Day 3

Cape Breton is a beautiful and frustrating place.

We arrived late Tuesday night at our idyllic patch of land, rested after a week in Halifax and ready to start building. After almost three days there's not much to see except some stakes in the ground, but when you spend those days trying in vain to find cell phone reception (screw you, Rogers), then using Carla's aunt's phone instead to call every friggin' backhoe owner on the island, finding one who's got a few free hours to dig a hole only to have him cancel due to the rainstorm of the year, then having to phone all those same people again to find another machine, and meanwhile the building inspector tells you he needs the owner's signature on the building permit application but the owner just drove back to Halifax and you have no idea where to find a fax machine, and once that's dealt with you have nothing to do but stare at the empty site and wait -- well, you can still get stressed out. Things move at a different pace here and I'm just now starting to sync up.

Despite these rather petty complaints there is a lot to be happy about. We should have the hole dug by tomorrow morning, the foundations poured by Monday, and framing started by mid-week. All-told we're still more or less on schedule. Costs have generally been under my projections so far. I'm not in an office all day. And last night we drove over to Inverness to see our friend Joel Plaskett play a sold-out solo acoustic show at the Arts Centre. Every time I see Joel play the crowd is a bit more devoted than last time, and this was no exception. A cluster of Irish hooligan-ettes in the front row were extremely drunk and smitten. Joel seemed a bit put off when they insisted on singing and clapping along to even the morose ballads.

More next week.

- Geoff