Today it begins back in my home country! i truly believe change will come... i had goose bumps yesterday watching the whole thing on tv. and it wasn't just the cold in the house!

standing there on Capitol Hill which was built in part by slaves who could never have believed a black President would one day stand... whose own grandfather couldn't go in certain places or transport. amazing, fantastic.

Obama's speech was written by a 27 yr old in a Starbucks cafe! a man who has a certain link some how and can put Obama's thoughts into words perfectly.

all morning some in the crowd had been singing anti-Bush songs and on his arrival they booed loudly and so they turned up the music so it couldn't be heard so clearly!

and back here in our casa looks like the rat problem has not gone! Pippa would not leave the cave alone this morning and was climbing in as far as she could get with all the boxes in her way, so i got in there and pulled everything out onto the floor area, the boxes are on a section in the cave that's raised up where someone a long long time ago had dug out the rock and where if you remember from an excavation a couple of years ago we came across an ancient cool box! or cooker area couldn't really work out which! although there was lots of charcoal there were also lots of bones that were just clean and obviously not cooked! we covered up the deep hole that had been carved out of rock and left it safe.

well area cleared and then swept! Pippa could get in and up onto a natural shelf area and get up close and personal with some of the holes, she was going crazy! and would not leave it, so i climbed up and got into that corner... oh and boy i wish i hadn't i completely freaked out, so much so Pippa bolted with me screaming to get outta here now Pippa!!!!

she must have in her climb up dislodged some stuff, and now on the floor by my feet was the rat! from two years ago! mummified! ugh! OMG!!! it looked like it had been run over by a truck, four little legs out flat and the tail.... i am screwing up my toes thinking of it, horrendous sight!

i got on the phone to Franco, i think he thought... oh i don't know what he thought i was just so as i say freaked out by it! so he has to get that thing out of the cave tonight when he gets home.

and its going to be chicken wire everywhere and cement everywhere or we are bricking it up! just kidding, but really! and this explains those flys we had a year back, the infestation remember? millions of flys and now i know where they came from!

i had to go back in and get the washing out of the machine, and Pippa had one minute in there before i got her out again! and that's it till the rats gone, i am not going back in that hole!

and talking of holes... or pipes at least, the bunch of them in the street waiting to be put in holes! the night before last a ninó from down our street was out savaging for fire wood i guess and took away some of the wooden blocks stopping them from avalanching down! but last night he tried again and some of them rolled off, later it happened again!?! so they were all out flat this morning stretching across the street, lots of 20 foot orange pipes looking like a maze for rats!!!

One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop!
G Weilacher

TTFN
Marian