Wishing my American readers a heartfelt Happy Thanksgiving! Thanks for stopping by!

Sorry for the lack of a post yesterday, my good intentions went awry. Did my Wednesday group hike as usual (more on that later) and had a Barretto Singles League dart match scheduled for 2 p.m. I thought I’d have time between those two events to throw something up here but alas, the hours got away from me. I’ll vomit up twice as much today to make up for it, fair enough?

When it comes to giving thanks we can always be thankful that things aren’t worse. Don’t get me wrong, I am blessed indeed. But that doesn’t mean it’s a perfect life. For example, that new blender I bought which was featured on thrivecuisine.com?

Well, I loaded that fucker up with all my frozen fruit ingredients, plugged it in, hit the switch, and nothing. Damn it! I figured maybe the shaft holding those blades hadn’t been inserted properly into the base so I reached in to check. Yikes! Those blades are as sharp as razors. No shit, I barely touched one and it sliced deep into my finger. Hurt like hell and bled like it wasn’t going to stop. My helper cleaned it up for me and taped a wad of cotton over the wound and thankfully I survived.

The blender was on sale and cost a little over 3000 pesos, the same as my driver charged for the trip to San Fernando. So taking it back to S&R for exchange or refund wasn’t an option. My helper gave me shit for not having it tested in the store before making the purchase. I’m like, who does that? Open a new box and make sure it works first? Only in the Philippines. Anyway, my driver knows a guy who does appliance repairs so we’ll see if that works out. Honestly though, I’m kind of scared of the damn thing now that I know it bites!

In addition to slowly losing my mind, I also lost my darts. As I was rushing around to head out for my match on Baloy, I reached for my darts in the usual location and they weren’t there. A frantic search of the unusual locations was also fruitless. In desperation I grabbed my backup set of darts–ones I won at a raffle years ago and have never used. I hope I never have to use them again. The shaft/barrel of the dart is almost twice the length of my old set. That makes a huge difference, especially given my relatively gentle and looping throwing style. So the result was my dart would hit the board but not stick firmly in place. It would lean down and block the rest of that number, sort of like this:

Now, I’m normally a stronger player than my opponent but this handicap made the games a lot closer than I expected. I still managed to win 12 of the 15 legs played, but most of the games were very close.

After the match I set out to retrace my steps from the night before. I was hoping I hadn’t left them in the trike that brought me home but I reasoned the driver would have returned them if I had, knowing there would likely be a reward. So my first stop was Sit-n-Bull where I had enjoyed a plate of baby back ribs the night before after the dart tourney. And when I walked in the door, the cashier held up my dart case and said “look what we found!” Yay! What a relief!

What else? Well, my massuse, Nikole, had asked me for an advance on her salary so she could buy food for her kids. Normally I wouldn’t entertain such a request but since I had cancelled our Sunday appointment on short notice, I was feeling a little guilty. The very next day I get a message saying she was in Manila now and didn’t know when, or if, she’d be back. Oh well, I’ll consider it severance pay then.

When one door closes another opens, or so they saying goes. When I opened my door to head out for darts yesterday I was surprised to see Catherine standing there. She’s the Wet Spot dancer who lives nearby I hooked up with a couple of times. I eventually had to block her on Facebook/messenger because she was always harassing me for money for some emergency or another. Anyway, this time she needed some cash to pay rent. Again, I would normally have said no, but damn, she looked so hot standing there in her short shorts. I had darts to get to though so I “loaned” her the money and said she could come over to pay me back on Friday. She agreed to those terms. We’ll she is she shows. And don’t worry, this is purely transactional in nature! I won’t get sucked in. Er, let me rephrase that…

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my neighbor Ed and I are sponsoring a Thanksgiving get together this afternoon at the Alta Vista community center. I bought the turkey (although Ed is grilling it) and Ed is bringing a ham, candied yams, and a green bean casserole. Our guests should also be supplying some additional side dishes.

I’ll post tomorrow about how the event went down.

So, yesterday we hiked 7K, trekking up the backside of Black Rock mountain. It was the first time I’d taken that route up Black Rock and despite a difficult climb (aren’t they all?) I rather enjoyed it. The unique thing about Black Rock is the panoramic views from up top. Hell, let’s go to the photos and you can see for yourself.

Anyway, an enjoyable hike. It’s going to be part of the Hash trail next week so I reckon I’ll be doing it again on Monday.

UPDATE: Okay, now that’s pretty funny. While finishing this post I get a message from Catherine: you want me to come there? No, not today. I’m busy. Tomorrow afternoon. Okay, do you have food? Huh? What do you mean? I’m hungry and no food in the house. Geez.

So, I scraped together some canned goods and some rice from my own pantry. I just couldn’t say no to giving food on Thanksgiving. And damn, when she came to pick it up…she’s a hottie that really trips my triggers. Tomorrow it will be her turn to satisfy my hunger.