Wednesday – 22 Sep 2010

[smartads] Today, for no particular reason, I decided to ascend from the bed at 0747.  Lita is at the market this morning so it is nice and quiet around here.  I know I will hear Arnel hammering in a short while though and lots of batas screaming, getting ready for school.  I’ll enjoy the few minutes I have of peace and quiet.

It got to be 0834 now, and just as I predicted batas are screaming and Arnel is hammering.  I think he is re-enforcing the roof today.  Yesterday he and his assistant cemented the wall.  The old rock fence that is there had lots of holes and weak spots in it, but it doesn’t now, at least not in the section up front.  I looked outside and I didn’t see the helper today, I guess Arnel doesn’t need him for anything today, or maybe not for anything else.  Spot jobs are common here too.

Grace came with her father last night to pick up Juvic.  She wanted to buy a couple of ice candies, so I told her to just take them.  She refused, she even refused to take the discount that we normally give everyone else in the family.  So she got the 2 ice candies and I gave her her 1 peso change (from 5 pesos) and while she was leaving I ‘accidentally’ bumped into her and put the 5 pesos in her hat, she was wearing a hoodie, but didn’t have the hat on.  Grace is an alright person.  She is very sweet, very respectful, pretty smart, loves to smile, and well just pretty darn cute.  I enjoy talking to her.

I received an e-mail from my niece Jaclyn a couple of days ago, Hi Jaclyn, and she said something in her e-mail that I thought was kind of neat, nifty, cool, awesome…whatever is in these days.  It was in reference to the thing that her mom, Joyce, Hi Joyce, said the other day that Winda, Hi Winda, commented on.  Joyce was saying that I just rambled on and on so my post were never short.  Winda said she liked my rambling, y’all remember that?  Anyway Jaclyn said, “Rambling is a good thing.  It’s always the little things that make stuff really interesting”.  Now isn’t that ‘interesting’?  Do y’all agree with that statement, cause I can ramble for hours, once I get focused on a subject.  I think I get it on my mother’s side.  My Meme (French for grandmother), could talk for hours upon hours about nothing in particular.  Another thing that Jaclyn wrote was the last item in the e-mail.  This was right after I was sick those 3 days.  She said, “Well get better and get blogging”.  I thought that was good too.

Well we did have another brownout today so they could ‘work on the lines’.  Same answer we get 80% of the time when we call.  Fix the stupid problem the first time and you won’t have all these problems to have to keep coming out to fix.  Anyway the power went out at 0907 and didn’t come back on until 3:33pm.  It’s 4:34pm now.  I am so sick of all these brown outs, but I really don’t see what I can do about it.  Please let that new power plant be the solution to all this insanity.

I had 5100 hits when I went to bed last night, well early this morning, it was 0230.  I was playing the bookworm game.  I’m at 5365 hits now.  I guess that’s pretty good.  I found that the hit counter was counting me whenever I was making changes to the blog though.  So probably about 1000 of those are mine.  Just guessing.  I have it fixed now so that won’t happen anymore.  The hits now should be a lot more accurate.

Did y’all notice that I added a Philippines History Page?  It has a lot of information there about the Philippines.  Quite a few things that I found to be pretty interesting.

I think I hear Judith outside.  I better go make an entrance.

Yep, it was her.  She’s just here to chat awhile.  I guess she’ll stay until it’s time for Juvic to go home around 10:00pm.  It’s 6:07pm now.

Judith, Victor, Mar, Ludy, Titing, Neneng, Lita and I are the ones that are suppose to be going on the little trip to Cebu in a month or two.  It depends on when everyone can get free from their jobs.  I think I’ve found the restaurant we will be going to.  I’ve seen their menu on-line and it is lacking some, but they say they can get whatever we want.  I e-mailed them to ask them, just to be sure.  I want a 16-24 oz prime steak.  Titing wants a fillet mignon, and I know Lita wants the Filipino food.  When I receive a response from them, and they can get what we want, then I will ask the rest of them if they want anything special.  I’m thinking all the guys will want to get steaks and the women will settle for the Filipino food.  But, hey, anyone can have anything they want.  That is just what I think will happen.  We are also suppose to be spending the night there and staying in a hotel.  I know some of them will decide to stay in the house that they have in Cebu.  (Marge you stay there don’t you)?  I’m not telling the name of the restaurant yet, because I want it to be a surprise, because there will be an extra surprise.  It all depends on that e-mail when/if I receive it.  Maybe I should go check right now.  I haven’t checked since the electric came back on.  Be right back.  It’s 6:17pm.

Titing is outside singing again, but I don’t know the song.

No, nothing in my mail from them.  I even checked the spam just to be sure.  Wish they would respond, but I only sent the message yesterday, so I guess I’m being impatient again.

Arnel decided to hang around again today after he finished working he is drinking the Philippines #1 Rhum (yeah that’s how they spell it).  It’s called Tanduay.  Just a really cheap rum that most everyone here drinks.  It seems to be in the Boone’s Farm and MD2020 class.  I haven’t tried it yet though.  Probably won’t either, unless it is in a mixed drink.  I’ll bet I don’t like it though.  I don’t really like drinking straight hard liquor anyway.  They have some apple vodka that taste pretty good.  Hard to find any tequila, much less a good tequila.  Think I’ll just stick to the Red Horse and San Miguel for now.

Winda, tomorrow I will write about why we decide to move to Calbayog City Samar, when Lita is from Southern Leyte.  I was going to do it today, but I was thinking it could turn into a long story and I might be short of material tomorrow.

Anyone notice the new hit counter?  Supposedly y’all can click on it and see the same stats that I do, but I don’t know if it works yet.  It might just try to get you to sign up for something.  Don’t do it just to see the stats.  If you are that curious, I’ll let you know or try to post it here somehow.  Not really interesting.  They just tell me who visits what page, how many times on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.  I just started it today so it’s not much to look at anyway.  I will look at it and the pages and links no one seems to be interested in, I will end up deleting and probably replacing with something else.

Did I eat today?  I don’t think so.  Oh, yeah I had french fries.  I’m not really hungry anyway.  I always feel so bloated.  Probably because I drink so much during the day.

I don’t have any new pictures except for the Store and there are only 2 pictures on the memory card.  I don’t want to download for 2 pictures.  I’ll head downtown and take a bunch of pictures.  Hopefully I’ll be able to do that tomorrow.

I’m going to have to tell my wife it stinks in the kitchen now.  At least I don’t like the smell.  Maybe I’ll put it that way, it sounds less threatening.  “I don’t like the smell in the kitchen these days”.  That sounds okay, I hope.  I think she going to get mad that I said something about it, but it’s my kitchen too.  Maybe it’s just the fish they have on the table.  It’ s been ‘stinky’ for about 3 days now.

Tagalog word of the day:  isda (is-da)  means  fish.

Well it’s 7:02pm now, time to finish up this post.  I guess I had ‘some’ good things in here today.  Maybe this weekend I’ll start going to the gym with Ramil, if he doesn’t chicken out, and I’ll have more to discuss next week.  I should be okay for tomorrow.  Not sure about Friday yet.  Remember if you have any suggestions, ideas, need to find something or someplace, let me know, I’ll try to accommodate.

Salamat, Palaam