A rainy, nothing kind of day here in Barretto.

I’ve managed to squeeze out 15,000 steps, but I confined myself to the neighborhood. Talk about boring! Kind of like this post.

I played with my old dart league mates yesterday afternoon. The highlight (for me) was facing off against my nemesis, Steve the Englishman who doesn’t drink. We played singles Cricket, which was a first. In my opinion, Cricket requires more skill than the standard game of 501 that is usually played here. For one thing, only the specified numbers count (20-15 and the bullseye), so there is a minimum of “lucky” shots. There is also a strategy about what to throw when, and pointing. I actually wrote a pretty scholarly (for me) blog post on the subject.

Anyway, Steve is the superior player overall, but I started out on fire. And he really didn’t play a “smart” cricket game, chasing me on numbers I had closed instead of getting ahead on a number and throwing points. Even with all that in my favor it came down to who could hit the most bullseyes soonest. In the end I prevailed. Woot!

I put my new crockpot slow cooker to work again this morning:

They both turned out quite tasty if I do say so myself.

I was never a whiz at math, but I found this pretty damn funny:

I’ve been conscientiously working to avoid using repetitive titles on my blog posts. I know none of my readers remember such a mundane detail, but for some reason it matters to me. The “nada y nada” sounded familiar, so I did a quick search of the LTG archives and discovered I’ve used it twice previously.

In October 2014, I was alone in the states and missing my wife who kept promising to “join me soon”. Without her around to motivate me I was sinking into a pit of despair and loneliness, sometimes not leaving the house for days. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that she was never coming back to me.

In June 2009, I was living single in Seoul and was lamenting being between dart seasons. Big whoop. And oh yeah, the “pending change” I was alluding to in that post was nothing more than a redesign of the LTG masthead. Dealing with that kind of drama, I guess I didn’t know just how good I had it.

And here I am all these years later, still living a pretty solitary life. I’ve added walking to my darts and beer regimen, which of course is a good thing. I’m not complaining about my lot in this life. After all, I have a clean, well-lighted place to call home.

It is the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too.

Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada.

― Ernest Hemingway, A Clean Well Lighted Place