A relaxing Sunday

Finished watching season 2 of the Sopranos. I am feeding the DVDs to Paul as I finish. He has already lost disk 2 of season 1. Perhaps it will turn up :) He has a 3-year old in the house which, from personal past experience, can mutate into a thing magnet and devour anything in its path, never to be seen again. Tennis is on tonight at 7PM and I hope I can have the satellite to myself. It is day three of sunny and dry. The locals keep promising us that summer is on the way; maybe this is a tease, maybe it's the start of the dry season. I am trying to figure out just what I will take back to Canada next Saturday and what will stay here. Clothes that I either have not worn or maybe worn once are going back.  I am parking a suitcase here full of stuff and taking an empty one back with me to fill with goodies for people here. The updated list: Tagel - guitar tuner, label maker, extra tape rolls Melaku - tennis string Hiruy - tennis string Paul - maple syrup, Oreo double-tops The drivers - coffee crisp chocolate bars Mack the DJ - needle(s) for his stylus Then there's the miscellaneous stuff I want ... hand sanitizer, crunchy peanut butter, floss wand, more toiletries, music stand clips, tennis balls, licorice, and electric guitar gig bag. I am looking forward to a week of nothing, other than hanging out with family and friends. I have some chores to do around the hacienda like prepare the outdoor furniture for winter. I am going to try to take 10,000 birr home with me to see what sort of exchange rate I get from the people in Ottawa who said they would buy currency from here. At the going rate, that would translate to about 850 CAD. I was told that the birr must be in good shape for exchanging. When I take money out of the bank machine here, the bills are brand new. I am limited to 3,000 birr per day from that machine so I am going to go every day om the way to work this week. I also owe Deker Inn for about 10-12 nights which amounts to as much as 7,500 birr. I will have to make a trip to the bank to get the money for Deker. I keep hearing conflicting reports about a cholera shot for Kenya. Some sites on the internet mention providing proof at the Kenyan border, some say nothing. The Kenyan person we had a beer with a few nights ago said not, and then the electronic collateral I got from the safari people said it was required. As mentioned before Sean and Paddy, I am not doing well on the list of stuff you asked me to get for you. For things I cannot get, I will substitute something that is the closest to what you are looking for as possible. I have taken a big chunk out of the second Michael Pollan book I have read ... The Omnivore's Dilemma. I can thank cousin Valerie for taking me to a lecture of his when I was in Vancouver in June. I highly recommend his books for reading to anyone who has even an inkling of suspicion about how f%^^%ed up our food system may be. He blames, in a nutshell, a 4-letter word for what is the bottom-line of what is wrong with our food industry ... C O R N. He discusses an outing to MacDonalds with the family and how, while eating in the car while driving, they were dining on the output of a fast-food industry founded on corn (and by-products) while driving in a vehicle that was being powered, in part, by a derivative of the same raw material. I do love the way he "mocks" the free-range chicken nomenclature; they get very very little time in the "open" before they are rushed off to be slaughtered at an age that is noticeably younger all the time. The trip to the clinic tomorrow will determine the course of events over the next few weeks ... 1 here then 1 in Ottawa, then back here. If I am told to stay off my foot, who knows what moe of transportation I will end up using. I am going back to the tailor who made my suit and asking him to get me some white cotton at merkato and make me a sports jacket. I have always wanted a white sports coat (especially after seeing Ben Errett in his white suit at many family functions). I hope all you out there in blogging land are enjoying reading this as much as I do writing it. 10 pounds lighter since I got here; I attribute it to the fact that I am not eating as much coupled with the fact that I am eating less than a third of the meat that I eat at home. Mr. B. and cousin Valerie are on the top of my list to call later today at a reasonable hour in Ottawa and Vancouver respectively.