Am I missing something here ?
On the admittedly rare occasion when I pick up my cell phone or my camera, they always seem to be out of battery.
So I charge them and then, when next I pick them up, they are out again.
What am I missing here ?
Should a charge not last a while ? Or am I in a space where charges dissipates ?
The latest to join the line of battery challenged equipment is my portable phone.
Sure, as of late it would send funny "ping" signals after a certain amount of airtime, but how was I to know that this might mean that the battery was about to go dead, which is what I fervently hope is the case at this moment.
Here is what I have learned from a search of the web.
A new telephone will cost about $50.
A new battery--if found--should cost no more than $4 to $5, even here in Mexico.
The trick is, however, to find a place that sells these batteries, and herein lies the challenge.
I know where to buy unlikely thingies for the water pumps, and even where to buy seeds and freshly roasted coffee, but batteries for phones ? No way. And my phone book is six years old and terribly out of date, so where?
Ah, light some candles and hope for the best.
Smoke signals ?

The window 2

TMI, said one of my favorite nieces.
I don't need to know this much, she said.
Hence the TMI ( too much information )
And yet
she admitted that she had a laugh and that the vision of the old fool on the hill peeing out the window was kind of funny.
That is why I love those girls. They will follow the dictum of society but only to a point. After that they are free spirits. And being able to see the silliness in some geezer peeing out the window, in particular if the geezer is an uncle.
It is of course much easier for a male to pee out the window than for a female, but that is for another post.

The window

I can pee out the window.
I can pee out of any window of the house, and nobody but I and the mutts would know.
Why, you might wonder, why is that important ?
Well, you see, even in the depth of the rainy season, when it rains every day and water is gushing in every gully, I have problems with the water supply.
So I try to ease the demand on water by peeing outside, but standing with your weenie exposed in the rain is not that much fun.
So I pee out the window.
And until now, when I told you, nobody knew.
Don't tell anybody else.
But I pee out the window.

My Birthday

Today is my birthday.
Today I turn 66 and I get to celebrate this momentous occasion all by myself; well almost.
All the worthless ones will be here.
As children, we were given-- within reason-- the choice of dinner of the birthday.
So I am going to fix a chicken. That is my choice for this day, my 66th birthday.
But I am a sly puss, I am, for a chicken dinner will last me, properly spaced out, a week.
So this is more than just a dinner of chicken; this is a week of not having to think about what to cook for dinner.
Happy birthday to me.

It took a letter from DMV saying that the end had come to renewing my license by mail to finally make me get a Mexican license.
And I fretted it, but today, after many and silly excuses to not go, I made it to the office and started the procedure.
When I asked the nice gent behind the desk what I might need, he listed items I already had--passport, FM3 and electric bill-- so all I had to do was to get the items copied--a copy store was conveniently located right next to the office-- and then pay the fee which had to be paid at another office, again located next to this office and then, and then, the nice gent told me, under normal circumstances I would have to take a written test, an eye exam and a driving test but.......
so I paid my fee and left a 200 pesos note with the receipt in a folder that I handed to the nice gent, and had my CV and picture taken by a busily typing lady and had my finger print printed and in no time I had my very own Mexican license to drive.
In four years I get to go back and renew it, no renewal by mail here.

Kill'em

I have been complaining loudly and consistently about my resident rodents, and somebody finally listened.
This morning as I entered the kitchen in my usual unfocused fog, I saw, on my kitchen counter, a decapitated rodent.
After the initial shock, I jumped for joy. This is the help I need. This is what will tell the impudent rodents that the free ride is over. No more free biscuits and chicken bones. This is war and the strange mouse killing pussy is on my side, so watch out.
Now if the killer could only learn to leave the carcasses outside, this person would be even happier.
But this is a step in the right direction.
The Worthless Ones slept through the kill. Great watch dogs.

It seems I have always been surrounded with music.
The cities where I have lived have all had a classical music station from New York through Seattle and San Diego to Puerto Vallarta. Yes, P.V. had a wonderful station for many years until, for reasons unknown to me, it was taken over by the cultural commission of the state of Jalisco, located in Guadalajara, and from being a charming, local radio station, it became a talk radio with strong-- some might say only-- emphasis on the city of Guadalajara.
And that was when I discovered the joy of silence.
I had been annoyed and upset so many times by the needless, inquonsequential talk fests of the station, that I started to not turn it on, and I liked it.
Now I like listening to the naural sounds of the birds and other critters in the wood. I like the distant, very distant sound of the waves and the traffic on the road to Puerto Vallarta.
Sometimes I turn the radio on, and sure as manure, there they are, talking, talking, talking.
So I go back to my silence.

Speed bumps and me

I hate speed bumps. I will fight the in-city traffic rather than bypassing it by going through the tunnel, because by going the tunnel way you pass over scads and scads of these hateful inventions.
And I have a choice.
Now we have the bumps on my way to town, and I do not have a choice, because this is the only road. Two lanes and no cross streets and no alternate route.
I do see the purpose of these bumps to slow down traffic to help children and mothers and animals to cross the street in relative safety, but this is not the case on this road.
Here there are no children or mothers or animals to cross the road.
The bumps on my road are erected at the entrances to some super expensive developments squatting on the rocks right next to the sea. They have yet to be finished, these super expensive developments, but now they have the bumps.
Some day we will have the new owners of the expensive developments driving their expensive cars out and never having to worry one little bit, because we who live in the different parts have had to slow down to a crawl because of the damn bumps.
I hate those speed bumps.

Rodents and alcohol and me

I have learned to live with my unwanted rodent house guests. I don't like it, but I concede.
I try to remember to put my legumes in plastic containers and not to leave my laundry unattended for too many days lest I shall find holes where none were before.
I was amused--at first--when I discovered the gnawing of the cartons of soy juice I was stashing in my converted fridge.
All clean fun.
Till they got into my cheap wine which, like the milk and juice, comes in cartons.
And that is not funny. Not funny at all.
Because they, for some reason, start to gnaw holes further down from the top, leaving the carton to leak precious wine if it goes unnoticed.
And you wonder...do the rodents like the taste of wine ?
Do they first gnaw a hole in the top and then, because they really, really like the taste, gnaw a hole further down so they can get more of the super tasting stuff ?
I don't know. All I know is that they have caused the spillage of good, drinkable wine, and that is a no-no.
So now it is war. It is the righteous me against the destructive forces of some rodents who have found courage and bliss in my cheap wine.
And that won't do.
Cheap courage and bliss is for me only.
I pay for the stuff.