Saturday December 8, 2012

Saturday December 8/12  update #308

Bella was out to buy some groceries, etc., then she is just going to have a relaxing day at home.

I started doing my chores and came across an item on Facebook about the Gemenid Meteor Shower to happen this coming Thursday night.  It should be spectacular because there will be no moon to obscure the shower streaks.   So naturally I am trying to put together another quick tour which may be difficult because of the late night transportation required.   This cannot be viewed from the city so it will be necessary to go to some dark, uninhabited area like the Cajas to the west from about 10 pm to 2am.   We’ll see how many folks are willing to do this.  I am only proposing this to the 36 or so photographers I have on my list.

I was going to go downtown this morning but time was again conspiring against me.

Sitting here, I could hear someone talking on a loudspeaker.  There was a religious procession occurring in front of our house, escorted by at least 3 police, who knows why?  I managed to get a couple of videos which I spliced together.   I have a new downloaded “Any Video Converter” that works quickly and easily, and it even does Flash movies, but I note it did not splice the movies together and the Flash quality was not great.  So it was back to using the Nero converter to get an HD WMV movie that works best on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/gNFQaaXYJEc

While waiting around I had my camera set up to new settings and managed to catch a few pretty good close-up shots of my friend Tom Thumb.   I sincerely hope you enjoy them.

Since Joe and Joseph had to go to Quito they had to cancel tonight’s supper.  I was very happy because that freed me up to go check out my pal Jorge’s volleyball group at 3pm.  They were still setting up as I got there and they let me play the first few games too.  They play very differently, and even though I was rusty and I think we maybe only won one game, they were a great group of guys and we had a lot of laughs, even when the rain came and terminated our game.

Somebody had a bottle, or four, of Zhumir, the locally made rum drink, and they kept passing around small shots to everyone.  We found many more things to toast and had many more laughs too.  They practiced their bad English and I practiced my bad Spanish and we had just a great time.

Jorge drove me home carefully after 7pm and I warmed up the lovely supper Bella had made.

All in all, this was a great day and we hope to have many more here.

That was today’s excitement.   Hugs to all.   Please see all photos at http://souvenircuenca.blogspot.com/