The windows in this old building are plentiful and large, so it gives me loads of natural light all day. And since the days are about 16 hours long, I have no excuse but to work long days! We did get out to run a few errands yesterday. First we headed to the Dollar Tree to pick up trash bags, paper products, etc., and since I wasn’t sure exactly where it was, I relied on Google maps and my phone to guide us there. My phone lady steered us in an unexpected direction, however, and after we took quite a long detour up and down a mountain and ended up on a dead-end street, she said, “You have arrived.” We noted then that we were indeed at the dollar store--but we were behind it with a tall fence between it and us! Oh well, needless to say we were able to navigate the old school way to get to the parking lot.
After a couple more stops to pick up supplies, we hauled it all home and up three flights of stairs. Evidently someone wrecked the elevator in our building a few days ago by overloading it. There is a freight elevator, but it can be somewhat intimidating. You have to close the metal strap across the door and make sure the toggle toggles. Then close the grate, which is like a really heavy-duty chain link shaped thing. Then you pull the handle toward you and rotate one direction for up and the other for down. Depending on how far you rotate it, the elevator will creep or shoot rapidly in that direction! And it has no floor indicator, other than what you can see through the metal grid. Good times! So, unless I have a heavy load, I use the stairs. Besides that’s good for me. Right?
After we got everything unloaded, our son, Cliff, picked us up for brunch at a bar/restaurant called delightfully enough, “The Office.” I like that because the guy who works behind the desk here at the hotel likes to ask us where we are going, and it just sounds cool to be able to say, “Oh, we are just headed to the office…”
And it probably is a good idea because the road that our apartment is on is referred to by the locals as “the circle of death.” It is a four-sided, somewhat oval shaped road that surrounds R.A. Long Park, and it is similar to a roundabout that one would see in Europe. When I have observed it of an afternoon on the patio with a glass of wine, it appears that people enter it going full speed and spin around until they are thrown off by centrifugal force! And even though it has a speed bump on each side, drivers fly around it! Some of them honestly seem to try to pick up speed so their vehicles will leave the ground when they hit the bump. Admittedly, they bumps are pretty well rounded and not much of a deterrent to speeding. So one of our navigational tricks that we have learned this week is how to avoid “the circle of death,” by taking the back exit out of our parking lot.
Until next time! I am thinking of painting on the sidewalk tomorrow...