Tuesday – 26 Oct 2010

[smartads] Starting off a little different today, instead of the same old boring, I emerged from under the covers at 0721 this morning routine.  But that is what happen anyway, because I had to get up sometime today.  That seemed like just as good a time as any.  I made pancakes again this morning.  I used the different “Hotcake” mix, not “Pancake” mix that Lita bought.  Let me go check the name of that right quick.  Okay, got it.  Lita threw the box away, so I had to dig in the trash to get it.  It’s called White King Hotcake and Waffle Mix.  This one you had to mix a little different than normal though.  With this one, in addition to the 1/2 cup of water (or milk for this one), you had to add 1 egg and 2 teaspoons of butter.  While I was mixing it, I put the water, then the butter and then I was getting ready to mix it and Crystal said, 1 egg Uncle John.  I said oh yeah, I forgot.  She was looking at the pictures on the box I guess because I doubt she could read those English words.  This one was pretty good also, but I like the other one better.  Neither of them is as good as Aunt Jemima though.  Oh and Lita told me to make 1 pancake for Lynn, which to my surprise, she actually wanted.  She tried to eat it without syrup, because maybe she didn’t know.  Maybe she doesn’t like syrup because the syrup she used was one that we brought from Texas when we went to the Cracker Barrel.  The maple syrup there is really good.  Anyway, the small bottle we had, I usually use the whole thing for 2 pancakes and Lynn didn’t even use 1/3 for her 1 pancake.  I think she just got it, used a little to be nice.  I’m thinking she can do without the syrup.

Well I’ve still only used 1 can of that beef stew, but the beef jerky is just about finished.  I’ve got 2 pieces here with me now and there is 1 piece left in the bag.  I’m going to leave that 1 piece for Lita.  I think that tomorrow I will open one of the chicken and dumplings or maybe the Van Camp pork n beans.  Dang, now I’m finished with my beef jerky.  Maybe Lita doesn’t want anymore jerky and it’ll be okay if I eat the last one.  She won’t care.  Nah, I don’t think so.  I’m going to leave it for her, unless she says I can have it.  If not, then I’ve eaten my last piece of beef jerky for awhile.  Ha!  She just walked in, I asked her, and she said I could have it.  I’m going to try to make this last piece last a long time.  I need something to drink, hang on again.   Okay, back.  Not much in there that is too cold to drink right now, but I got a cool Mountain Dew.

Eddie finally came by this morning to pick up the tricycle.  He showed up a little past 7:30am.  He returned it early, around 5:00pm, but at least he had it long enough to owe the boundary.  (This beef jerky will never make the end of the blog).  Don’t know why he returned it early, but as long as he pays the P60, the rest is on him.

You probably noticed by now that I have added music to the blog.  That’s Spanish guitar background music.  It’s easy to remove if no one likes it.  I was hoping it would be nice to listen to while you were reading.  If you go to the bottom of the screen, you have a choice of 6 different tunes that can be played.  You can also press stop on the player and the music will stop until you restart it or come back to the blog.

I also changed the background again.  Winda how does that work for your laptop?  The background picture is from Bohol, Philippines.  I found it under “Nature Pictures” doing a Google search.  (Only 2 small bites of that beef jerky left).  I hope that the background is good for everyone.  I tried to get a light color so it wouldn’t interfere with any words on the screen.   The background can be tiled like it is, horizontal across the top or vertical down either the left or right side, but not both at the same time.  To me this looked better, but I’m open for suggestions.

I tried to give the ‘last’ small piece of beef jerky to Lita, but she said she didn’t want it because if she tasted it, she’d want more, and there isn’t anymore.  So I sacrificed myself, and I ate the last piece.  It was rough and I now have a tear in my eye, because it’s really hitting me that there is no more now.

Tagalog word of the day:  bisig (be-cig)  I have a problem with this one.  My dictionary says it means “arm”, but Lita says it means “shoulder”.  I’m hoping Winda will break the tie for me.  Or anyone else that reads this and knows can let me know.

On the front page there is a link that says “Top Blogs of the Philippines”.  If you check that out it says that there are 1415 blogs in the Philippines.  My blog at the time of this post was at 543.  It was at 550 only 2 hours ago.  Seems the more unique visitors I get the higher up it goes.  I checked out the visitors and if we can get 10 more unique visitors, we can move up to under 500.  By the time you read this it may have changed.  That site also has a breakdown of how many pages were visited, and a time frame for all of it.  It’s pretty cool, I’m glad I decided to check it out.

Oh by the way when I went to bed last night the hits were at 20843.  I didn’t check them again until 10:10am, but at that time they were at 21013.  That’s 170 hits, and that’s cool.  It’s not up there with the top blogs yet, but it’s moving up.

People around here have been trying to get in contact with Ramil today.  I don’t really know what’s going on, and no one is saying, right now.  I got in touch with Ramil on Yahoo Messenger, but he claimed that he had a very slow connection and couldn’t really talk at the moment.  I pretty sure what he said was true, because it showed him typing a message and it took several minutes before his little 5 word message came across.  I told him that he needed to contact his wife and I even gave him my home phone number so he could call.  Supposedly if you call Globe to Globe phones, there is no charge for it.  I pretty sure I told y’all about that already.  Anyway, he never did acknowledge that he got my message with the phone number, hence no call.  Maybe later on, it’s only 7:27pm.

Yesterday at Malajog Beach, I went walking down the shore looking for shells.  Don’t know why I did it, I just did.  I found 4 shells that looked kind of pretty, so I kept them.  While I was sitting at the table, Joshua came by and took all of them to the ocean, played for a little while and then brought back 2 of them.  I guess he felt a little guilty because he started filling up this little plastic bag with rocks and shells and dumping them on the table next to me.  Eventually I did find 2 more to add to the collection and I have them here under my computer screen.  Actually it is 3 shells and 1 piece of coral.  I don’t normally collect shells, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Okay this is the last story I have for today.  I was over visiting Titing a couple of hours ago.  He was in the warehouse doing paperwork.  I didn’t feel like squeezing through the little hallway, even though I do fit now, so I just talked to him down the alleyway.  I was asking him if anything interesting happen to day, so I could put it here in the blog.  The only thing he could come up with was we had another brownout today.  It lasted about 30 minutes.  This is a normal brownout, no dump trucks breaking electrical lines today.  While I was talking to Titing, I show a rat run by his feet.  I told him about it and right about that time another rat starting coming down the alleyway towards me.  I stomped my foot and told that rat that if he came this way, I’d stomp on him.  Guess he believed me, because he turned around and headed back where he came from.  I hate those nasty little rodents.

It’s times like this that I really miss my cat we had in Texas.  That cat would have clean out every rat in this area by now.  She loved to catch things and play with them.  Snakes (the smaller ones), rabbits (babies), birds, mice, rats even bugs.  She came up to the door one day with a big crow in her mouth trying to get in.  I told her, I don’t think so, outside.  She listened to me.  She even brought home a baby squirrel one day.  She got it into the house though.  Of course it got loose and ran into the bathroom.  It hid between the bathtub and a cabinet where the cat couldn’t get in.  I had to reach in there, with a towel, to get that little squirrel out of there.  I thought it was going to attack me, but it seems that it was happy to be getting out of there and didn’t put up a fight.  I just brought it back outside and let it run up a tree.  That cat tried to go after it again, but I stopped her.

Dang, stupid electric in this country.  We just had a brownout that lasted about 1 minute.  We’ve been getting a lot of short ones recently.  I thought it wasn’t going to save that last paragraph and I was going to have to retype it, but it turned out I didn’t.  Good thing or you never would have known about my weird cat in Texas, because I probably would not have retyped it.  Saving now, just in case of another brownout.

That’s it.  I’ll put on the finishing touches and hope to be back tomorrow with some really eye popping news.

Philippine Trivia

• Philippine Airlines took to the skies on March 15, 1941, using a Beech Model 18 aircraft amid the specter of a global war. It became Asia’s first airline.
• The world’s largest pearl was discovered by a Filipino diver in a giant Tridacna (mollusk) under the Palawan Sea in 1934. Known as the “Pearl of Lao-Tzu”, the gem weighs 14 pounds and measures 9 1/2 inches long and 5 1/2 inches in diameter. As of May 1984, it was valued at US$42 million. It is believed to be 600 years old.
• Alto Broadcasting System (ABS) Channel 3, the first television station in the country, went on the air in 1953.
• Fernando Amorsolo, a painter, was the first national artist declared by the Philippine government. The award was conferred on Amorsolo in April 1972, several days after his death.
• The world’s second deepest spot underwater is in the Philippines. This spot, about 34,440 feet (10,497 meters) below the sea level, is known as the Philippine Deep or the Mindanao Trench. The Philippine Deep is in the floor of the Philippine Sea. The German ship Emden first plumbed the trench in 1927. The world’s deepest part of the ocean is the Marianas Trench, which is over 11,000 meters below the seal level.
• The symbolic name for the Philippines, Juan dela Cruz, is not a Filipino invention? It was coined by R. McCulloch-Dick, a Scottish-born journalist working for the Manila Times in the early 1900s, after discovering it was the most common name in blotters

Salamat, Palaam