Morning all:

This week during my walks my iPod musical theme has been ladies of jazz, those phenomenal jazz singers of a generation or so ago. Last night, while walking Shang, I shortened the time by enjoying a recording of the last concert tour Rosemary Clooney held. One song stood out as being amazingly apropos, especially to those of you who know how I normally “kick start” my morning, especially with a refrain phrase that goes: “happiness is just a thing called Joe.” And yes, I am sitting here already enjoying my hot mug of Joe.

Actually I was worried. On my walk I noticed water company trucks messing about down the street and lots of water running down the hill section. Going to bed I discovered that there was no water. Now a choice, collect the little water that drained out of our house’s plumbing system to brush my teeth or save for the morning pot of coffee. Guess which won? In a while I will be brushing very thoroughly! During the night our water was restored, but you can’t take a chance now, can you?

The saga of the stringing of the little outside icicle lights has been going on for way too many years. Marcia, for much of this time has seen it as her personal battle with the perfect little family across the street. Marcia has lost every one of these battles. Every year, just as we’re struggling on a bouncy ladder we hear their kids “ooh” and “ahh” in the front yard as the switch is thrown and their house lights up. Now she barely mentions the inner turmoil she experiences. Marcia, just as a reminder, they beat us again! Click on “Week’s Best” button below.

This morning I did a quick check of the news and happened to catch one of the local weather weenie forecasters extolling the wonders of having a dozen or so Doppler radar systems. The first weather related words out of her mouth were those of hyped doom and gloom as the absolute mean-nothing phrase of an “impending wintry weather mix” forecast was mentioned several times over during her 45 second on-screen session. The way it’s presented it will probably mean that a city-wide stampede for much milk and loaves of bread is probably under way even as I write. Deciphering “wintry mix”, isn’t this just a bit of wet grey skies with a little snow that doesn’t stick? Am I missing something?

For the past year we’ve been using a prepaid AT&T; calling card primarily to keep the cost of calling Adrianne in Tonga in check. I should point out that calling fees to the Kingdom of Tonga are extraordinarily high—thanks be to the rulers of the kingdom. Slowly (I really am slow waking up to these things) it dawned on me that I had to re-charge the card with increased frequency. Finally I did an on-line check and found that calling fees had changed from an original 37 units per minute to a current 60 units. Checking further it appears that the lower rate is applied to new cards, in other words, keep the card, recharge it with additional time, and AT&T; penalizes you.

This week we called Adrianne and I used my Skype VoIP program. Using my laptop and its built-in microphone along with a couple of external speakers and voila, Marcia and I had an amazingly clear speaker phone style chat with her—at 36 units per minute. For those wondering why the charges, Skype is a free service if connected to another Skype user but we connected to a land line.

All this almost made me forget to mention the fact that Adrianne was bouncing up and down with anticipation about her Christmas visit home. This Tuesday (our Monday) she will start staging her way home and will arrive here early morning a week later. Think of her as she begins her trip with a long ride on a small and decrepit ocean freighter/ferry which has no passenger seating, no passenger cabins, and no food service of any kind; she leaves Vava’u at 1 AM and arrives in Nuku’alofa at 6 PM.

Make it a great week, and a very happy Sinterklaasdag (December 5) to friends and family in The Netherlands.
Cheers,
Dirk