Jil and The Texas Sniffle Meet The Karia

Karia = village in Arabic.

So I'm moved in here on Soi Osama Bin Laden... a name given not by myself, but by the local Thai people who think that it is only noise pollution when it is coming from a minaret. Heheh. There may be freedom of religion here in Thailand, but the Thais do know how to be pissy about things.

Personally, I don't think it is that bad. I've only heard the Adhan when I'm outside, and I think the mosque is only about a mile away from here. The church bells in my hometown that rang "Big Ben" every half-hour were about the same volume, I would guess.

I like my new house. The only drawback being that my office is now in my bedroom. However, since my bedroom here is actually about 50% larger than my bedroom in the old house, that's not too bad.

I've been nailed with a cold... a Texas sniffle. These are the hottest days of the year. (According to weather.com, it is 97º. 97? Yeah right.) Personally, I have been keeping almost exclusively to the air-conditioned areas of my house, with things being a nice 75º inside. Ahh.

Of course, going outside into the sun causes an instant geiser of sweat to cascade off of me, and I'm soaked within minutes. Therefore, I rush as quickly as I can, soaking wet, back into my beloved air conditioning. That is how you catch a Texas sniffle.

For moving day, I was worthless. Since I had been sneezing and coughing so much, all my muscles were seized up, and I couldn't lift a damn finger to help. I was able to sit at my desk and do a little work while the first load of my belongings was loaded into a truck and sent over to the new house. Since my computers had to go on the second load, I took them all apart and (for the first time ever) allowed the Thai moving guys to carry them out to the truck.

Mickey, unfortunately, was not moving. Neither was Pridi. Mickey refused to get anywhere near the truck, apparently recognizing the packing-and-moving-and-the-dog-is-next thing from the last time it happened. So, as of 24 hours later when this is written, he is still sitting at the house, waiting for Risa to get back from the Phillippines tomorrow, to coax him into a car to take him to his new home.

Pridi was nowhere to be found. So, she stayed behind as well. Khun Khan had hopped the fence last week sometime, and amazingly out of 6 cats, I am now back down to one... and she is my constant companion, probably out of acute lonliness.

Anyway, the act of taking apart my office finished me off, pretty much, and I was strengthless. I rode in the moving truck to the new house, managed to climb the one flight of stairs to my new bedroom, and immediately crashed.

Every house I have moved into since coming to Thailand had bedsheets, except for this one. Therefore, Pui had to go to the local market to buy sheets. She also came back with a new comforter for me (quite stylish too) since my old one was... well... it had had my corpse wrapped in it for the last 2½ years.

Anyway, ensconced in my new bed with new comforter, and oh-so-cool air conditioning (no... I don't learn), my Texas sniffle and I went to sleep.

Mike woke me up a couple of hours later inviting me over to his house for a welcome-to-the-neighborhood beer. I went over, and managed to put away a bottle before my Texas sniffle was dragging me home by my shirtsleeve.

Upon getting home, at the sight of me and my Texas sniffle, Pui and Go had all of their female compassion kick into high gear (which was amazing, since they had been working all day from sun-up until sun-down on the move to the new house), and took care of me. First, Pui gave me a big-baby bath. (i.e. I just sat there and got cleaned.) Then, she tucked me back into my bed in a nice set of jammies. Then, Go came and gave me a 90-minute massage... although I was asleep after about 70 minutes or so.

(Well, if there no benefit to catching a little cold, why would I even bother, right?)