CAUTION! Handyman at work.

Stu loves to play handyman and fortunately, he's very good at it. Recently, he had two major projects to tackle.

The first was mounting the lamp we bought at Rotary Market last week. We needed more light over the kitchen sink and thought this would help.

He got it hung, after testing how much it blinded me in various spots, ran wiremold for the cord, installed a small push-button on/off switch and voila! We now have a great over the sink light that is soft and yet works. I love it (and I love the color).

The other was a little bigger. In their infinite wisdom, when they pre-wired the apartments for Directv and Etapa Internet, they used two different walls. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, but since we use a Roku 3 for streaming most of our TV, this meant we were connecting the Roku wirelessly to the router. In our old apartment, they were direct connected.

So in an effort to improve the speed of the service, Stu opted to use wiremold and a 50 ft telephone extension cord ($6.78 at our local hardware store) to accomplish this feat. Now the corner by my chair is much neater (no UPS taking up lots of floor space - it is now in the under TV cabinet), the signal is much better and the cords behind the TV are no longer a snarling mass of wires.

Here are some before, in progress, and completed photos of my wonderful hubby getting it done!

BEFORE - next to my chair:

DURING:

LOOK CLOSE: wiremold run along baseboard, up wall, across ceiling:

ALL DONE:

Ciao for now!

PRODUCT: Home or Travel Accessory

We tend to travel with a lot of electronics: two Kindle e-readers, two cell phones, two iPads and often one if not two laptops. This means carrying a mass of cables and adapters/chargers, being careful of wattage requirements for the newer iPads (or other tablets, when we had Kindle Fires).

Over the years we have tried and tossed many different adapter/charger combinations, usually settling for a duplicate of what comes with our device pre-stashed in our toiletry bag. We even bought laptop bags that came with a battery and a host of charging plugs, handy but heavy.

While Stu was in the US, I ordered two of these SHARKK® 25W 5-Port USB Wall Plug Family-Sized Charger/Adapter from Amazon. As soon as he unpacked it, he put it to use. HUGE hit! He easily plugged in and charged his iPad Air, Kindle e-reader, iPod and Android phone. No muss, no fuss!

We can now travel with the one stashed in our luggage and the other works in our house. OR we can each put one with our travel stuff. Hmmm, thinking I may get two more when we are in the US this fall.

Oh, but you STILL have to remember to bring your cables! ;)

*for Apple iPad Air / iPad Mini / iPad mini Retina / iPhone 5 / 5S / 5C / All Apple Phones and Tablets / Android Smartphones & Tablets / Samsung Galaxy / Samsung Tab / Samsung Note / And other USB-Powered Devices

He's leaving me! Just kidding...somewhat

Stu leaves tomorrow to head back to Maryland for the birth of his youngest's baby girl. She is due June 4th, hoping she can wait for him to arrive LATE Sunday night. I can't wait to see little Waverly, so glad we have both Facetime and Skype working.

He plans to stay about three weeks but that is open ended until the baby is born and both mother and daughter are okay. He'll see the rest of his family and friends while there.

He's already "muling" back a lot of items that we have ordered, including my laser printer. Lots of long sleeved shirts, a few fleece vests, some food items we can't get here, etc.

Last night I read about a $200 off special on the 13" MacBook Pro and we pulled the trigger on TWO of them. Not sure he'll be able to bring both back but we hope so since we have read we can bring one new and one used computer back into Ecuador. The nice thing is for $300 more, each, than the base model I was going to buy, we get twice the memory and quadruple the disk space.

Happy campers...well, for now. The learning curve may be interesting. I've already started a list of comparable software for the programs I use, have to get back to that now so I'm prepared.

Most of the time he is gone I will be working on book three of my Klondike Mystery Novels. If you haven't read them yet, might want to grab the first one, Not a Whisper, and see how you like it. You'll also want to download the FREE Klondike Kompanion, interviews with some of the characters.

I'll leave with a shot of two adorable little girls who posed for us at Mall del Rio a while ago. The kids here are so gorgeous, dark eyes and wide smiles!

Apartment Work Day

We had originally planned to travel into El Centro yesterday to get a few errands done but our friend, Emilio, called in the morning and was available to come out and help Stu install the wire we need for our Etapa Internet line. Our landlord pays for a basic line that we share with our downstairs neighbor. We want to pay for a higher speed line and not bog her down when we are using the Internet intensively (like watching TV). We also need a higher speed to be able to subscribe to services like Hulu and Netflix if we want a good watching experience. While we enjoy our Amazon Prime now, we'd like to see current series from the US, too.

The gentlemen from Etapa, the local Internet provider, came out a couple days ago and showed Stu where their line terminates, two houses down. It's our responsibility to get the wire from there to our termination point inside the house.

Fortunately Emilio is very experienced in construction as well as being our driver and facilitator/translator. He and Stu quickly opened up the little manholes, ran a metal wire through and then pulled our new wire back through. They then ran it up the building to a hidden corner of our living room and over to behind the television.

Etapa is scheduled to arrive next Tuesday to finish the install. We shall see, even in the US those days seem to undulate like an over full bowl of Jell-o. When they are done, then we will have the local specialist come out and configure the router we brought with us, designed to work specifically with Strong VPN services.

Here are some photos from the work today.

Once done with that, he and Stu hung our two big wall hanging rugs in the hallway. We couldn't have done it without him! I can already notice a difference in the echoing there!

Emilio has become so much more than just a driver since we met him in Guayaquil last December. We feel privileged to call him friend!

Staying connected.....

We are not moving to the Hinterlands of Zarnia, we are moving to Cuenca, Ecuador. Fortunately for us, we found Internet access is very available there, several companies offer the service and many apartment buildings provide it. There is a bit of free wi-fi as well. Since I am a writer, that's critical for me. But we also want to continue our blogs and stay in touch with family. Oh yeah, and visit Facebook. :)

We also want to keep things backed up so we have several portable hard drives for back-ups as well as storage of music, photos and movies. I use both Carbonite and DropBox to keep things backed up offline. DropBox is especially important for me since I use two laptops (my small one for writing and the bigger one for programs I don't have on the small one). Files are kept in sync between the two as well as my phone.

Since I can access the files on my phone, I keep important personal documents there. I can easily pull up a copy of our pup's shot record, a membership card, a travel itinerary, etc.  Comes in very handy.

Of course we don't know what will will get for a phone data plan when we get to Cuenca. Stu will bring his iPhone 4S (unlocked), I already have my iPhone 3G set up in Cuenca for phone/text only, and I'll have my Android which will probably get a pre-paid SIM card in the US.

We've got two Google Voice numbers which are working now, sending any calls to emails and texts. Those will be local numbers for folks back here in the US. We may get a MagicJack or some other VoIP system that will provide another way for folks in the US to call us without making an international call. We will have Skype, too.

So no, you won't lose touch with us when we move to Ecuador. We'll be CONNECTED!