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Sorry, not feeling creative enough to think of a title for this evening's post. I'm not feeling very creative for anything tonight, in fact! It's Saturday evening, and I just turned on the generator. I've got a few little bits and pieces of things to do tonight, then I'm planning to finish watching my Chinese dvd version of "Becoming Jane". I started it last night, but then the dvd stopped and refused to continue about an hour and a half into it. By then, I had already turned off the generator, and it was dark and late, so I left it to figure out today!

I have to admit I had quite a frustrating, defeating few hours this morning. One of the language teams' computers hasn't been receiving its emails properly all week. I keep trying different things, which don't work. Which means I send more sms emails to my computer geek buddies in a couple of different countries, and they reply, and I try something else. And I fail at something else. This morning, I thought, finally, I have good instructions for something to try... but alas. After a few hours of mucking around in it (and probably doing more harm than good by the end!), I gave up. Mostly because it was time to turn off the generator and I couldn't work anymore!

It quite amazed me how frustrated I got with this silly computer. It made me quite grumpy, in fact. And I must admit that I was a bit of a grump when the woman who was cooking lunch ran out of cooking gas and I had to go and "install" a new gas cylinder in the middle of it all. Of course, I couldn't find a spanner wrench, and Richard's toolbox was locked... so I had to go find the neighbors and beg to use a spanner... but in the end, I was successful, and I did get to eat the fruits of my labor, since Vicky was then able to finish cooking the lunch :)

But still, not being able to understand how the computer file structure was supposed to be working, nor being able to figure it out even after so many hours of messing around on it... rather frustrating!

So I went in the afternoon with Matt and Pam for some "retail therapy", as Annamarie calls it (who, by the way, I just got a text message from. She's sitting on a lovely verandah in Tanzania, sipping a nice cold beer and munching on pate in the shadow of Mt. Kilimanjaro!). Retail therapy was great. I didn't buy much - just a pineapple, some tomatoes, potatoes, an avocado, green peppers, bananas, UHT milk (long life milk in a tetra box), and a splurge treat - halwa with pistachios for $5! Mmmm... I can hardly wait for my cup of tea with halwa this evening.

This domestic streak hasn't quite rubbed off yet, and even though I was a bit grumpy about not being able to fix that silly computer, I happily put together a real casserole! I just ate some of it and yum yum, quite good. But then again, how can you go wrong with potatoes, garlic, onions and green peppers?

I have also learned a small lesson about manicures this afternoon. Cutex nail polish remover from the UK works SO much better than the much smellier East African nail polish remover. And if you use blue toilet paper with which to remove your pink nail polish, your nails and fingertips will also turn blue. Lesson learned. Good thing I've got some light blue-ish silver nail polish to cover up the blue toilet paper stains on my fingers...