Plastic Bottle Houses

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Yeah, I've been not writing much. Saw this house on Lloyd's blog - http://lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/ - and really liked the link. The entire article is at http://inspirationgreen.com/plastic-bottle-homes.html?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d938f04f74efcac%2C0 . At the link are pictures of green houses, sheds, cisterns and houses built using plastic bottles much the same way that used tires are used in Earthship houses.

I saw my first bottle wall while watching Anmar build one of his cabins back in Indiana about 20 years ago. Later when I was reading all about PaperCrete I saw that they used a lot of bottle walls for decoration. Those were all made from glass wine bottles to add light and color as a part of the design plan. The houses in the link above use plastic bottles, some filled with sand, to make the body of the wall. If nothing else it keeps the bottles out of the waste stream. And, Lord knows we have plenty of plastic bottles floating around down here in Honduras.

Now that I've broken my silence maybe I'll start posting more regularly again.

Three suitcases and a box...

This was the title of one of the posts on the Simple Living Network forums that really got me thinking along lines that have me ending up here in Honduras.  The original post was by a guy named Jim who lived in Mexico.  He was originally from Canada, and the three suitcases were how many it took to hold everything he owned, except for a box of important papers in a family member's attic back in Canada.  I'm getting closer to a single box of papers (closer, not really close yet), but as for the rest I'm more a two 10'X20' storage unit person than 3 suitcases. 

This weekend I have made a dent in some of the scanning and tossing of papers.  I need to get moving on some of the things I need to accomplish while I'm down here if I want to be ready to head Some Place Else in 6 months.  I am under 200 days left on my contract.  In talking with Turtle Lady this morning on Skype I verbalized some of the things that I need to have resolution on by next September.  It's a lot.  So, I'm motivated now.

The tenants are moving out of my house.  They didn't pay rent this month because, duh, they will be moving.  Ummmm.  You still owe for this month.  It's in the hands of my real estate agent.  She was headed over there today to talk to them.  Also, she will give me an opinion on whether I should sell or rent it out from here on in.  I prefer to sell if I can get much of anything for it.  Insurance is one of the things that renews (or not) in September.

So, life goes on down here.  Weather is lovely.  Not too hot.  I keep cutting deeper into my long sleeved clothes and sending them back.  I truly don't need layers or long sleeves or more than a light rain jacket  It's a constant surprise to me just how little I need.  I do miss wearing my heavier clothes.  Not enough to move back where it snows, though.  The second Gorilla box of stuff got to Mom without incident, so I'm packing another one to send.  My goal, if I have one, is to send 10 of them so as to cut down on stuff here.  I should get rid of most of this stuff.  But, some of it I just can't let go of yet.  The cost of shipping and storage is buying me time.  Yes, buying the time to sort and let go of stuff is expensive.  Apparently it's a price I'm willing to pay.

slump

I seem to go from slump to slump.  That's one reason I don't blog much for long periods of time.  I learned from going back and reading diaries of mine over the years that they all sounded the same, trying to get housework one, trying to find a job, being low on energy.  So, I quit writing about most of that kind of stuff.  I do still live it, though.  Just fill in the blanks with that stuff when I don't write here.

I am having some strange feelings of having done something right.  My old job in WA is going (ummm, can't really use the term I was about to type in a family-friendly blog...), it's going away.  It will most likely re-emerge after the President signs a new budget, but under a new company.  My old company lost the contract.  So, all my friends on the old contract are lost in limbo.  Meanwhile, I am... working.  Still pulling a paycheck.  This is backwards.  I'm the one who is always scrambling to fill the gaps between paychecks and jobs.  This is where I feel badly that knowing that leaving the US (even though I work for a US company on a US installation) was the best thing I could have done.  I'm still amazed that I actually did it.  Not like me at all.  I am thankful that I will have my next paycheck (I'm assuming that the budget crisis doesn't affect us... guess I should check) and that it will pay off the second credit card, leaving me with 2 to go.

No electricity here yesterday, which was strange.  One of the reasons I stay here in the hotel is that they have backup electricity.  The air conditioning may not work when the town electricity goes off, but everything else does.  I had to use my backpacking stove to make my second cup of coffee.  I found some things in the camping gear I had been looking for, and was amazed at how much I stumbled while using the stove.  Way out of practice.  So that part was all good.  It wasn't too hot, and if I'd needed to get online (which I finally did to talk to Mom on skype) I had 3 laptops charged up and a Tigo stick (usb cell network) and really had no issues.  Electricity came back on right after I ordered a delivery pizza.  So all went well.

Today I can finally get to the scanning that I tried to do a week ago.  Drivers now downloaded, electricity on (for the printer/scanner).  Time to get moving on that stuff that I keep putting off.

Do as I say, not as I do

I work in IT.  I give advice on a daily basis.  A lot of it about how to not lose data.  I have 4 computers here with me.  I have been thinking, a lot before and now after my trip away, that I should pull new images of all of them.  One never knows what might happen down here.  Things get stolen.  Things break.  I thought about it.  But, that's all I did.  I have been scanning documents lately in a vain attempt to go 'paperless'.  I think (hope) that most of what I scanned I also copied to an external drive attached to the computer that I used to scan.  I left that computer on for a few days last week.  I also use it to play games on sometimes.  It's a laptop, which isn't really made to be left on, but it went into hibernation so I wasn't worried.  I finally turned it off a couple of days ago.  Today I turned it on to do some more scanning.  It wouldn't boot.  sigh.

I tried several ways to get into the drive to copy off the files.  A quick check showed that my latest image was a little over 3 months old.  Not too bad.  Luckily my end of year guilt is stronger than the 'I'm going on a trip' guilt.  I had made that backup.  So, the computer is now reset to 3 months ago.  Tomorrow when I'm more fresh I'll update the virus software and reinstall anything that is missing.  And, I'll rescan anything that didn't make it to the external drive.  And I'll image the rest of the computers and copy the contents of the external drive to a second drive.  I have the equipment, I have the software, I have the knowledge.  I just need to do it.

The question of how often should a computer be backed up is answered with 'how much data do you not care if you lose?'

Revival

The field across the street was used by a noisy circus, and a then a few weeks later less noisy circus.  This week it has had a very loud revival going on.  Lots of music (electrically amplified).  Some yelling.  Last night the speaker spoke English that was translated into Spanish by a female speaker.  He would say a phrase, she would translate, he would speak, she would speak.  I finally fell asleep.  I did think it would be a tad difficult to get the momentum up that one (well, that I...) expects of an Evangelist in full steam when every phrase had to be translated inbetween.  I didn't stay awake to see if that happened.  I found that, unlike the music played upstairs here at the hotel that vibrates through the walls, the speaker could be blocked with ear plugs.  Unfortunately, last night I couldn't find where I'd put them when I took them out the night before.  The pillow worked.  They finish around 10pm, so it's not too bad.

Subject goes here

Can't come up with a subject.  This isn't the second part of the trip, unless I wander into a story or two from it.  While I was at Mom's I tried out her mini washer.  It's something called a Wonder Washer  http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000BTDNEK/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new  (forgive the ugly links, I'm not high speed with it like Ben is).  It looks like something just to sell on TV (that's the 'brand') but for someone who only has a few things to wash it has it's advantages.  It will do a day's laundry for me or Mom.  Then she also had a spinner to spin the water out  http://www.amazon.com/Mini-Countertop-Dryer-Clothes-Portable/dp/B002HT0958/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1  , and this is what makes the deal work.  By spinning all the water out the clothes take very little time to dry hanging on a drying rack.  Even a pair of my heavy jeans dried just fine overnight.  So, I ordered a set today.  I have to have them shipped to Mom's, then she will have to ship them to me.  If they make it though Honduran customs without being stolen, I'll be able to do my laundry here in the apartment without going up and down 3 steep flights of steps.  There are other, more automatic versions of this, but weight and ability to pick them up and move them around are some of the key points this setup gives.  For Mom, being able to move them easily is key since she doesn't have any place in her small apartment to let them sit out, so they live in her closet between uses.  For me, being able to ship them around to wherever I am will be the big plus.

I'm slowly waking up.  I didn't sleep a lot while at Mom's.  I've paid for it since I've been back.  That and the fact that I napped on the plane and bus trip home had my back and legs sore from being curled up so much.  I am inspired to clean here, and to sort and get rid of/send back as much as I can to get mobile.  I'll see how much of that gets put into practice in the next few weeks.

Trip, part 1

It's Saturday morining early, and I'm finally going to type up the blog entry about my trip.  I have a large mug of coffee brewing.  I use a single cup coffee maker that is set up to make 2 mugs at a time if I want.  I just make one, but the water resevoir is big enough to get a nice large mug made.  The coffee maker is made by Black & Decker, and I haven't seen any since I bought this one 5 or more years ago.  Why is it that suddenly no one makes a nice single cup coffee maker anymore?
My trip:  I bought my ticket to fly out of San Pedro Sulu instead of the capital of Tegucigalpa for some reason that made sense to me at the time.  The issue with this was that while I had a free military shuttle to the airport in Teguc, I had to find my own way to SPS.  A quote on a Taxi was $265.  Yes, dollars.  That includes both trips, and it's a 2-3 hour drive.  Reasonable on one level, but more than I wanted to pay.  While researching cheaper taxis, someone pointed me to one of the Government guys (civilians who live on post) who had taken a bus previously.  I talked to him, and he said the fare was $7 each way.  More to my budget.  He isn't some kind of daredevil, but is cautious, and he traveled alone.  So, I asked my local Honduran friends about the Rivera bus, and it got good reviews.  The Hotel staff said they would take me to the bus terminal at 5:30 am on the day I left.
The morning of the trip I was all packed, dressed except shoes and doing 'one last thing' around the apartment and thought I had 5 minutes.  There was a knock at the door, and the front desk guy motioned that my ride was waiting.  He grabbed my carryone suitcase while I scrambled for my shoes.  It was still very dark and there wasn't much traffic at that time of morning.  We pulled into the 'terminal' which was a place that on my own I'd never go near even in the daytime, being behind a wall and crammed full of large busses down in the middle of town.  It wasn't a passenger terminal, it was a 'bus' terminal!  There were a very few folks waiting in the dark lighted by one light, and a guard cradeling his shotgun.  Seemed quiet enough, and so I told my ride I'd be fine.  At 6 we loaded up and drove out to the road.  Since my Spanish is not good I was glad the bus turned north at the highway, towards San Pedro Sula.
Note:  It is now Sunday morning, and Charlie has expressed a definite lack of faith that I'll ever post about my trip.  I'M WORKING ON IT!!  :)
The bus trip was amazingly uneventful.  However, as they kept stopping and picking up folks, and then stopping and letting folks off as we went through the mountains I was concerned.  I finally asked as the ticket guy wandered by getting payments and while my Spanish was totally not up to the task he finally convinced me that the trip took 3 hours total.  We were 2 hours into it at that point, or really 2.5, but I had been warned that the 6 am buss took off when it had 'enough' passengers or 7 am which ever came first.  We left around 6:30.  By 10 we rolled into the terminal in San Pedro Sula and I walked into the bus terminal.
 I have learned that the best method of getting to where I want is to just look lost.  Some enterprising person, usually a kid or young man, will grill me about where I need to go.  This time was no exception.  When he finally understood 'airport' he said taxi, and motioned me to an older guy who was a taxi driver.  We negotiated on the price, which basically meant that the kid agreed with the driver that the highish price was indeed correct.  I shrugged and said ok, and with the driver pulling my rollng carryon we headed down the hall.  Soon another driver ran over and was angrily talking to my driver and kept trying to get the bag away from him.  My driver didn't say anything, just kept walking and dodging this guy's attempts to grab my bag.  I really didn't want to go with an angry driver, no matter how 'right' he might have been.  We walked past a policeman who was keeping peace at the taxi stand and the angry driver appealed to him.  The officer looked at me, I said 'airport?' again, and he motioned me to go with my original driver.  We got loaded into the taxi while the other driver was still yelling at the police officer.
It was a bit of a driver to the airport, which is outside of SPS a ways.  The $15 fare was actually reasonable by US standards, and since I'd paid less than $5 for the bus ride I was feeling good about it all in general.  I got to the airport in time to check in (no checked bags), eat breakfast and head to the gate.  I skyped with Turtle Lady awhile, but felt conspicuous since I didn't bring a headset and so our conversation was out in the open.  The flight started loading an hour before takeoff.  If you fly international with Continental, get there early!  They also looked through everyone's bags again, actually opening them and doing a visual check.  The rock I was taking to my aunt and the small piece of a branch of guava wood that I was taking to my uncle made it past the inspections.
The flight went well, and I got to Kansas City on time, found Mom and my aunt, and headed to the storage unit where my Jeep is housed.  Mom gave me the copy key that she had made and I unlocked the door to the unit and got into the Jeep and turned the key.  It turned over but didn't catch.  Several attempts later, with no luck in starting the Jeep, I'm getting comments from my peanut gallery about how I must have forgotten how to drive my Jeep!  We called my uncle who has been driving it every month for me.  We go over all the possible interlock issues - brake, clutch, etc.  I have juice, it just won't start.  sigh.  I get back into Mom's car and my uncle says he'll come out the next morning and bring it to me.
This is enough for this post.  I'll cover the return trip next.

Back home again

Home in this instance is back in Honduras.  I enjoyed my time back up in the States.  I'll post more later.  Really.

Vacation

I'm at Mom's in Kansas City.  I've done lots of driving, visiting, and going to the casinos.  I got in on Thursday evening, and I go back on Tuesday.  I'll write more details later.  I took a Honduran bus from the town where I live to the city the airport is in, a 3 hour ride.  But, it was $3.50 one way rather than the $265 for both trips that a taxi would cost.  Both Mom and the casinos are happy I'm here.  I did discover that a regular copy of a key won't start my Jeep, I need one of the original ones.  My uncle had to go back and get it from storage the next morning and drive it to Mom's since when we stopped on the way from the airport the night I got in I just couldn't start it.  Durn modern electronic things.  My Uncle had the only original key to the Jeep that I currently know where it is.  I'm thinking I took the other one to Honduras and forgot to bring it back.  Oh, well.

Back from hibernation

I've been quiet lately. I still write blog posts in my head during the day, I just haven't written any of them down. I was sick for a week with a cold. When I got well I could feel the 'well-ness' as a new reality, as concrete a feeling as the sickness had been. I had a lot of catching up to do. Especially at work. Now, I'm caught up more or less.

There have been small shifts in my mental state and I guess I've needed time and space to incorporate the change. Nothing large. I've been down here 4 months now. Seems so much more mature than being newly arrived 3 months ago. I'm sorting and repacking my huge piles of stuff that I have here and wondering how the heck I'll get a lot of it back to the States. I sent a 'Gorilla Box' (brand name) foot locker of stuff back a couple of weeks ago and just got an email from my Mom that it arrived. I'll take inventory of the condition of it's contents, and start sending more stuff back. I am getting rid of some things. I've found most of the things that I thought hadn't made it down here. It's just a matter of time till I do have something not show up at the other end. A friend ordered a new Blackberry phone, and the package came in as 'damaged' and when he opened it there was no phone in the box. The place he ordered it from is sending a replacement. We'll see if it gets here. Luckily, most of my stuff isn't anything that would sell on the thieves market.

I've had a few 'what the heck is this middle-aged hippie geek from Nashville doing down here in Honduras' moments. Sitting in a conference room waiting for a meeting to start and listening to the local Honduran admins chatting in Spanish that is still gibberish to me, I had one of the moments. I think that going back to the States I will feel it as a concrete PLACE in a way that I wouldn't have been able to before. I'm headed back to visit Mom in a few weeks. I'll only be there for 4 days. I'm a bit afraid that if I was to stay longer I wouldn't come back down here. It's not that I'm unhappy, it's just so different. I've told friends that I want to go back and drive my Jeep wherever I want, take a walk down a town street at night, alone, go to the casinos, and, oh, yeah, see my Mom. That is pretty much the truth.