Dear Diary

Thanks Pit...

Dear Diary,

I am enjoying a long weekend - Thursday was a church holiday and our department was closed today, Friday. And the weather is absolutely wonderful. So I went rollerblading this morning and then cleaned all the windows. I read, I fell asleep. I went outside to the café across the street and sat outside until after 8 pm drinking iced coffee and reading some more.

I cooked spaghetti and drank wine. And tomorrow, I will go to my sister's house for a BBQ.

And I will not think about Monday!

Dear Diary,

This is personal.

There are people here.

We write a lot.




Just thought you might like to know.

Grattitudes,
-CodeBorg-

Urs, you pretty thing. Just enjoy this looooooooogggggggg weekend.

Codeborg, you funny green thing. Love it!

Dear Diary - two things.

One, I am so glad I don't have to post on the missing persons thread that I'm missing CodeBorg. Two, I am so sick of being snot-filled.

ehBeth, are you ill? Yes, I'm glad you found Codeborg as well.

I am most decidedly unwell, my fine feathered friend.
Hope, of course, is that thing with feathers.

Allergies went out of control last weekend after some giddy gardening. Devolved into my first officially diagnosed episode of asthma, which activated a bronchial infection which had been simmering.

I am NOT a good patient, but I went to the doc - greatly as a result of the pushpushpush of my good friends, littlek and blaise daley. So - it is antibiotics, an inhaler, ear drops, nasal spray, eye drops - a cough suppressant at night - and a great case of the jitters.




While I still sound like I should be doing voice-overs for a phone-sex line for people who like very butch men (a colleague mentioned that in passing today) - I am now rarely barking like a dog.

I was my own dog and pony show for a bit there.

~~~~~~~~~~~


<kicky's on vacation, so I'm doing his job in the "symptoms" department for a while>

ODE TO EHBETH

Her green snot
was irresistable.
Yet somehow, dispensable.
The irreprehensible yet charmingly sensible

expression of histamine unveiled.

I couldn't do without the element of wondrous coloration,
so I came back, returned to the place of fluid streams
and torn dreams, yet the mucous still seems
to make me run among fearfully nasal moonbeams.

Divided. Collided.

Consciousness is a "two-edged sneeze".
On the one hand it relieves, exuberantly cedes
to our wherewithal and inner frail humanity,
yet on the other hand it makes our hands ... green.

Life is sticky and sublime. Doncha know?

I couldn't do without the happy green spooze,
the natural explosion of inner self soothes,
so yet sneeze, please wheeze, keep it off my sleeves,
and do post and think and write what you needs.

Of what colors your life. Especially green.




I am blessed.

fearfully nasal moonbeams


I'm quite taken with that particular vignette, within the series of vignettes


how wonderful!


<another reason why I'm so glad NOT to miss CodeBorg>




~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm picturing a tiny imp.
Likely with iridescent green wings.
Capable of glaring fearfully at anyone and anything that interferes with her giddy appreciation of life.
Talking like Ernest Borgnine.

And her pals.

Fearfully nasal moonbeams.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm smiling.

Dear Diary,

Delightful exchange, the words that followed before, smile readings...life is good!

That is really nice to hear Maple

I acidentally said a offensive word today, and boy do I feel guilty still. Me and my big mouth.

otherwise, its been a good day - sunny but still freezing and I am free from exams for a few weeks now.

Hey! I just upgraded to a seasoned member and didn't even realise it!! I think I need a break.

jackpot

Moving In
Dear Diary

It's been quite a while since I posted and it's time for an update.

We finally moved in to our mountain home forty five minutes away from and 6,600 ft above the city of Cali. There were endless delays, first a major remodeling project then a month and a half long trip to the US and lastly confirmed rumors that local thugs were planning to visit us for a shakedown, kidnap or something after we moved in. Regarding that I applied for a gun permit months ago from the Colombian Army (the only legal option here) but each time I go to inquire they tell me "no ha llegado". I'm losing interest anyway. They have a display of available weapons and most are "Streetsweeper" style black short handled shotguns that cost fifteen hundred dollars or so. All pretty expensive. In the mean time we've installed loud sirens in both the main house and the caretaker's and have concluded that if armed bad guys enter the house having the element of surprise as the bad guys always do we're better off confronting them unarmed. Also we have walkie talkie communication with the three neighbors. The only "scare" came the very first night when I dicovered a bat flying around inside the house. That sent my wife fleeing to the bedroom where she locked herself in untill I caught the poor creature and removed it. Ahh city girls…

I'm enjoying the cloud forest environment. Lots of orchids and bromeliads in the woods and I already have a "yard list" of over fifty birds. I hear and see Emerald Toucanets, the guys with the great big beaks every day. It's also hummingbird heaven. I put out some feeders and have ten different species coming to them. My two forty eight ounce feeders are emptied in less than two days. Many of the species are about twice the size of the Ruby-throated so I guess that's why.

The temperature is pretty steady at around sixty degrees but warms up during the occasional periods of sunshine, occasional because this is after all cloud forest and indeed and the place is socked in a lot of the time. The temp is not popular with my wife who spent all of her thirty years in Cali which is at 3,200 ft and it's a cold snap with everyone donning jackets and coats if the temp plummets to seventy five. In Cali she slept with a warm blanket when the night time temp was eighty. We have oil filled electric heaters going round the clock (I can't wait to see the first electric bill) and a fireplace so inside it's about sixty eight. Aside from the cold a big problem has been humidity and the resulting fungus. Outside it's almost always in the ninety to a hundred percent range and it was the same inside before we moved in. Any untreated/unpainted wood surfaces such as the plywood in the cabinetry just loaded up with mold. It's under control now after heavy applications of liquid furniture wax and the humidity inside is down to seventy five percent thanks to the heaters.

All country houses here have a "mayordomo" who is a caretaker of the property. Any house with out one would be cleaned out down to the plumbing fixtures and light bulbs in no time if the owners were away for any length of time maybe even a couple of days so a mayodomo is pretty much obligatory. He earns a "salario minimo" of about $166 plus health insurance. He and family usually occupy a few side rooms of the main house or often have a small house of their own some what removed from the main one. He pays no rent or utilities or daily go to work transportation costs and usually has a good sized vegetable garden. That is the case here. Marco worked for the former owners for eight years and we kept him on. He has a wife Amparo and two children. When we began the remodeling project they had a constant stream of visitors, mostly family members of Amparo but friends as well. Often their visitors would spend the night as it's a long walk up here. We realized before long that this was a big security breach, who knew who was who and besides the situation created a total lack of privacy so we added a clause to his contract that they were to have zero visitors. That was quite a shock to Amparo and they thought for several days about signing but did in the end and we have enjoyed tranquility and privacy since.

Pitter
As always I know you can come up with some great pictures.

Thank you Husker, for the moment my photos are mostly of hummingbirds and moths.

Glad to hear your report, Pitter. Quite an adventure...