EXPERIMENT; can I use FREE village WIFI to upload blog?

29th May: STOCKING THE FRIDGE!

The charge controllers stopped charging the batteries at about nine last night, dusk, but they were twinkling away again when I got up around seven; so now we're hunting around for all our electrical gadgets to use with all this free electricity!

Having free village internet didn't last for long; last night it said our password was invalid (it's exactly the same as user name, I 'cut and paste' so it wasn't, and Brett tried it and got the same message) and now all day it says "servidor RADIUS n�o responde", so we think the server is down. While we were in town we used the free wifi at Jumbo and posted a week's worth of the blog, it'll be so great when I can do it daily from the comfort of my own sofa - we're still trying to decide which internet provider to go with, we don't want to get it wrong as we'll have to sign up for a year if we want to get a good deal.

We did a big shop to stock up our working fridge - beer, wine ........... etc. We feel like it's such a luxury, now all we need is a bigger fridge!

Brett spends at least a hour every evening strimmering; so the place is looking far more tidy than when we arrived. I haven't got any enthusiasm for starting the vegetable garden, it is so overgrown with weeds, I can't think where to start - it's very intimidating; but I must do something soon, you can't be self sufficient and buy your food from the supermarket!

30th May: DINNER PARTY

Flippin' heck, this morning we had music playing, the fridge working, Brett was using power tools and I was boiling water in the electric kettle and it hardly made a dent in our capacity - the charge controllers were twinkling away, making free electricity; of course it will be a different matter in the winter when there's less light available.

Brett has made a couple of compost toilets and when I have time I will decorate them using my heat transfer tool. 

Internet came back this evening; we reckon it's like our modem, occasionally it needed turning off then on again, as the Junta is only open Mon 6.30 - 7.30 and Thurs 6.30 - 7.30 that's when it will get reset. I was able to check emails and facebook.

We had Mark (unfortunately without Pam as she is still in France) and Nick round for a celebratory (celebrating the solar system, any excuse!) meal tonight. It was quite a challenge cooking a three course meal with only two burners; but we managed ......... fried camembert, with sweet spicy aubergine chutney (one I made earlier, 2006!) as we didn't have any red currant jelly, spaghetti with chargrilled pepper, olives and pesto served with mixed salad and crepes (kind of suzette) made with our own oranges but without any alcohol - it was very filling!!!