Moving to Aargh 10 - Oven and hob

Today, another milestone: the hob and the oven installed. That needed some major engineer Jansen engineering, as the oven is 58 cm deep, but the worktop of the kitchen is only 61 cm. (Never noticed that when viewing the house.) The socket for the oven is behind it, and so is the gas connection for the hob. So, the oven needs to be installed a bit further into the kitchen than planned. And there must be room for the gas hose behind the oven.

Then the electricity socket broke off its screws, bad plastic. But some tape and a few rings fix anything. NASA should hire me.

The hob is installed as should be, the oven is still provisionally installed, sitting on a few bits of wood, as it needs to be placed so that it does not touch the gas hose.

Another oven day for engineer Jansen. Now installed in its final place. It needs some extra panels to hide that the oven is a bit more to the front. It cannot go further back, the plug and socket arebin the way. The gas conduit has been tied to the wall, so does not touch the oven. (The oven casing does not get hot anyway)

This house has propane gas, the old house has butane bottles. Fortunately that seems compatible, no adjustment necessary.

Moving to Aargh 9 - Furgoneta

To move stuff that does not fit our Dacia, like couches, wardrobes, we rented a furgoneta (van) for 3 days. Did 7 or 8 round trips, 2 and 3 per day.

We could not yet leave Pili with the other dogs, too new, too uncertain, so we took her on every trip, there and back again. She curled up nicely on my feet. Aww.

We had a bit of a scare: the left tail light of the van was broken. See the first photo, the bottom part is broken off.  That is very strange, that first photo is 15 minutes after collecting the furgoneta, and it had not been driven in reverse at that point in time.  When you collect the van they take pictures, so all we could hope for is that the rental agency is honest and decent, and if the photo has a broken tail light they accept.  We had not seen that it was broken, went back to the place where we loaded the blue couch to see if bits of the light were there. No.  So maybe we're in for the repair of a tail light. At 75€ rent per day that probably is more expensive than the rent. 

Our beloved Tango, and a broken tail light

More stuff on top of the Tango

Bed

Outside furniture

Couch nr. 2: Benz

Tex'ss couch

Office chairs

Aaargh

PS

Took the furgoneta back, they (Costa Coches) are indeed honest and decent: the light was already broken when we got the van. 

They are very observant, even though we cleaned and mopped the footwells of the van he spotted some dog hairs. Transporting a dog is not allowed per contract, and indeed that was in the (long) text. Sorry. That cost us 60€ cleaning costs. So be it. Should have vacuumed.

Pilar / Pili

Next day. 

The family that said they’d adopt cancelled.  Paws Patas has no space. But we could arrange a visit to the vet in Turre. Ellen. The same vet we went to with Tex, a few years ago.

She thinks the dog is 4-5 tears old. She's too thin. 29 kilos is too little. The skin patch looks like a yeast infection. That can be due to leishmania, or a simple allergy. 

She took a vial of blood to send off to the lab to test for the 5 nasty Spanish dog diseases (leishmania, filaria/heartworm, ehrlichia, and two more).

PS

Blood tests came back negative for all 5 nasty diseases  That is incredibly lucky. 

We call her "Pilar", or short: "Pili", after the Cuentame Como Paso charatcter.

Skin

She has a big hairless patch, with strange looking scaly skin, and she smells a bit funny. "Elephant skin" the vet called it. Probably a yeast infection called Malassezia, see https://www.marvistavet.com/yeast-infection-of-the-skin.pml

There is a shampoo to treat this, "Malaseb".  Another way is to make the skin more acid, using diluted apple vinegar. Using both now, awaiting results. May take a while to clear.

Young female German shepherd in Sierra Cabrera, looks lost

When going to Cabrera we saw a german shepherd in the street. 10 minutes later she was at our house. Looking lost, but did not come when called, and fled. Hm.

Sent the photo to the estate agent, who lives in Cabrera, and has a dog herself. Do you know this dog? No. But it is outside a house clients are renting. She's outside the gate, crying. Hm. 

She does get water and food though. 

Why don't they let her in..

Facebook. She was already noticed before. Someone came up with a chip scanner. No chip. Ticks yes. And a skin condition, bald patches. Suspected leishmania. Not good, but not unexpected.

People noticed she's a very nice and lovable dog.

Paws Patas stepped in too. A family in Palomares came forward to adopt her, but could only come and get her the next day.  

We went to Cabrera that night (were still at the old house) and took her off the street.  That was easy.

Can't put a dog off the street with your own dogs right away. First a vet visit and some quarantaine.  

And a spot-on treatment against ticks. She must have a hundred.

Soo, engineer Jansen stayed overnight at the house in Cabrera to keep an eye on the dog, while engineer De Waal went back to the old house to guard the existing pack.

The couch was discovered quickly.

Sleeping arrangements. No bed yet, so make do with mattresses for sun beds and the floor.

Next day: The family that said they’d adopt cancelled, and Paws Patas has no space.

So now we’re fostering her, and killing the ticks. Been to the vet, blood test. Awaiting results.

All in all not too a great moment for us, as we’re moving house next week. 

We’ll manage. I hope. She’s absolutely lovely. So far it goes well together with our 6 dogs.

The dog is an absolute sweetie. If we can keep her we will.

Incomprehensible leafblower

Today we hoped to really actually finally finalize the fence. All that was left to do was to top up the holes with the poles that were not filled 100% to 100% with concrete.  That requires cleaning out leaves and debris that ended up on top of the concrete that was already there. We appear to have inherited a leaf blower! That is the perfect tool to get rubbish like that out. 

It has an English plug. Luckily we also inherited an extension cord with an English plug, so the leaf blower could be fired up. 

But, it isn't a leaf blower, it's a leaf sucker! It has a wide tube connected, and a bag, to collect leaves. Not very useful to get leaves out of the holes, as the tube is far too wide for that. But, there also is a tube that is narrower, and engineer Jansen, being engineer Jansen, instantly recognised that as a blower extension.

But, how to connect it up? The collection bag was easily removed. But, the blower extension doesn't look like it fits anywhere. 

Engineer Jansen on his iPhone consulted a manuals site, for the Black & Decker GW370 leaf blower. Those manuals sites are not generous. They show you one page, and then serve you an advert. Well, this manual is one where the have images with the parts labelled 1-325, with text on another page telling you to:

Engineer Jansen has not succeeded to "Attach the blow clamshell and tube (6 & 7) to the powerhead (2) (Fig. J) by locating the blower as indicated by arrow 23, then pivot about this point until the locking/release catch (24) is fully engaged". In fact he did not understand that one bit.

Here's Fig. J:

Engineer Jansen did notice, however, that the blower tube has two things you can press to release it from it's thing. He also noted that the exhaust is sort of the size of that tube, and if you squeeze it a bit the blower tube fits the exhaust quite well. So he ended up with:

Sort of a set of one bag pipe, but it did what it is supposed to do.

For those that are smarter than engineer Jansen here is the full manual:

Oh, engineer Jansen did manage to process 6 bags of 25 kg concrete today, more or less finalizing the fence.

More or less finalizing the fence? Yes, we noticed that at the back of the terrace there are two stepped walls that are planting terraces. Each wall is about 1.5 meters. But, the upper wall is out, and freedom, for dogs. We are against that. So, it needs a 50 cm high fence on top of the upper wall.  And then, dear reader, the fence will be finalized. (We think.)

Salki grapadora cercas

To attach mesh to the wires mostly people use a bit of wire that they turn with pliers. That is tedious and takes too much time, and a sharp piece of wire remains in the fence.  Like this:

There is a staple gun that does this:

This:

But, it failed. All the time it would spill an extra staple. Grrr!

Engineer Jansen noticed one of the pinching halves was about 1.5 mm off:

He took apart the stapler, and used a VERY BIG HAMMER to teach it a lesson. It's still off about 0.5 mm, but it doesn't spill extra staples any more.

But what do you do, send it back? That takes days. And it may be a serial error.. Salki should do better.

Moving to Aargh 8 - oleanders and cycas

 If you like to keep your dogs you need to a) install a proper fence, b) try not to poison them. 

There are about 10 oleanders and one cycas. All very poisonous for dogs. The oleanders need to go, apart from one that is more like a tree, with a 2 m high stem and double flowers. We'll put a fence around that one. The cycas needs to be replanted outside the fence, or in a container..

Need to remove the branches and leaves too, can't burn anything in Cabrera, and even dry oleander is dangerous. 

Sorry!

Sorry!

Cycas, and another (variegated) oleander in the background

Sorry!