33 days and counting.

It seems something is happening every day to get us closer to Cuenca, Ecuador. The big tractor left the place in Willow Springs last week - its new home is in Aurora, Missouri, where it is going to be a project tractor.

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 "Old Stumpy" has skidded many an oak log and lifted all of them onto the log deck of the sawmill. That old tractor earned his keep on our place for many years.

The last load of books from Barbara's library going to the Public Library. To quote Cicero, "a room without books is like a body without a soul", our house had a lot of soul.

We thought we had found a rental house in Cuenca a month ago, but we were not able to work out the lease agreement we wanted. We found another rental the other day in the north section of the city but we were not familiar with that part of town. Thanks to Clarke Green, of clarkeandbrenda.blogspot.com fame, we were able to determine it was an okay section of the city and we are in hopes of the attorney getting a lease to us soon.

We've been taking a load or two of household goods and tools to the auction site every day, for the auction on the 7th of November. The Willow Springs property goes on the auction block on the 22nd of November. All of our residency paper work has been Fedexed to the attorney in Cuenca, signed and sealed. Early this morning I sold Barbara's tractor - she will be happy about that, but I don't think she will be happy about what I sold it for. A year and a half ago I bought that tractor for $17,500.00 and today I sold it for $11,000.00 and I am going to change all the fluids in it before it leaves the property. If I left it on the property unsold the auction company would sell it for what they could get for it, in the off season to a bunch of cattle ranchers who would pay what they would pay for a tractor with 3000hrs. on it - she only has 47 hours on it. I am trying to make my case, because I may be in the dog house for a while.

All things considered, I think we will make the plane on November 30th.