26

That's how many pair of shoes I have.  I'm fairly certain that I have all of my shoes with me.  At least right now.  As I pack the Gorilla boxes to send back I'm going through things and attempting to empty containers so that I don't ship back things I don't need to spend that money shipping.  Did that sentence make sense?  I have things that made the trip here because they might be difficult to obtain in Honduras that I can easily replace once I get back to the States.  I am attempting to purge and get rid of those things that I don't plan on shipping back, and that I'm not using now.  Last weekend it was belts.  That is still on-going.  I haven't counted those, but I'm guessing I have at least 40-50.  Not changing sizes for 40 years (from age 12 to 50-something) meant that I had no reason to get rid of clothes and such.  In the past 4 years I have, ummm, changed sizes.  I'm working on getting back down to a middle ground.  When I tried several of my belts, they didn't meet in the middle by several inches.  Even the stretchy ones.  So, I am slowly making my way through the belts to get rid of the majority of them.  It's depressing to me.  So, to cheer myself up on this journey, I pulled out all of my shoes.  Yeah...

I have a couple of pair of shoes I wear to work and a pair of tennis shoes and a pair of water sandals I wear on the weekends.  Mostly I wear these shoes to work because I can here.  It was a major issue in a previous job that I never seemed to meet the dress code no matter how hard I tried, especially with shoes.  Finding ones that met my boss's approval that I could actually walk in was not in the cards.  That's one reason I have so many.  It wasn't for lack of trying.  So, here the boss is just happy when I show up in clothes that cover important parts of my body and aren't ripped up (some folks can't do this much) that he really doesn't care about my shoes.  So, hiking boots it's been.  Today I looked at my 26 pairs of shoes and thought about how I really do have some nice ones I want to start wearing.  I'll weed out the ones that don't fit as I go along.  Who knew that when one gains weight their shoe size changes too?

The co-worker who was accosted is now in the catch-22 of worrying about the guy he tackled (and who is now out of jail) coming after him with his amigos for backup.  There have been talks among the guys about weaponry.  We are not allowed firearms unless we have a residency card (I do, but have no plans to get any guns) and register them,  which tells the locals what gringos have what guns..  It's all a lot of drama I really don't choose to participate in.

Weather is dry and hazy and hot.  Not sure if the haze is a weather inversion, dust, or smoke.  I can't see the mountains on either side of the valley a lot of the time because of it.  Since I live and work in air conditioning I'm not feeling the heat as much.  It does put any plans to walk/run/workout at the  post on hold since the gym there is not air conditioned.  Always an excuse.

It happened again

One of my co-workers was robbed/assaulted at 5:30 pm in the main park square last night.  He is ok.  In fact, after having a knife waved in his face (he was sitting on a bench with his local Honduran girlfriend) and tossing his wallet at the guy, he followed him and tackled him and held him down till the police got there.  There are a more than a few things wrong with this.  One, he was bitten.  Chances of getting a blood test done on the guy are basically nil.  This guy will not be happy when he gets out of jail, which he will if he's not out already.  This is why I don't go out.  You remember the pictures I posted of a park when I first got here?  That's where it happened.  At least this coworker wasn't sliced with a machete as the previous one was. That assault happened at 10:30 am on a Sunday. That person left the contract for someplace safer (the Philippines),

I go to work, I come home.  The taxi drivers I use are mostly the same ones.  Tonight one of the guys from work gave me a ride home.  He has been here for a year and a half.  He said everyone who has been here over a year has been robbed, and usually it happens at least once a year.  He himself was robbed while waiting for the free bus to work.  That is why I don't take a bus to work.  He also said his Honduran girlfriend has been robbed twice in the past 2 years.

 Mostly its the town where I live.  I feel safe other places here.  And the majority of the local people are wonderful, friendly folks.  It's the random violence that I just don't want to deal with, so I don't go out. 

Debt

Some quotes:

From Walden by Henry David Thoreau
" It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins æs alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent;"

From Joe Diffie:
"They say debt is a bottomless pit where the devil likes to play.
I'd sell my soul to get out of this hole, but there'd be hell to pay."

From Queen:
"Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
Another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, I'm gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust"

Paid off the second credit card.  Two down, two to go.

Old Habits and Old Clocks

>Down here we don't observe Daylight Savings Time. So, I had to un-set all my automatic clocks (mostly on my computers)  when everyone else up in the US went to DST a few weeks ago. I have one old alarm clock that I really like, have had it for 20 years, and the only issue with it is that it is hard programmed for the old DST weekends. It's made me late for work a couple of years when I wasn't expecting it to change and it did.

Well, I'm ready for work an hour early today because it got me again. I didn't look at another clock until I wondered why my 6 am alarm on my watch to warn me I'm running out of time in the morning hadn't gone off at it's regular place in my routine.  Guess I should start working on my excuse for the other end of this fiasco when it makes me late an hour. How many years has it been since they changed the dates? And for no good reason... And I don't even live where we observe DST anymore!!!

Plastic Bottle Houses

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Yeah, I've been not writing much. Saw this house on Lloyd's blog - http://lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/ - and really liked the link. The entire article is at http://inspirationgreen.com/plastic-bottle-homes.html?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d938f04f74efcac%2C0 . At the link are pictures of green houses, sheds, cisterns and houses built using plastic bottles much the same way that used tires are used in Earthship houses.

I saw my first bottle wall while watching Anmar build one of his cabins back in Indiana about 20 years ago. Later when I was reading all about PaperCrete I saw that they used a lot of bottle walls for decoration. Those were all made from glass wine bottles to add light and color as a part of the design plan. The houses in the link above use plastic bottles, some filled with sand, to make the body of the wall. If nothing else it keeps the bottles out of the waste stream. And, Lord knows we have plenty of plastic bottles floating around down here in Honduras.

Now that I've broken my silence maybe I'll start posting more regularly again.