Family news

Internet is now working!

It seems that the wires weren't connected to the plugs correctly.

Joy is at another meeting.

Tomorrow, Ruby has a school meeting and the driver will get the oil etc. changed while they are in Manila. I'll stay home.

They are widening the drainage ditches around the house (the street in front of the Palenke floods when it rains heavily, because it flows past us to the river. Lolo put in one foot wide ditches when he built the house 30 years ago, but the pipes under the streets get clogged. So they are putting in 18 to 24 inch ditches and pipes, and covering them (to stop mosquito breeding in the low flow times), and replacing the pipes with larger pipes.

The bad news: The plants in front of our wall, mainly cactuses and other plants with thorns, have all gone, since the pipe will now be 6 inches from the wall instead of 18 inches.

That is on the south and west side. So far no work on the east side, and the north side has neighbors and doesn't face the street.

I usually try to give the guys 50 pesos for snacks every day. On the days I was away, the cook gave them free ice water and coffee.

The bad news is that the dirt had broken glass in it, and George the killer Lab cut his foot on it and it got infected. Usually you can buy medicine without prescription, but now the best pharmacy won't give me antibiotics without checking my medical licenses, which I have changed to "retired".

After ten years of no practice, I won't practice medicine again, and so let the licenses go into hibernation.

As for cats: Now that all three dogs sleep in the room, I am keeping cats out...which is okay because they are all strays and hiss at you if you get too close. We have two black cats (and a third black male visitor sometimes), and two semi black kittens, and two yellow kittens that George sniffed out in the local vacant lot.  The kitties are getting to the wandering stage, so usually at that point they leave or get killed by the dogs (sigh).  One of the yellow ones has a half tail, a genetic problem we see in some of our yellow strays.

When the internet was off, I just read a couple of my books (I have a library of about 200 books.

I went back on and the headlines haven't change in two weeks, so I guess the world didn't end.