Friday, June 10

Today I woke up feeling better, but still not great. I don't know what I ate that might have kicked me like I got kicked. Maybe it was the Chinese food taking a while to impact me, or maybe there was something at the Wellness Center. Maybe it was something in the water. Whatever it was, I was feeling better after a fairly fit-less night of sleep. I'm hoping just to take today easy. We don't have anything planned, so it shouldn't be too hard.

We started the day with pancakes from the MIR restaurant. Well, I had pancakes and Claire had the island breakfast. She bravely ordered her eggs over-easy, which she finds is sometimes hit-or-miss in restaurants we frequent. She likes the whites all done, and the yolks a little runny yet. Too often she finds that there's some of that runny white stuff left on the outside and the yolks get cooked solid. That's what happened this morning.

After breakfast I just spent the day with a sleeping Grace, chilling in the room. Claire stayed for a while, but then spent most of the afternoon running errands, getting stuff ready for the beach tomorrow, and also doing a little bit of visiting, since her errands took her near the other hotel.

I also did a bit of work, parsing the web pages for my client; I got a bit of software written to parse, but I haven't finished a format to save the data. I've also been considering (which sometimes means getting stuck on the idea) of how to grab the data to parse. I've already used a script to grab all of the HTML, but I'm not satisfied with a bunch of oddly named pages. I've thought of re-scripting that and controlling the output of the page name to be a little more organized. I've also considered making the little app I'm working on just grab the pages directly, but given my Internet connection, that'd be hard to test.

Claire came back from her last trip, the one where I learned she was visiting the other hotel. The family staying there had learned their papers were coming in on the shipment tonight! They'd been given a tracking number of the delivery service, and after unsuccessfully learning anything on the website, visited the local office, and learned the guy was going to be getting it today. I guess that the guy here goes to Guam to drop off whatever is being delivered from here to there, and while there grabs anything coming this way for his return flight. I suppose in a larger picture, it's better than planes passing each other in the sky full one way and empty the other. No matter what your package is, though, it's a frustrating delay, especially when coming from a place where planes are packed with stuff going back and forth all day long.

I think I have already mentioned that they got here a good amount of time before their court date. It's been four weeks since their embassy visit, for their visa submission, making their total visit close to six weeks. Plus their adopted son has been fighting an infection and dealing with rather high fevers as a result. They are pretty eager to go home.

Apparently, they have been calling the embassy frantically trying to get through to Andrew to try to arrange an after-hours connection to get their son's visa so they could catch the next flight, tomorrow. If they can't make the flight tomorrow, they'll have to wait until Wednesday, as there's evidently no room on the flight Monday. In a moment of trying to help, Claire, having made a connection, shared the phone number of Andrew's wife, and they pleaded with her to get a message through to him.

A bit of good news, as we've been trying to gauge our experience based on theirs. Timing-wise, that is. The ebbs and tides of paperwork in Manilla have as much to do as anything else, so it's only a rough gauge. This gives a little glimmer that in about two weeks, we should be receiving our papers. Hopefully we don't have anything that pushes us to need an emergency connection. Maybe we'll also be luckier and the package won't be sent on the last delivery of the week, arriving after business hours on a Friday.

Claire also showed me the bounty she'd picked up for our picnic tomorrow, assuming it goes off. She found a little charcoal grill, some charcoal, and starter. Today and previously grabbed some more hotdogs (blended meat, not pure beef like we prefer), buns, cans of beans, bags of chips, bottles of soda, plates, and other things for a good old-fashioned American cook-out.

As we were chatting, the television signal got worse and eventually just stopped. I muted it, partly curious to see how long it would be out, but also hopeful it would come back and I could see how the Mythbusters did with their concrete gliders.

Between shopping, visiting, and ambushing the wife of the embassy dude, she had had a long day out. I'd been entertaining an occasionally awake Grace, and watching a little television after I gave up on working my little bit, but I felt a little wiped out too, as relaxing too much sometimes can do. The television signal was still out after almost an hour, so we turned off the tube and retired to the restaurant for some dinner.

I wasn't all that hungry, so I just had some soup for dinner. Bubu was there, so we had some chat time with her, too. We shared a little bit more about our home life, as it seems we are quite a mystery. It's been so long since we've seen our birthmother, and even when we do she doesn't ask a lot of questions, nor does it seem that some of our conversation get translated back. The one time we asked if there was anything she wanted to know about us, hoping to start a little bit of a dialog, all we got back was “yes,” but no inquiries.

Bubu asked if we had our own car, and we said we did, a Jeep and a motorcycle. She asked if we lived in a nice place, and we said we did, a five-bedroom home in the suburbs, on a quiet street, with a little yard. We told her about the dogs, which raised some concern as they don't really do pets here; we noted the difference and shared that they're well-trained and cared-for, healthy, and like kids. I refrained from joking “because they're tasty.”

We asked bubu about the computer at her house; our birthmother had said there was one and it was used all of the time. There is a small laptop that her son, in about the 8th grade, if I recall, uses, so he can get e-mail and find pictures and stuff. “He knows how to do all of that,” she said. We shared that's what I do for my job, writing software and configuring systems and networks and stuff, which elicited a “wow” that I couldn't tell meant more of a “whatever, I don't understand all of that” or “that's impressive.”

While visiting, and not filled with my cup of soup, I tried some dessert, too. All they had was the Alaska Cake, which I had at first thought to pass on, but still a little hungry decided to try. The description was a bit different than the plate of cake. It was kind of a banana-flavored, thin, two-tier cake, with a chocolaty frosting between and atop, served chilled. It was tasty, but not the fluffy cake with whipped cream and bananas covered in chocolate as described. I was a little afraid of the description, not sure what that would look like, which also added to my curiosity and decision to take the cake. I was satisfied, and even full enough by the end of it to leave the last few bites.

After dinner, dessert, and chatting, we returned to the room. I checked, and the television was still out. We deposited a sleeping Grace into her bed, and turned in early.