updates

The other day I bought 1 single gallon of gas, something I don’t think I’ve ever had to do before.  I only had $12BZ on me, and gas is now $11 per gallon (or about $5.50 US)!  I know gas prices are high in the states too, but when you consider a fairly good wage for the whole day is $25 US, you can understand how paying $5 for a single gallon of gas is exorbitant.   I think it’s only a matter of time before this starts causing problems here.  The cost of gas (and diesel) has risen over 100% in the last 5 years or so, but transportation fares have stayed the same. Yet  historically, whenever buses or taxis have tried to raise fares, riots have broken out… 

Daniel got a nasty case of flu which took him out of commission for the entire of last week.  Hence, I became sole animal feeder.  Only one animal died… I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my fault? I’ve got a pretty good morning and evening routine down now, but I have decided solo farming is not for me.

We got some guinea hens, because they are supposed to be tick-eaters, and I want the birds to eat the ticks before the ticks eat me.  I’m not sure why this didn’t occur to me, but guineas lay eggs every day!  And we have to do something with the eggs!  This weekend I made custard from scratch (5 egg yolks) and a white cake (5 egg whites).  We now have  4 eggs left to deal with as of this morning.  This is after we gave one dozen to my brother in law, and  I made Daniel deal with about 10 more (I think he is going to try and hatch them.  I don’t want to know what happens to them as long as they are not in my kitchen).

Daniel has killed two scorpions in our house in the last 2 weeks.  TWO. SCORPIONS.  As a result, I spend a large amount of time poking suspiciously at my shoes before I put them on.  I’m thinking of sticking to sandals for a while. 

I finished the sequel to Blackout, which is called All Clear.  The book was 645 pages long, and it would have benefited from a lot of editing.  I'm pretty sure the entire plot could have fit into about 45 pages, the rest was characters running about worrying about where the other characters had gotten to.  I only stuck with it because I wanted to know how it ended.... so not worth it.  If anyone happened to read Blackout, and wants to know how the sequel ends without trudging through it, email me and I will summarize it in 3 sentences.