preguntas

Today, Friday work very easy. Started painting the 2 big doors that lead out to the verandah area, but about an hour in Suzy asked me to help her out with some stuff she needed doing for an exhibition of pacific island boat building, that she is contributing to. She has lots of carved wooden printing blocks on her walls that she has made and needed to print off some sarongs for the show. She'd already mixed up some screen printing ink and was ready to go. The process is really simple, just a matter of laying some very thin gauzy fabric on top of the carved block and then with a paint roller applying ink on top. The prominent uncarved areas pick up the ink and bleeds through the fine fabric, so the blocks don't need to be carved in reverse. Suzy had mixed up 4 colours and was slapping them all on- I wasn't overly impressed with the results, she asked me if I wanted to try, so decided to be really simple and on use 2 colours so as not to muddy the image, I thought it was clearer and sharper than what Suzy had done so far, so was quite pleased, I did another couple using other blocks(they each signify certain things), I think the show's on Monday and I think I'm going to help install her stuff, so it'll be interesting to see which prints she uses! Got to use her car again yesterday for only the second time. Decided to first go to the main Mall area, which is out past the airport about 9 miles from Suzy's, typical stores Macy's, Sears, Walmarts a large Borders store and various smaller places alot selling terrible 'Tat' and as you can guess loads of eating establishments. I was desperate for a new belt as the leather one I've been wearing all the time(including whilst working and getting hot and very sweaty) has developed a nasty case of mildew and smells really bad! I hunted high and low but couldn't find anything, so after a disappointing trip I decided to go to the beach to test my new waterproof camera. It wasn't very bright so I wasn't expecting great results. It was very pleasant unlike the holiday weekend, just a few people and a nice end of day chilled out atmosphere. I swam out and immediately started snapping, I realised too late that the best plan is to try not to move much. The idea of diving down and chasing fish is a complete non-starter. 80 pics later and my cheap batteries were dying. So I packed up and drove back stopping at another beach along the way when I saw lots of paddlers in outrigger canoes. I was quite excited, but when I plugged my SD card in to review my work I was very dissapointed to have about 75 shots of rocks. When I was snapping I couldn't see anything on the screen so just pointed in the general direction of the fish, unfortunately the shutter delay on my camera is terribly slow and by the time it got around to taking the picture the fish were long gone! I think I've worked out a solution though, if I change to movie mode when I upload it to my laptop the software I use allows me to take a snapshot anyhere I like, quality won't be great but better than pics of rocks! We are sort-of getting on better now, we had a minor tiff the other day. It was absolutely glorious, bright sunsjine and very warm, I had earmarked the car to go to the beach in the afternoon but at about 11.30, Sue the soon to be divorced wife of Sam, Suzy's neighbour was dropped off and 5 minutes later left in the car. During lunch I told Suzy I was pretty bummed out about the car, it was an early lunch and I had another hours work to do, I was hanging the gates. I came across a problem with the second gate because the posts either side were way off vertical, way bigger clearance at the top than the bottom, so was gonna have to insert a block into the post, to mount the latch, this involved chiselling out a wedge and screwing in the block. I'd just started when ue returned with the car and left, Suzy came out and said, OK we're going to the beach in 15 minutes and meeting my friend, after which we'll go have dinner somewhere then we're going back to her church!?! or you can go to a bar! It was gonna take me at least that time to fit the latch and the I had to put everything away. I was filthy dirty and dripping in sweat. Plus I didn't really want to go with Suzy. I sort-of snapped and said that she should go and meet her friend and I'd stay and read my book in the garden. She asked was there a problem and I said that I was in the middle of doing something for her benefit and that I didn't want to have to rush around because she'd decided on the spur of the moment to meet her friend. We then had a protracted debate, the way it seems all Americans, Californians especially need to do, to 'resolve our issues' and 'sort things through, the way adults do'! I told her to stop over anylyzing things and just go and meet her friend, I explained I was cool with the situation, just that in future if she decided that 'we' were going to do something give me a decent amount of notice first. It has seemed to clear the air between us and I think she's beginning to tune into the way I talk. I'm still wondering about when to broach the subject of me leaving earlier than planned, I think I'll let her know next week that I don't think that 'La Sensoir' and I would get along and that she changed the agreement we had after I had arrived, the plan was that I, alone was going to housesit for her during July. I'm just hoping that she doesn't get nasty about it as I'm relying on her to get to the airport, or that she doesn't throw me out before I've arranged a flight home, but just in case I've looked into the price and availabilty of a nice hostel I've seen by the beach.TTFN