Construction, Christmas, and Politics

It's holiday time, and to help out our friends with some Christmas money we decided to start on construction for the addition to the house. Our plan is to get the extension to Tom's shop done this year, and then start on the guest room next year - money permitting! Charlie and Tina's house had a serious case of dry rot in their porch columns, so Tom agreed to supervising the replacement of the three most critical columns with concrete. That went well, and we now don't have to worry about their roof blowing off in the next severe storm.

The political silly season in Jamaica is upon us, but is blessedly short compared to the USA. The Prime Minister called the election on December 5, nominations were put forward on the 12th, and the election is next week on the 29th. We're getting very tired of the non-stop political ads and campaign sound trucks blaring out the campaign songs. Our crew is about evenly split between the two parties, and they argue quite loudly for most of every work day. We find it kind of amusing.

JC has been doing a lot of work in the gardens, working on a quilt square, and working on Quilters Guild archival materials. Tom is doing more mosaics. The big mosaic project was the "Naked Ladies" panel on the front porch, which complements the front door grille. He has also finished up a couple of panels on one of the porch columns and is starting to extend the original mosaic down by his shop door around the column and onto the front wall of the shop. He also completed the stone retaining wall by the path down to the shop.

We are now stopping construction until the New Year, so that everyone can enjoy Christmas and we can sit out the week remaining before the election. Between Christmas and the election traffic in the cities will be totally nuts, so we just go into hermit mode up here on the hill.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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