Yesterday we went out to hit a Japanese yard sale. we arrived as the canopies were coming down. Nothing to buy. When they say they will only be open two hours they mean it!

Then we headed down to the canoe. I have not been very active since my knee surgery but I have been doing better recently and we wanted to touch base again. We found the crew getting ready to mount the long beams on the canoe house.

For the last several meetings the crew has been setting the upright posts and cementing them into the ground. Now they wanted to set the long poles in place and tie them off with the cross beams. We set up a two leg lifting crane and hoisted one end of the 25 foot telephone pole into place and then got on the other end to lift the "light" end into place. About that time Manny showed up with a huge crew of his fellow islanders and we got the other piece in place with a minimum of effort. The Carolinians then set the cross pieces in place and tied them off. It's fun to watch them work. They laugh and chat in their home language, at ease with the work and the day. The canoe house will be built without nails, only rope tying the frame together and the roof to the frame.

After the work was done Wakana and I and two other couples adjourned to Carmen's for lunch. Carmen's is the local Tex-Mex restaurant. We went to celebrate a birthday and talk. It was a great time. Carmen's makes the best taco salads ever.

When we got home we were in for a surprise. You see, Wakana has discovered that she loves working in the yard. Every day she goes out to do a little trimming or mowing, digging and filling. The place looks great and it is all her doing. So we were dismayed to get home and find that someone had been working heavy machinery in our front yard.

It isn't actually our front yard. There is an electrical pole in our yard with a street light on it. The yard under the pole is actually an easement the power company owns. But we keep the lawn and trim the brush back, keeping the jungle at bay. Now it was a mess. we thought it might be the power company.

Today I was working at the side of the house, building the ultimate closet doors, when I heard someone in the brush. I looked up to see a young Chamorro man come out of the jungle and wander down to look at the mess in our yard. He turned out to be our neighbor. He'd inherited the house from his parents and had inherited a set of problems with it. The mess in our yard was from his contractor. The man was trying to protect his sewer pipe. Instead he'd messed up our yard and the pipe was not any better off than it was before. I expect he will have some harsh words with that contractor. He promised to have the mess cleaned up. Nice guy!