Author: doug

Snake and toad

We ran across this on the trail yesterday

A small snake trying to eat a toad?

Apparently it concluded this wasn’t going to work.

Then it showed the underside of its tail, which allows a 100% identification: a young lystrophis_dorbignyi, or Falsa Crucera de Hocico Respingado. I’ll let you try to figure out what that means in English on your own….

Meanwhile, worth noting that we have never seen a toad before on a dog walk.

Amazing!

This remote control is for a split (heat/AC) unit that we’ve had for 13 years or so. It had gotten to the point that the on/off button no longer functioned. I took it apart, found no moving parts and nothing dirty, so figured it was a lost cause.

Until the feria this week. There, next to the cheese sellers I go to almost every week, was a guy advertising remote control repair. I couldn’t believe it. I have never seen him before. I went home and fetched the remote control. He spent maybe ten minutes with it, disassembling, scraping, cleaning, and voilá! Ten bucks seems like a lot, and I could have gotten a universal remote control for a lot less.

But do I really want to deal with this when I only use five buttons? I think not. My solution is far more elegant.

A classic

I guess. 1966 Chrysler station wagon. Just parked in front of somebody’s nothing-special house.

Coming home along the Rambla (beach road) I passed a mid-50s Chevy with mag wheels following a mid-50s Ford T-bird. Special day today? It’s fathers day in the US, but not here for another three weeks.

A big-ish chunk of firewood

It was a bit of a trick getting it in there – the bed of coals was hot!

I never noticed the rust on the stove until I looked at this photo. But I’m pretty sure this is the stove’s 10th year of service, so it has certainly fared better than our first, that rusted out inside in three years (Ñuke was the brand, if you insist).