Family news

Well, no one can find a computer battery here in Manila (we ordered two and neither fit). Guess the next step is Dell US...

Joy got back from Manila last night and brought Pizza... I asked Lolo if he wanted one, and he said no...but as I came in with two pieces, he ate both for his midnight snack.

Ruby and her homeschool magnet school class had a trip to Bataan...to learn history and visit the never opened nuclear plant. They also climbed up the mountain there (lots of eco tourism hiking).

Today, the maid came to iron (which she was supposed to do yesterday afternoon) so I said I'd pay her if she also cleaned up the room of the houseboy, where one of the dogs had her puppies. 
So she cleaned it up, and I got the puppies out for their first bath. Their eyes are open and some of them are starting to eat, so when I bought the 20kg bag of dogfood (hi pro for nursing moms) I also bought some puppy food...we mix everything with gravy and leftovers and brown rice.

The cats however smelled the puppy food and ate it. The cats are also fed rice and fish, and whatever they can catch (lizards, birds, mice). The small kitten is still alive: The next danger to him is when he starts wandering, which is when our dogs will kill him if he isn't fast enough. Sigh. we are down to 2 cats: one male and our "mama cat" who had four litters before we had her fixed.

After lunch, we went to get Lolo's medicines at the mall, and I also bought some light bulbs (none of them last very long: now with the new fangled light bulbs, I really worry about mercury in the environment...we recycle but most folks don't).

I invested in one LCD lamp...400 pesos (8 dollars) for a 60 watt bulb, whereas a newfangeld one is either 99 pesos or 120 pesos...and the older types are 40 pesos.

Sheesh.

But because we have to light up the house, the gardens, and the storage areas, we use a lot of light bulbs at night to keep the thieves away.

However, after coming home, we found that one of the dead light bulbs is okay: it was the socket. We have our handyman replacing the fancy bulbs in our fence (some got broken by kids, the rest by the storm)...replacing the fancy capiz shell bulbs around the lamps with a wire shell. The kids would break the capiz shell globes for fun, but the storm just blew them all out, and the lightbulbs disappeared...presumably someone needed a spare light bulb at home.