around the premier of the house down sloping where necessary along the rooflines of the shed roof above the front door. A little more work, four corner pieces and a lot less clutter resulting in cleaner lines. Like most of our plans they sound good on paper!
I started with easy part.
In the pic above I simply cut a ten foot gutter piece to fit the front of the porch. The down spouts are a work in progress. Because of the fascia board, if I mounted the leader heads up closer to the gutter where I wanted them, I would then have a 1" offset problem for my downspout. (In the picture I have them under the fascia board lip creating a straight drop into the downspout--very clear in the picture below.)
Not liking this look. We want the catchment closer to the gutter.
Yet we want the downspout flush to the column.
They don't make custom 1" offset elbows only 2", 3" and 4". I have seen peeps hang their downspouts on an angle. We don't like that look. I'll have to come up with something. I put them up, as is, just to funnel the water into the cisterns while I think about it.
Working with copper feels really good.
Getting in touch with my inner Mexican, I mean tinsmith...;~)
Everything is getting put up for a test run before I solder everything.
In the picture below you can see the gutter on left sloping up, following the slope of porch roof I mentioned earlier. That's how we want it but it created its own problem as I was to find out.
What you don't see is my driving back to Cruz to borrow the jackhammer again. The original drains were on the outside of each column. I quickly realized that was not going to work with my gutter layout. Water would flow down the gutter with some of it passing over the downspout and then collect on the front of the porch with no place to go. Monster rains would probably cause it to overflow. Hello jackhammer. Yup, of course I ran into rebar in the slab. Just another snafu!
Finished....moved from the side to the front.
With the hurricane season over I left the dry fit gutters in place on the front of the house to be soldered when I return in the new year.
I think most people thought these were ruins inside the park at Maho until a construction crew showed up and started a major remodel. Reporters were not able to find out what is intended. From this I arrived here the next day!
It was a spot the size of a pencil eraser---not my death mask!
The reason I came home...Medicare kicked in. I knew I would need Mohs surgery. It can be vey expensive so I waited. For the Mohs's uninitiated, they cut, check the margins to see if they got it all, and then close you up. This took three tries over the course of almost seven hours. Yes, you are awake for all of it occasionally yelping when the pain medicine wears off in he middle.
Finally the good news comes and they tell you they got it all. Then the fun begins trying to figure out where to get the skin to lose it all up. The stitches above show where they went looking.
A week later.
Then there was that small spot on my nose that turned into this. Another three peat constantly taking more each time to get clean margins.
This one kicked my ass while it was happening. You can see it in my eyes. It was if my face/psyche could not take this much in ten days. The picture above was the half way point. To get the skin to close, they cut into my cheek and pulled over a "flap". You don't want to see that photo but if you insist it follows!
The next day....
The flap later failed and had to be removed causing a very slow healing process where the wound had to fill itself. I must have killed a lot of people in a past life for this karma. I cannot feel anything around my eye. The nerves have been temporarily damaged. Supposedly they will heal.
My daily walk
At the corner of Broadway and Fillmore
Of course we only find the tile we like here in SF. I take pictures to show vendors what I'm looking for. If I could even find it on St Thomas it would start at $25/sf making it economically not feasible.
Other than ordering, receiving, and transshipping to St John the missing kitchen cabinet I did nothing except cry the blues about my painful face. Would I give up the life that gave me the skin cancer? No way. Had you been there you would say the same.
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