The verandah was repaired just in the nick of time for the big party on Saturday night. Actually, I had moved all the dining room furniture out onto the verandah myself on Tuesday. That took some doing as the table is huge and heavy. But necessity is the mother of invention, and I managed to do everything but right the table after putting it on its side to get it through the first door. My landlady came down to see what all the noise was about and got the man in the annex, who happened to be home for lunch, to come to help put the table back on its legs again. Veenitha had done a great job cleaning everything up after the construction and now everything was in its place. All this only to find that the roof still leaked.
I managed to move everything around so that it was sitting between the leaks and then got in touch with the contractor. He came to have a look, but couldn't do much since his worker was on another job. In the end, they showed up at 2000 on Friday and in the dark and the rain laid a tarp over most of the roof. It hasn't stopped all the leaks, but it has stopped the biggest one, and the rest I can live with until they can be properly repaired after the rains. After all, there isn't a roof in Sri Lanka that doesn't leak.
The house has a whole new lease on life now that the verandah can be properly used.
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| My breakfast area has not changed. You can see the monkey cage beyond. No more monkeys! |
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| The new dining area. Love that al fresco dining. |
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| Still have a small space for my coffee and reading area. |
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| The new living room. So much more open. |
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| The new foyer. I love it and have put it to good use a few times already. |
The Scorpio party on Saturday night went very well. There were about 30 of us with 5 Scorpios in attendance. The Scorpion Sting was quite a hit. Very boozy with two full bottles of arrack. Judith did up a lovely poem in honour of the occasion and gave each Scorpio a hand printed copy on a scroll to commemorate the occasion.
The last guests did not leave until 0100 but Indika had been here to help Veenitha, so everything was done by the time they left and we just went to bed. Sunday was spent doing the last bit of clean up.
I even managed to haul in a few birthday presents along with quite a few bottles of wine.
My iPad rang this morning at 0700 saying my friend Sue Burgess from Calgary was calling. I called her right back to find that there was some kind of a glitch and she had not called at all. It must have been the Universe saying we hadn't talked in a long time. So we had a lovely catch up.
Thus another memorable birthday passes.
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