Congratulations, Visitor 1,000!

Digging through my records over at sitemeter.com, I realized that we hit the big 1,000 visitor mark at 9:58 a.m. Eastern time Saturday morning, when someone logged in from Cincinnati, Ohio. We think that lucky visitor number 1,000 is Berni, one of Shelly's Peace Corps buddies.

Berni, Mister Tanaka would like to honor your persistance by extending your subscription to mistertanaka.blogspot.com for one year, absolutely free of charge. Mister Tanaka gives your subscription his pawprint of approval, guaranteeing you double your money back if you are not satisfied.

Are the Olympics Over?

America isn't the only place where nobody is watching the Olympics.

I think they ended yesterday, but I don't actually know that for sure. I've channel surfed around, looking for the Olympics on TV here, but I didn't see a single event. I guess you can't be too excited about curling and the luge when the temperature rarely drops below 78 degrees Fahrenheit.

***

All's quiet on the Philippine front. Well, probably not really, but it's as quiet as could be expected. Long-term expats at church yesterday told me that the Arroyo government is prone to overreacting and had probably blown things out of proportion.

Police filed charges against 16 people today -- described by Reuters as "leftists and soldiers" -- accused of plotting to topple Arroyo. The weekend brought about tension at a Marine base in Manila when a group of soldiers defied the state of emergency, and at an anti-Arroyo newspaper which was ransacked -- but not yet shut down -- by government officials.

Meanwhile, for most Filipinos, life goes on as usual, wondering what the next day will bring.

Can You Pass 8th Grade Math?

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 9/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

_____________________________________________________________

Perhaps I should be embarrassed that I only got 9 out of 10 correct...

I expect Brad and Laura to do better than I did!

That's A Lot of Music

On the brighter side of the news this weekend...Apple sold its one billionth song -- that's 1,000,000,000 songs -- sometime Thursday night or Friday morning, U.S. time. According to an ABC News story, the guy who downloaded (the downloader?) the one billionth song won a $10,000 iTunes music card, a new 20-inch iMac computer and ten 60GB iPods.

Ah, what I could do with a $10,000 iTunes music card. With only 2,064 songs currently on my iPod -- that would take 5 days, 11 hours, 21 minutes and 37 seconds of music to listen to all the way through -- I really do need to flesh out my collection, don't I?

Turmoil in the Philippines

It's been 20 years since Ferdinand Marcos was deposed, and the anniversary has put the Philippines back in the news. I was reading an excellent Washington Post story on the lack of progress made here since the 1986 People Power Revolution when I got the following text message from Shelly: "Big protests in Manila. In state of emergency."

"All quiet at home," I reported, then headed upstairs to turn on the TV. If the president of the United States declared a state of emergency, it would be all over the news.

Basketball. Soap opera. Staid political discussion show -- must have been taped in advance. Home shopping network. "Joey" rerun. Nothing about protests or presidential decrees.

"Nothing on TV," I texted her, leaving "are you sure?" hanging implicitly over my message.

"Read Yahoo! news," she wrote.

I headed back downstairs and got back online. And, sure enough, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) has declared a state of emergency.

It's been a tough year for her -- not that it's been any easier for your average Filipino. And that's a large part of why so many Filipinos are eager to kick her out of office, just as they revolted against Joseph Estrada in 2001, sweeping GMA into the presidential palace.

Now, on the 20th anniversary of the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos -- seeing a pattern here? -- the electorate is getting impatient, according to a Reuters story published this afternoon:

[G]roups from a wide spectrum of opinion believe Arroyo has lost her legitimacy and that the daughter of late president Diosdado Macapagal should have resigned last year over a series of scandals.

Rogue troops allegedly want to kill her and set up a military junta. Thousands of leftists and opposition members have used this week's 20th anniversary of a "people power" revolt that ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos to demonstrate against her.

Allegations that Arroyo tried to influence the vote count in the 2004 presidential election and that her husband, eldest son and brother-in-law took payoffs from illegal gambling have refused to go away.

Seen as cold and aloof, the U.S.-trained economist has not managed to endear herself to many Filipinos. Repeated attempts to jazz up her image have failed.
In a visit this week to the scene of a deadly landslide in the central Philippines, Arroyo looked stiff against former First Lady Imelda Marcos, who arrived at the same time handing out hugs and kisses.

Earlier this week, speaking to a group of foreign journalists, GMA said "nothing" could make her resign. "I believe I am the best person to lead this nation through this transition," she told the forum. "I was elected to make difficult decisions and I have made them."

And, earlier today, declaring that the military had foiled an attempted coup by some military officers and their men, she placed the nation under a state of emergency. According to an Associated Press report,

[c]lashes erupted as riot police used water cannons to disperse about 5,000 protesters defying a ban on rallying at a shrine to the 1986 revolt that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Police then used truncheons and shields to roust a stone-throwing group trying to gather for a second protest. Several people were arrested; others were left bloodied.

Amid a massive security clampdown, the military barricaded its camps to keep troops from joining the demonstrations and detained an army general allegedly involved in the takeover plot. The military has played major roles in two popular uprisings and has a recent history of restiveness.

Declaring a state of emergency stops short of declaring martial law. GMA's chief of staff said the declaration will not include a curfew but bans rallies, allows arrest without a warrant, permits the president to call in the military to intervene and lets her take over facilities — including media outlets — that may affect national security.

Police were already on alert, as rumors of a coup have circulated through the Philippines for the past week. On Wednesday, presidential staff members said that a reported explosion at the presidential palace was the result of a cigarette butt being thrown into a trash can that held chemicals, denying reports that the explosion was part of a coup attempt.

I doubt any of today's events will affect us much, but don't worry. We won't do anything stupid, and we'll stay safe. Plus, we live almost an hour away from where the protests are taking place.

Update, Friday, 9:35 p.m. Manila time: We're just back from dinner and a movie, and the only thing we saw out of the ordinary was a fire truck backed up against the entrance to our neighborhood. I've only seen this once before, last fall, when a rally and march against GMA was planned to go around the outskirts of our neighborhood. It's just a precaution, and I cannot imagine we'll be touched by anything that happens tonight.

Scoping out some of the stories compiled on Google News does reinforce that this is for real. Here's a link to a set of four BBC interviews with regular, ordinary Filipinos, and here's a CNN story with a photo of troops mobilizing in the streets of Manila.

Like the rest of the country, we're going to bed tonight not really knowing what will happen overnight, or tomorrow.

If you're at all interested in the the past 20 years, do read that Washington Post story linked to above. You'll have to register at the Post Web site, but it is free.

Paying Bills

Living overseas isn't as exotic as you might think it would be.

Sure, it's exciting at first. Everything is new and different, and you tend to think of things in terms of "Life in the Philippines," or wherever. But after a while that changes, and eventually your Life in the Philippines becomes, simply, "life."

And that's how I'm reduced to writing about paying bills. What could be more mundane and pedestrian than that? Taking out the garbage might qualify, but I've already written about that. Twice.

Paying bills at home is so easy. Write a check, peel off a stamp, drop it in the mail. Or log on to the Internet, make a few mouse clicks, log off. Either way, paying bills is a snap.

In the Philippines, it takes a bit more effort. Don't get me wrong: It's really not that difficult. It's not like I have to negotiate the bill paying process in Chinese, after all, but it does take some leg work. For example, here's a look at my afternoon:

2:02 Arrive at HSBC, withdraw money from ATM. Go inside to exchange P1000 note for something smaller that I can use to pay the gardener later this afternoon. Discover the bank is out of P200 notes, so reluctantly accept a wad of ten P100 notes.

2:06 - 2:15 Drive to Union Bank's Makati Supermarket Branch to pay the power bill and telephone bill. Stand in line for five minutes before stepping up to the booth to talk to Ric, the teller who now knows me so well that he tells me jokes whenever I stop by to pay our bills. Ric immediately hands back the power bill and points out that it's more than three days overdue (how did that happen?) and, therefore, he cannot accept payment. "You'll have to go to Meralco," he tells me. But he does take my money for the phone bill before practicing all the colloquial ways he knows to say goodbye to his American customers.

"Bye!"

"See ya!"

"Catch ya later!"

"Take care!"

"See ya 'round!" I give up and let Ric get the last word in, making him the winner of today's edition of the Goodbye Sweepstakes.

2:25 - 2:35 Shop at the supermarket for something -- anything -- so I can get my parking pass validated and save that ever-important P15 parking fee.

2:35 - 2:40 Remember where I parked and debate, loudly, with myself about the best route to Meralco.

2:45 - 2:55 Fight traffic but -- I think -- find the least busy route to the power company.

3:00 Receive number 0946 from the guard greeting me at the front door. Wonder how many people are in line in front of me. Walk upstairs.

3:02 Discover that luck is with me, and that number 0943 has just been called.

3:03 Bells chime and the electronic sign board hanging over the cashiers tells me that booth 4 is now ready for number 0946. Booth 4 is still occupied by another customer.

3:04 Cashier at booth 4 uses her thumb to gesture towards booth 6. The booth 6 cashier picks up the gesture. I give her my money and my very overdue power bill.

3:05 Cashier at booth 6 hands me my receipt and says "See you next month," says the guard who had given me number 0946. I get in the car before he can try "Catch you in March."

3:06 Debate, loudly, with myself over the meaning of a road sign.

3:07 Lose the debate, as I find myself on a one way road into a gated housing development.

3:08 Smile to the guard and tell him I made a wrong turn. "Can I make a u-turn here?" Guard opens the gate so I can leave the neighborhood.

3:09 - 3:16 Wait for traffic to clear so I can drive back past Meralco and finally head home. Make a mental note to remember what the sign means.

***

If you're a child of the 80s -- well, if you grew up in the 80s -- you might like a CD that I've been listening to by Colin Hay.

Colin Hay was lead singer of Men At Work, who hit big with Down Under and Who Can It Be Now back in 1982. (This happened to be about the same time I was losing some of my, ahem, innocence to my summer-between-junior-high-and-high-school-girlfriend. Her family had cable TV. Her parents worked all day. We watched a lot of MTV.)

Shelly and I were watching an episode of Scrubs a few weeks ago when he was a guest star who performed a couple of his songs. I eventually searched him out on iTunes and listened to a number of his tracks. On the CD Man @ Work, Hay does some nice acoustic versions of old Men At Work songs as well as some new music.

I'm also enjoying the reissue of "The Legend of Johnny Cash," which my lovely wife gave me for Valentine's Day. It's got a number of songs I had not heard before, as well as alternate versions of a couple more. Though I'll never make Shelly into a Johnny Cash fan, I definitely appreciate this gift.

Look Familiar?

It took me a moment to figure out why this bottle of "Dalisay" looked so familiar:

But, it has been four months since I've been in the U.S.:

Now, if they would just spend as much time on the bottle as they did on the label, it would probably fool quite a few North American tourists...

Cooking

One of the things I've been trying to do -- at least when Shelly is home -- is to stretch my culinary skills.

Shelly bought me a Filipino cook book for my birthday last year, and I've been making something new out of it every other week or so. I've made caldereta, adobo, menudo and a fish soup that I love, but that Shelly is kind of, shall we say, lukewarm about. Here's a version I made with zucchini a couple of weeks ago:

Trust me when I tell you that it tastes better than it looks, at least in this picture. To make this soup, I use rice water, a term I had never heard before. All you do is rinse some rice with some water -- since you're in the Philippines, you'll presumably cook the rice for dinner, to go with the soup -- and use the water in the soup. I'm not sure what function it serves, but it does make the broth turn to jelly when the leftovers are refrigerated.

The paella that I've been working on for the past couple of weeks has its roots in Spanish cooking, I believe, but it's been part of Filipino cooking since the Philippines was a colony of Spain in the 1800s and before.

I've been experimenting with food that's more familiar, too. Shelly and I recently made pizzas, and tacos are a recurring theme.

Yes, that's asparagus, corn and chicken. Nobody said it was like calling Domino's.

Last week, I made my first-ever homemade baked macaroni and cheese. It tasted fine, but it wasn't gooey enough, so I'm going to have to try it again, maybe with some mozarella added to the mix next time.

A Van for the Motorcycle Man

Shelly and I saw this van in the mall parking lot yesterday when we stopped for lunch:

Now, with a paint job like this, wouldn't Jerry and Mom look more intimidating as they drove up for Jer's motorcycle races?

Garbage, Part 2

There's an industrious soul in our neighborhood.

Friday is garbage and recycling day. To make sure I don't miss the pick up, I take our garbage and recycling to the curb on Thursday evening.

And by Friday morning, well before the official garbage and recycling truck has come by to collect our discarded odds and ends, most of our recycling has already been picked up.

The aluminum cans are always gone. They have been pretty much every Friday since we arrived. But within the past couple of months, glass started disappearing. In the past few weeks, the newspaper has been collected.

It doesn't make any difference to me who picks up our recycling -- I'm glad it's being put to good use. And if somebody can make a few pesos by doing it, why not?

***

Shelly's off again today. I took her to the airport this afternoon, where she hopped on a flight to Dubai where she'll be working at a trade show early next week.

Am I jealous? Sure. I'd like to go to Dubai. But I know that all of Shelly's traveling can be hard on her. She'll be on her feet for hours every day at the trade show, and she'll probably only have a few hours to explore the city and the souks.

Meanwhile, I'll be here, watching movies and working on a bunch of freelance assignments that all seem to be coming up at the same time. That will all keep me plenty busy.

The Evolution of the Cat

I woke up this morning and wandered off to the bathroom, leaving the air conditioner on with the idea of going back to bed to read for a while.

I pulled the bedroom door shut to keep the cool air in, but since Mister Tanaka had been outside and away from his food dish for a while, I left the door unlatched in case he felt like having breakfast.

In fact, while I was in the bathroom, I heard the bell around his collar jingle as he ran up the stairs. "Yes, I really am such a nice, kind pet owner," I told myself.

Returning to the bedroom armed with a new book to read, I saw that the door was open a perfect amount for a cat to slip through. Again, I congratulated myself for being so kind to Mister Tanaka.

And that's when I turned the corner and saw the bird-shaped mass lying on the bed, right on my side, exactly on the spot where I was planning to lie down and read.

It couldn't be a bird, I thought. It must be one of Tanaka's toys. But, if it was just one of his toys, why were all these feathers on the bed, and in the blankets, and on the floor, and on the night stands?

Standing proudly over the freshly-killed bird was Mister Tanaka, who purred loudly when I walked into the room. He jumped to the floor and wound expectantly between my legs, waiting for the praise that was no doubt due him for his fearless extermination of the tiny, yellow-bellied bird.

I stood there dumbly. Our sweet house cat had turned into a killer.

Just standing there not praising him was not scoring me any points with Mister Tanaka. He jumped back onto the bed, picked up the bird in his mouth and brought it to me. Wonderful.

I petted him on the head, removed the feathers from his whiskers and took his offering in my other hand. I dropped it in a plastic bag, but not before noticing that Tanaka had, very efficiently, broken the bird's neck.

(Shelly read an article a week or so ago about cats and why they sleep so much. Cats, the article said, aren't lazy. They're able to sleep so much because they're such efficient hunters.)

Mister Tanaka has always been an indoor cat. After much discussion, we had him declawed when he was young, so we've always kept him inside since he would be largely unable to defend himself. Here, though, we have a tall wall around the back yard, making it a good, protected place for him to roam outside.

He spends most of his outside time hiding in the bushes, lying in wait, ready to ambush any flock of birds that happens to land in the back yard. He's been chasing birds since October, but recently, he's been unable to actually catch any of them. There's a bell on his collar, which gives most birds plenty of time to escape. And, as an indoor cat, he was fat and slow before coming to the Philippines. Now that he's outside so much, he runs much more than before, and he's gotten much faster.

And, apparently, much more efficient.

The efficient hunter,
in one of his less-lethal moments

***

Today is round two for the paella, and round two for the squid. Shelly's boss is in town and is coming over for dinner. I am being the perfect little housewife and making dinner. Wish me luck!

Happy Valentine's Day

Before we moved here, Shelly warned me: If I want to give anyone sarcastic greeting cards, I should buy them before leaving home, because Filipino greeting cards are almost uniformly sappy and sweet.

Not being the sappy-and-sweet kind of couple, I stocked up. But, since it's impossible to buy a Valentine's card in October, I relied on Hallmark's Philippines office to get me through the holiday today.

So instead of a slobbery dog with a wise-ass comment, which is what Shelly would usually get from me for Valentine's Day, she got this one, instead:

Between life's
little "have to's"
and the daily stress
of schedules,
I hold on to the
one thought
to get me through--
the thought of moonlit quiet
with your arms
so close around me...
I hold on
to the thought
of holding you...

And each time I do
I fall more
deeply,
madly,
happily
in love with you.

As I wrote on the inside, the sentiment is completely true and accurate. But it's just such a cheesy card that I couldn't resist giving it to Shell.

And that, perhaps, makes it a sarcastic Valentine's Day, after all.

***

Don't get me wrong. I'm not the only one in this marriage who has a sarcastic outlook on things. The only way I can get away with giving her cards with slobbery, wise-ass dogs is that Shelly and I have similar approaches to humor. I'll take a bullet here and say that I'm probably more sarcastic than she is -- she's a polite woman, after all, while I'm a guy.

(And, since I didn't ask before posting this card, Shell, I hope that's okay with you...)

***

I'm finally getting paid back for being out of town on the first Valentine's Day that Shelly and I were a serious couple, way back in 1993. She's in Hong Kong today, getting a taste of sales meetings with two potential clients.

It's pretty cool when you have to use your passport to go on a one day business trip. I wonder if my Uncle Larry in Wisconsin has ever had to do that?

Homesick

I'm finally homesick, but not for the U.S.

Or, I should say, at least not for the mainland.

After church today, I talked Shelly into visiting a big consumer travel expo at the SM Mega Mall in Manila. I used to write about the travel industry, and I loved going to this kind of show, where airlines, travel agents and destinations go all out to separate consumers from their wallets, often with fantastic "show-only" deals.

As crowded as the show was -- and as bored as Shell was from pretty much the moment we walked in -- we decided to go our separate ways and meet up later outside the exhibit hall. I went in, turned right, and almost immediately ran into the Hong Kong booth, where I picked up a map for Shelly's upcoming one day trip to Hong Kong. Already, going to the show had been worth it, I thought.

Wandering down a few more aisles, I came upon something that looked familiar: latte stones. I was at the Guam booth.

It's been a lot of years since I lived on Guam -- I left in 2006 and, aside from a couple people, I've lost touch with most everyone I knew there. I headed over to see if I happened to know anyone.

"You look familiar," a woman at the booth said to me, before I'd said a word.

"I'm Greg. I used to live on Guam," I said, taking a look at her name tag. "Regina? I don't think I know any Reginas."

"I'm Gina, actually," she said. And instantly, I remembered Gina from the many days I spent researching stories at the Guam Visitors Bureau.

"Yeah! You're still with GVB!"

"And Pilar's here, too," Gina said. "Do you remember her?"

I did, actually, and remembered her last name and, more importantly, the Chamorro pronunciation of her last name, which drew the attention of the man she was talking to.

"He must be a Chamorro!" the guy said.

I begged off of that, as I'm clearly not a Chamorro. I'm much too white. "So," he amended, "you're a Chamaole!"

(A brief aside here to explain "Chamaole," a word I had forgotten since leaving Guam. The indigenous people of Guam are Chamorros. Guam has taken to using the Hawaiian word for whites, which is haole, pronounced how-lee. A Chamaole, then, is a haole who has embraced island customs and makes an effort to be part of island society, despite his obvious foreigness.)

I knew he looked familiar, but I couldn't place him, either. It's been six years, after all. Turns out that he was Jesse Bais, the male half of Guam's "Jesse and Ruby." Ruby was just around the corner, and they were getting ready to take to the stage for 15 minutes of island music and dancing.

I loved the show, I loved the music, I loved the dancing. But the whole thing made me distinctly homesick for "Guam U.S.A. -- Where America's Day Begins."

Clark

I spent today riding in the car.

And it was no short trip, either. Bobby was heading to Clark, the former U.S. Air Force Base 90 minutes north of Manila, so I hitched a ride with him, figuring that at least I'd see something different than what I see in our neighborhood every day.

Clark was abandoned by the USAF about the same time the USN abandoned its facilities at Subic. Just outside Clark is the city of Angeles, perhaps best-known for the abundant girlie bars and legalized prostitution. Needless to say, when the Air Force was in town, Angeles was a booming city.

Since being given back to the Philippines, Clark has been developed as an industrial and tourist center. And although Angeles fell on hard times after the USAF left, it's booming once again. Apparently, many of the businessmen and tourists who visit Clark are just as tempted as the servicemen were. In fact, when Shelly visited Clark on business in October, she had a conversation with an Australian pimp while she was visiting a girlie bar. (Want more on that story? You'll have to ask her.)

Before lunch, we drove onto the former Air Force base, which is now used for a number of things, including a civilian airport, a load of duty free shops and hotels and as home to a wing of the Philippine Air Force. It looked a lot like Subic, a lot like Tiyan (the former Naval Air Base on Guam), and a lot like I imagine any other former U.S. military base looks: lots of very utilitarian buildings with big numbers painted on the sides. Interestingly, even though it is, in part, an active Philippine military base, access to Clark is in no way restricted. Though I'm sure there are places that are hard to get to, we didn't see them on our brief tour.

Fortunately for me, Shelly had also visited a good cajun/creole restaurant while in Clark, and sent us there for lunch. The shrimp étoufée was really good, the atmosphere was thoroughly New Orleans, and it was interesting to be the one exposing Bobby to something new for a change. (He ended up with fried catfish and hush puppies. After his lunch arrived, he stabbed one of the hush puppies with his fork and eyed it suspiciously, much as I have with any number of things I've eaten in the Philippines. After determining it was, basically, fried corn meal, he popped it into his mouth and was off and running.)

Aside from our errand and a window-shopping visit to a very expensive German deli, that was the extent of my trip to Clark. I didn't meet any pimps, hear any fighter jets or see a single dancing girl.

But I did have that étoufée...

Three Shopping Photos

Here are three photos from my grocery shopping last weekend.

Yep, that's Cookie Monster touting the deliciousness of pork and beans. Don't want a Cookie Monster can? PureFoods Pork and Beans are also available in Elmo (smaller) and Big Bird (larger) versions.

Rustan's Fresh is by far the nicest supermarket I've visited in the Philippines. It's also the most expensive -- and, from the ad above, it caters to the wealthy expat crowd. It has a nice selection of foreign goods, however, so we bought some Japanese rice for Shelly and some Australian cat food for Mister Tanaka. Me? I carried everything back to the car.

Did you realize it's not polite to stand on the toilet seat while using the facilities? Just in case you didn't, PriceSmart reminds you to "Please keep feet off the toilet bowl." Seriously. This is an issue in the Philippines. Rumor has it that it's not all that uncommon to see shoe prints on public toilet seats, though I have to admit that I, personally, have not seen this.

Sorry for the poor quality of this photo. Combine a cheap cell phone camera with a darkish CR ("comfort room") and this is what you get.

New Résumé Entry: Squid Cleaner

Turns out that cleaning squid is much easier than it appears.

When you go to the store, you get this sloppy, floppy, inky pile of flesh with tentacles. Once you start to look at it a little closer, it's quite easy to do.

After washing it thoroughly, I pulled out the cartilage that runs down the center of the squid, and removed the head and tentacles, which left me with these two pieces.

(By the way, I am topless in these photos.)

There was still too much squid there. How was I going to get rings from that big piece on the right? That's when I realized that I still have to take the skin off in order to get to the fleshy part.

Volia! It finally looked like I expected it to. So I cut off the tentacles to use in the dinner, threw the head away and put my shirt back on. Now, wish me luck with the rest of the paella....

Edited at 8:15 p.m., Monday, Manila time, to add that the paella turned out okay, though it turns out that my wife is somewhat squeamish over eating squid prepared in our house, rather than by, as she put it, "someone who knows what he's doing." (And, as I pointed out, agreeing with her, I am from Iowa, so I know how to cook up some pig, but there aren't any squid farms within a thousand miles of where I grew up.)

The squid did have a little extra-squiddy-tasting flavor, so I'll buy two small squid next time and see if they work any better.

Home of the Five Dollar Massage

No longer do you have to drive home after your massage. Schedule one in the evening, and you can simply drag your relaxed body from one room into the other, and head straight to bed, all for the very affordable sum of about five dollars an hour.

Last night, we both took advantage of the in-home massage business. We called in the middle of the afternoon, made a reservation and, promptly at 7:30, the masseuse rang our doorbell. I'm still sore today.

Shelly had spotted an ad for Thai massage, which neither of us had ever experienced, so we called in the afternoon to make a reservation for the evening. Shelly would go first, then me.

If you've never had a Thai massage, prepare to be sore.

After her massage, Shelly stumbled in to the room where I was reading. "She .... found ..... so ..... many ... spots .... I ..... didn't ..... know ... I ... had. It .... hurts."

She wasn't kidding. I should have expected pain when the masseuse climbed on top of me and proceeded to walk back and forth on my legs and back for an hour. You know those pressure points on your lower back, just above the point where you butt begins? I was in serious pain last night as she stood on top of them and dug her heels in. They still hurt today, but it's a good kind of pain. Today I do feel like I've been on the wrestling mat, though. Or maybe it feels like I fell out of a tree.

***

I actually watched the Super Bowl this morning for the first time in at least five years, and not just because I was too sore to do anything else. (Although, really, my reason for watching it wasn't any better than that. Quite simply, I woke up and it was on, so I watched it.)

Pittsburgh was in the game, so I actually had a team to cheer for, but had it not been for the banner I saw yesterday advertising the Monday Morning Super Bowl Breakfast Buffet at Outback, I probably would have forgotten all about it. Rather than spending 10 bucks at Outback, I watched it from our TV room with a bowl of cereal and my laptop, which worked just as well.

I've missed the Super Bowl for at least the past four seasons because I'm never home during this part of the tax season (working two jobs tends to do that to you) and, since nobody else goes out that Sunday night, it has made a good date night for me and Shelly.

And yay .... go Steelers!

***

I'm cooking with squid tonight. Anybody have any idea how to clean one of those suckers? I know there's some cartilage I have to remove, plus the squid's beak. Shelly has already suggested I cook topless so I don't stain my shirt with black squid ink.

Or maybe she's just hot for me.

We Walked

We made it to Walk the Line last night, and both of us enjoyed it.

It also spawned a lengthy conversation about whether Johnny Cash was a bad guy or not during his drug-fueled days. I learned a lot from the movie. I knew he had spent a bit of time locked up for drugs, but had no idea how badly he was addicted.

Shelly must have had a good time, as she walked out of the theater and immediately hopped on the Dance Dance Revolution machine.

Playing Dance Dance Revolution spawned a lengthy discussion between Shelly and the DDR machine, with my lovely wife questioning how accurately the machine was measuring her accuracy. It's possible that words were exchanged. I believe the machine won.

Walk the Line

I'll finally get to see the Johnny Cash bio-pic.

"Walk the Line" came out months ago in the States, but only opened yesterday in Manila. Considering that I've yet to run into anybody in the Philippines who has even heard of Johnny Cash, I'd better go this weekend. I have heard from a number of people that it was a great movie, on par with "Ray," and it's already won a bunch of awards.

One of the most interesting things to me is that Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspooon were hand-picked by Johnny and June to play them in the movie. I'm only a recent fan. I bought my first Johnny Cash CD -- American IV: The Man Comes Around -- in 2004. It's part of a series of recordings that he recorded near the end of his life with producer Rick Rubin, and it got me hooked. It includs covers of a bunch of artists you'd never expect to hear Johnny Cash singing, including U2 and Nine Inch Nails.

Amazing thing is, I think I've even talked Shelly into going with me, and she's definitely not a fan of the Man in Black...

Ha ha ha! This One's For Kathy

After hearing about how Shelly tortured her mother in Los Angeles by making her go first to a mall and then to Wal*Mart, I thought of her when I came across a link to this story.

It's a fairly long story that really does prove that news is only interesting when it affects you, so I won't bore you with too many details. The story, from a paper in northern Louisiana, tells of a businessman who started a store -- Dollar Palace -- in a town that nobody else wanted to touch, and how he's now facing competition from Family Dollar, a national chain that carries much of the same merchandise that he carries.

The story is not interesting for that reason -- though it is interesting, if you follow the slow death of small, independent businesses in America -- but I post it for this quote:

Debra Jackson said she likes shopping at the Dollar Palace because it is convenient and casual. "I don't have to get all dressed up like I'm going to Wal-Mart or something," she said.

When we get back to Maryland, perhaps I should start wearing a tie to Wal*Mart...

Getting More than I Bargained For

This post is not about bargaining, although it was taken at the fabric market.

Instead, it's about how, sometimes, you get more than you planned on getting when you're taking a picture. I'd chalk it up to being busy with composing the photo, then with fiddling with the exposure, shutter speed and everything else. But I took this photo with my cell phone, and I was just trying to shoot it quickly enough so that I wouldn't lose sight of Shelly.

I took this picture because of the unique face on the mannequin, but I think that the perfect expression on the sales clerk behind the mannequin is really the better part of this photo. I couldn't get that shot again if I tried...