An 'old' bird picture of somewhere earlier this summer. 

Isn't he cute and fluffy one?

I've been waiting for something interesting to happen this week to blog about, but even though I'm now a day late with my 'weekly' update, I'm afraid I've got nothing to write about.

Just a lot of the same ol'-same ol' ...

We ARE working hard of course.

James asked me if I could help washing a few windows, please? Sure, no problem ... how bad could it be?

 

Ha, that bad!

And those are only the front ones on the second floor. I also did the ones in the back and than there were just as many on the first floor!

(OK, I'll have to admit I didn't do all of them, James did the ones at the top, since I'm not too good with heights).

James keeps having fun with his toys:

(Doesn't that exhaust-pipe 'thingy' on the front of this machine look like some sort of animal? It scared the bejezus out of me one evening when I looked at it one evening after dark!)

We did finish the 'dog-kennel into cat-cage' conversion.

His royal highness was not amused, but it will keep him safe during the day when we leave, or entertained at night when he likes to look out into the darkness ...

Last Thursday was the 11th of November, the day St. Martin died.

St. Martin of Tours, a revered European saint was known for his kindness to strangers (and children) and was said to once share half of his (red) robe with a half naked beggar as depicted in this old dutch painting by Antoon van Dijck:

Not much of a 'thing' here in the US but in Holland this day is celebrated in the evening when children up to the age of 11 or 12 (primary school age) go door to door as soon as it gets dark,with hand-crafted lanterns made of hollowed-out sugar beet or, more recently, paper, singing songs, hoping to receive candy in return, similar to Halloween.

Look, I found this cute picture of my little sister and me on St Martin's eve in 1965!

Our only 'outing' this week, was to the grocery store in Amite and before that we had dinner at La Carreta, a downtown Mexican restaurant.  

Wherever we are, we like to eat the 'local' food, which down here is Cajun or creole, but we just had a craving for Mexican, which we used to eat a lot in California en Texas.

Besides the quaint Mexican atmosphere, the food was also really good. 

We'd ordered shrimp and Mahi ceviche, which is a fish dish where the fish is 'cooked' in lime and lemon juice and which is served cold, as a salad:

(The acid from the limes and lemons change the structure of the proteins in the fish, essentially “cooking” the fish without using heat.)
We also had an order of Chili Relleno with rice and refried beans :

I think this was the best Chili Relleno I ever had! A huge roasted poblano chile in a nice egg batter and just oozing lots and lots of cheese! Yummm!

Well, I think these were the 'highlights' of this week. As I said, not much going on, but that's not always a bad thing ...

See y'a next week!