Beginning Week Two

Beautiful day in Lake Waccamaw, started out a chilly 43 degrees, mid-70’s this afternoon.  Not a cloud in the sky.  Started back in 309 this morning where Deb and Reenie worked on painting the bedrooms while I finished up some drywall patching.  The pros can do this in one or two passes, but it takes me several passes.  Slather some mud on let it dry, sand 90 percent of it off, repeat until satisfied.  I can eventually get there, I just make a lot more dust than the pros.

But they get paid a lot more than I do.

Lee had purchased a new sink for the kitchen in the Lake House so I worked on installing that.  First, the hole was too small and had to be cut a quarter inch bigger on all sides.  Then the drain assembly would not come off of the old sink and I managed to break it during the attempt.  Then the drain plumbing didn’t match and there was no trap among the supplies. This is all normal stuff and the reason why these kinds of projects take multiple trips to Lowe’s.  On a project like this, someone else buys the supplies so all this has to be reported to our group leader to relays that to the volunteer coordinator who either checks with their maintenance group or goes to Lowe’s himself.  So it’s not a quick process.

The sink is mounted, half of the drain plumbing is hanging on it, and hopefully it can be finished this week sometime.

I also repainted a bathroom that I had touched up last week.  Seems that the kitchen and the bathroom are exactly the same color, so when I finished painting the kitchen last week,  I took the wet roller into the bathroom and touched up the spots where the paint had not quite covered well.  Once it dried it looked terrible and I found out that the colors may have been the same, but the sheen was different.  The bathroom was painted with flat paint and the kitchen with satin.  So the bathroom now had a very blotchy look that needed to be fixed up.

Life on the road throws us some interesting curveballs.  Technology has certainly made life on the road easier, as a lot can be done online.  Bills can be paid online, I can turn the heat on at home remotely and control the sprinklers remotely.  I haven’t figured out how to mow the lawn remotely, however, I have kids for that (thank you, Zhen).

Sometimes, things require paper.  And that’s where it gets complicated.  I had to transfer some money between accounts.  Since the accounts were titled differently, it required a notarized signature.  On paper.  Everything else could be done online, I just needed a signature.  We don’t carry a printer in the RV so I figured I could go the local library and print out what I needed.  The library in Lake Waccamaw closes at 5:30.  We biked there after dinner.  I was just walking up to the side door when the librarian came to the door and said, “Sorry we’re closed” and shut the door.  I looked at my phone.  It was 5:17.  We walked around to the front of the building.  She was just closing that door also.  Seeing our determination she asked us if we had something quick. 

I held out a USB stick.  “I just need a to print a couple things,” I told her.

“Our computer is shut down at 4:30,” she said, “and I can’t turn it back on.”  With that, she closed the door.

I’m still trying to figure out how time works around here.   The library must work on multiple clocks.  On the front door, it says it closes at 6pm.  Inside, a sign states that it closes at 5:30.  The doors were shut at 5:17 and the computer stops working at 4:30.  I’m not sure the library had a single patron all day so no one will even notice if they shut the doors 15 minutes early.  Except the out-of-towner that needs a document printed.

So the first hurdle is getting something printed.  The second one is finding a notary.  The only bank in this town is an ATM machine at the gas station.  The nearest actual bank is 15 miles away.  Deb found a couple listings of names at residential addresses so we may just have to use one of those.