Just keep on keepin’ on. What else can you do? As much as it seems that it’s all just more of the same, there’s enough different to keep it interesting. Or interesting enough for me, at least. These deep and meaningful thoughts (yes, I’m kidding) were triggered by the difficulty I had coming up with a title for this post that hadn’t been used previously. It took me like five tries to get this one. I guess that comes with the turf when you’ve been blogging for over 15 years. Can you imagine if I only posted when something new or exciting happened in my life? I’d be a long time gone for sure!

Anyway, let’s do this and see where it leads, shall we?

One of my favorite writers, Larry McMurtry, died this week. I remember seeing The Last Picture Show, a film based on one of his early novels, and thinking: man, that was really good. I wonder what they left out? So, I bought the book and was hooked. He will live on through his body of work. I don’t know that there is a better measure of success than that.

So, I guess I’ve started the house search in earnest. I’ve still not confirmed that my rent here will indeed be raised, but I have no reason to doubt it either. Hopefully, I will find out for sure today. In the meantime, a nice two-bedroom place here in Alta Vista is coming available in May. There’s an apartment upstairs and I prefer to have a place to myself. Then again, the guy who lives there is a Hasher and plays darts, so we are not strangers. We’ll see.

The way to find rentals here is through word of mouth and/or walking around until you spot a for rent sign. I mentioned to my waitress at Mango’s last night that I was in the market and she has a friend who might know a place. She sent some photos and it looked pretty good. They also have a thing like the key money in Korea–you pay a lump sum up front, live rent-free, then get the money back when you move out. The waitress mentioned 2.5 million pesos, which is over $50,000. I’d need a comfort level that I really would get that money back. On the other hand, after 5 years or so, I’d pretty much be breaking even. We’ll see.

Cooked dinner at home last night.

I actually didn’t practice good grill control technique and had some grease fires to contend with. Made the meat a little more cooked than I prefer, but still satisfactory.

So, I was chatting with one of my unmet FB friends today. Wanted to show her my “good” side, so sent her this photo:

She seemed impressed, so I sent her this one:

What’s going to happen next? Well, the Hash for one thing. Hopefully, my stamina will be adequate for today’s trail. And then next week we will be doing the annual climb up Easter mountain. Oh boy!

Damn, I just ran out of gas. Gonna grab a nap before I head out for the Hash. Later, gators!