Squeaky Update

You may remember from the last newsletter that Nora rescued a baby squirrel a week before we left for Texas. We left him with friends in Cerro Azul while we were gone, and were amazed at his growth in just two weeks. He's still growing, and we've now transferred him to a new, much larger cage, which he seems delighted with. We've also reduced our handling of him. He's much too trusting of humans to turn him loose just yet, but we hope to have him in the trees within a few weeks. Nora has furnished his new cage with limbs and leaves off the trees in the back yard, and he's made a start at constructing a nest. Our plan is to open the cage when we feel he's ready and hope he goes home. We will probably have to supplement his diet for a long time to come, since he's had no mother to teach him how to find his own food. I've learned a lesson. It's one thing to adopt a puppy or kitten. You know from the start that you are responsible for their welfare for the rest of their lives. It's something else entirely to rescue a wild creature and return it to nature. I hope we do it right.

Texas

Nora and I returned over a week ago from a wonderful visit to Texas, and though we had a great time, it's good to be home again.

We flew Spirit Air to Ft. Lauderdale, where we enjoyed a 7 hour layover, before continuing to San Antonio. I will say that arriving at 4:00 AM made for a pleasant passage through Immigration/Customs and the presence of Wi-Fi points helped me pass the time by surfing the 'net. I will also say that in my life-long observation of the most uncomfortable seats inflicted on air travelers, the military C-130 has been edged out by Spirit Air.

We arrived in San Antonio at 3:05 PM, picked up our rental car and set out to find Lackland AFB where we had reservations at Gateway Inn for the night. It took about 5 minutes of the 75 mph Loop 410 traffic to convince us that our original plan of driving 350+ miles from Sabine County to San Antonio on the day of departure, finding the rental car turn-in, and getting checked in was insane, so we later revised our plans and scheduled an early San Antonio arrival the evening before departure.

We got up the next day and returned to the Base Exchange where an Acer Aspire One Netbook had caught my eye. This has to be one of the neatest little notebook computers made. Mine has an 8.8 inch screen, a 120 GB hard drive, 1 GB RAM, built-in camera and microphone and is unfortunately crippled with Microsoft Windows XP. Though it works well enough, XP practically demands a hard drive and that shortens battery life, which is about 2 1/2 hours. But, it was $348.00, no sales tax, and has proved to be very useful. It's replacing my 12 inch Averatec, so if anyone locally needs a good small laptop at a good price, give me a call.

After the BX trip, we headed for downtown San Antonio, where we toured the Alamo, which I found disappointing (who knew it was so small?) Then we had a fine Tex-Mex lunch at the Iron Cactus on the River Walk.

Because of some confusing (non-existent) road signs, we got to see some parts of San Antonio we would rather not have seen on the way to I-35 and then North to Austin, where we once again took a wrong turn, but eventually found my brother Paul's and sis-in-law Cathy's house.

The following day, Saturday, I went to a nearby clinic to get a prescription for Glucovance, which I had left behind in Panama. The service was excellent, the wait short, and my military ID card was accepted without question. The bill went to Tricare. Just an observation, but I think Panama's prescription law makes a lot more sense than the US'. Why is there a need for prescriptions for drugs that have no potential for abuse?

Paul and Cathy took us to lunch at El Rancho on 2613 Lamar (www.mattselrancho.com), one of the best of Austin's many Tex-Mex restaurants, and Nora pronounced their Margaritas world-class. The food was excellent. We were treated to the sight of a young, pudgy woman's butt-crack, exposed by her low-rider jeans at the next table over from ours. Excuse me, but who is telling these young women that exposing their crack is an acceptable fashion statement?

More Texas in the next Newsletter.

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If you received this Newsletter from a friend and would like to read all the past Newsletters, go to http://www.panamaretire.net and click on 'Newsletter'. To receive the newsletter via email, join the Yahoo Group "panamanewsletter" at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/panamanewsletter/ or send an email to henry@panamaretire.net and ask me to send you an invite.