I spent a good part of yesterday up on a ladder doing mindless work. Our house in Brasil is only about six years old. It has galvanized rain gutters 
that may be about the same age. When we bought our home almost two years ago, the owner had just painted it – likely to help it sell. The rain gutters were painted at that time.
Maybe you don’t know this, but galvanized metal will only hold paint if it is prepared properly – it needs to be clean and a special type of primer should be used. The primer isn’t expensive – it’s about the same price per liter as paint, perhaps the equivalent of $7 here. I was up on a ladder yesterday morning because the rain gutters were painted without being properly prepared. I have had to remove all of the old paint, clean them, apply the proper primer and then repaint. 
Removing paint is a messy and time-consuming job. It’s a little easier with my cool Harbor Freight heat gun. I did this same job to the gutters in the back of the house on my last trip here. I’m trying to get everything squared away now because I’m not going to have time for home maintenance (in Brasil) for a while.
The previous owner of the house likely didn’t paint the gutters himself, the painters that did the job skipped this important step – just to save money. In less than two years, the paint has begun peeling away from the untreated metal and the gutters looked really bad.
The previous owner was moving away, he didn’t care. The painter was unlikely to get another job from this customer, so he didn’t care. The job looked good when the house was sold, so the owner didn’t care. For the $7 cost of paint and an extra hour or so of work, the good name of both the painter (I don’t know it) and the seller were sullied. I can’t respect someone that would allow that sort of corner-cutting on a job that he was paying good money for, and a good painter wouldn’t allow his people to skip something that important.
Or maybe I’m just whining because I had to do a bunch of ladder work…..
Last night, we took Monica’s poodle on a poop walk and stopped at a padaria (a neighborhood bakery) to pick up some coffee. I always have my cell phone with me and I took this photo. 
Unfortunately, my camera focused on the back of Monica’s head, but if you look carefully, you can see red LED numerals at the top of the beer coolers – just below the TVs. These numbers show the temperature of the cooler (and the beer inside). People here like their beer cold, and most beer coolers have been designed to brag about how cold they are. Just a cool detail about this area that I thought that I would share. Cold beer really is better….
Here’s a random photo from last week at work. One of the really important things that I do there is check the water streams leaving the plant to make sure that they’re clean. We have operators that do this, but it’s so important that I like to check myself. Here’s a photo that I took of a couple of egrets watching the water for for their dinner. 
I’ve gotta go paint some gutters…
Greg
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