The Oscar For Best Blog Goes To...

This is my 164th blog. Who knew I could be so talkative. (Yeah, I know, you're still waiting for me to say something.)

I have a temperature gauge (thermometer?) hanging on the wall next to where I write. It's 71 degrees Fahrenheit, 21 or 22 degrees Celsius. I'm going with the Fahrenheit because it is obviously a lot warmer. A couple of days ago it was 56 in here when I sat down to scribble. Damn near froze my patooty off, which I'm told, can be a painful thing to do. I wear a zip up heavy sweatshirt with a hood on it to keep me cozy on those cold early morns. It has a pale orange number 2 sewn on the front. "I'm number two!" is not a chant you hear very often.

Volcan Baru is not visible from my new blog launching pad. In fact, when I lift my head from the screen, all that greets me is a lavender wall. Less distracting, I suppose, but not exactly inspiring either. There is a window to my right, but the glass is the clouded type you can't see through.

I'm seated at a small computer table with a monitor on top and one of those pull out drawers for the keyboard. The word for drawers in Spanish is cajones, pronounced ka-hone-ace. We used to say "kicked in the cajones" as a euphemism for that place that makes you double over and want to puke, because it sounded like cajones should mean exactly that place. Now that I actually know a little Spanish, six words to be precise, I can see that "kicked in the cajones" makes no sense. Next thing you know they'll be telling me a burrito is not a little donkey.

To my left there is a desk and a doorway and behind me there's a bookcase. On the floor in front of the bookcase is a dog bed in which Gus is now snorfling.

On the walls there hang a clock, a calendar and a carved piece of wooden art that has Honduras etched on the bottom. Other than that, nothing but lavender. Or maybe it's mauve. The color changes with the light. What is mauve anyway?

So there you have it. The scene is set. We're ready for the action.

I almost watched The Oscars last night. Mostly what I saw was the pregame show. The actual Oscar show didn't come on until nearly nine. I can't tell you how much I miss my beloved Rocky Mountain Time Zone. Eastern Standard Time bites rocks. Prime time for RMT is seven to ten. For EST it's eight to eleven. There is no need for EST in Panama where the two largest population groups are North Americans with an average age of roughly 84 and Latinos under 10. Both those groups should be going to bed early and not staying up to the wee hours to watch someone they never heard of receive an award for Sound Mixing.

A friend of ours came over with his Panamanian girl friend (novia) to watch the show. He is a friend of Forest Whitaker and wanted to see if Forest copped the big acting prize. A thing, the copping, I learned this morning that he did. The girlfriend left early as she had a muy temprano morning wake up to deal with and I took that cue to go to bed. Woowoo Charly and our friend stayed the course though, and saw the whole show. They deserve some kind of award themselves, especially considering that the show was being instantly dubbed into Spanish, including the songs if you can believe that, and all traces of humor and juicy insider Hollywood stuff were mostly incomprehensible.

So there you have it, blog 164 is in the can. It's not likely to make my "best of" list, but it's better than being kicked in the cajones, whatever they are.