Cumple La Patria

My wife and other members of the Panamanian Mafia are in high fettle since we mark Panamanian Independence Day.  I consider myself an honorary Panamanian based on my long association with the young lady I’ve been married to for 32 years now (Egad!).  I wish the most heartfelt best thoughts to all my Panamanian friends and family.  You are the friendliest and most family oriented people I’ve met in my long years of wandering.  I count myself fortunate to hang around the fringes.  Thanks for letting the big gringo take part in your lives.

My Favorite Panamanian

My Two Favorite Half-Panamanians - A Few Years Ago

I’m going into this week’s fantasy football match hoping I lose spectacularly and not just because I’m up against my Wing Man.  Two of my best players will take the field today against the Patriots and I hope they fail to score a single point.  I don’t want them scoring at all, even when the Patriots take their hopefully huge lead; break their sprit now!

Yesterday was a complete washout. A cold driving rain pelted the entire day into submission.  Other than removing a late season tick Buddy was trying to smuggle into the house it was pretty uneventful.  I had planned on dismantling the deck gazebo frame since it has reached the end of its usual life after several years of torture at the hands of our hill top winds but that was not to be.  I did get a chance to empty out the DVR queue and watch some college football.  The highlight of the day was a long conversation with our daughter while she packed her belongings for the planned move to the Left Coast. 

The rain was followed by some of those epic winds I was talking about, which commenced a night long assault on the house.  This had the effect of wiping out the extra hour of sleep which the end of daylight savings promised.  I woke at 4am thinking Buddy was having one of his panic attacks only to learn it was the wind blowing the gazebo around.  Buddy was happy to see me but that extra earned hour was spent trying to go back to sleep.  On the upside, the winds did a fairly god job of scouring the front yard of all leaves; something the downwind neighbors will not appreciate.

I finished yet another Travis McGee novel with Bright Orange for the Shroud.  McGee stays in Florida this time around to help an old friend who was swindled by a grasping wife as part of a huge con game.  McGee infiltrates the group in the attempt to recover some of the money assisted by two friends.  He runs up against an evil brute of the type John D. MacDonald specialized in and who gives McGee a true run for his money.  McGee, the philosopher knight, is pushed to his limit as the collateral damage spews  in his wake.  People have been recommending books to me over the past couple weeks but I tell them it will have to wait until I complete my run through the ancient battlefields with my old friend, McGee.  Another sample of McGee philosophy:

“Acquaintance rather than friend.  The dividing line is communication, I think.  A friend is someone to whom you can say any jackass thing that enters your mind. With acquaintances, you are forever aware of their slightly unreal image of you, and to keep them content, you edit yourself to fit.  Many marriages are between acquaintances.  You can be with a person for three hours of your life and have a friend.  Another will remain an acquaintance for thirty years.”