October 15, 2013

• Beard net, copulating grasshoppers, zombies, and missionary kids

  Images of the past week.

  One of our errands last week took us to Sam’s, where as usual we bought the frozen yogurt berry parfait. The young man who served us was wearing a beard net, the first one we’d ever seen. I sneaked a photo with my phone as discreetly as I could:

  

  On our cat porch we discovered these copulating grasshoppers. The female was twice as big as the male. I don’t know what became of them once the cats came into the lanai.

  

  Our cat Pumpkin was limping. He had  these odd puncture marks on his foot. We took him to the vet a day or two later, but the marks had disappeared. All he had left at that point was a fever, which the doctor said would go away in a couple of days. He is doing fine now.

  

  This is me with some friends at the entrance to the Goodwill store. But Alicia doesn’t want me telling people that we shop there, so I won’t say any more.

  

  Friday I got assigned a quick trip to Panama City, Florida. I flew up in the morning by way of Atlanta (nearly all the Panama City travel is through Atlanta) and got a rental car. There are gorgeous pine forests surrounding the city and airport. The trees are all the same size and planted in rows. You can see the rows in this photo.

  

  Images of the past week.

  One of our errands last week took us to Sam’s, where as usual we bought the frozen yogurt berry parfait. The young man who served us was wearing a beard net, the first one we’d ever seen. I sneaked a photo with my phone as discreetly as I could:

  

  On our cat porch we discovered these copulating grasshoppers. The female was twice as big as the male. I don’t know what became of them once the cats came into the lanai.

  

  Our cat Pumpkin was limping. He had  these odd puncture marks on his foot. We took him to the vet a day or two later, but the marks had disappeared. All he had left at that point was a fever, which the doctor said would go away in a couple of days. He is doing fine now.

  

  This is me with some friends at the entrance to the Goodwill store. But Alicia doesn’t want me telling people that we shop there, so I won’t say any more.

  

  Friday I got assigned a quick trip to Panama City, Florida. I flew up in the morning by way of Atlanta (nearly all the Panama City travel is through Atlanta) and got a rental car. There are gorgeous pine forests surrounding the city and airport. The trees are all the same size and planted in rows. You can see the rows in this photo.

  

  I didn’t know how long the interview I was interpreting would last (it ended around 5:00), and the only flight out was around 6:30, so I got a hotel room and flew back Saturday morning.

  I discovered that Bob, a Facebook friend who had grown up in Colombia, was in town, so we picked him up Sunday for lunch, and he spent that night in our guest room. Coincidentally, he is the oldest brother of Frank, who had to empty 20 lbs of rotten meat out of a freezer in my last post! I had met Dave personally only once, back in 1965 or 1967 when his family visited us in Puerto Asís on their way out of their tribal location. (His parents were Bible translators and worked with the Siona tribe in the southwest of Colombia.) I had a great time talking to him; even though I hadn’t known him before, we have a lot of background in common, including jungle life and living on the mission base where I went to high school. His brother Bob was a classmate of mine in 11th grade.

  Anyway, we put him to work, and he painted the dining and living rooms.

  

  I discovered these height marks in a doorway and decided to take a photo to send to the previous owner of the house, before we painted them over.

  

  Yesterday morning I did the van brakes while Dave painted another coat. In the afternoon we went to Clearwater Beach before taking him to the airport. Alicia was very happy to get to wade in the Gulf. (We’ve lived here almost a year but have only been to the beach a couple of times.)

  

  • 4:06 pm
  • 8 Comments