Daily Report: All Home, All Quiet... Almost

Epril, her mother, sisters Susan and Ednel, and niece Doreen all arrived home this morning, returning by ferry from Epril's mother's mother's funeral in Leyte. They were all tired from the trip. (Epril said she must be suffering from "boat lag".)

It was Doreen's first trip anywhere. Ednel said she enjoyed the mountainous scenery. Epril remarked upon how poorly-off her maternal relatives were.

Here is something that made me think: Epril took a 15-minute video of the funeral and burial. The amount of wailing, actual swooning, and overpowering grief in the video was really quite upsetting to watch. But, it's a very important memory for Epril's family — albeit it a truly bad one — so maybe having that video around makes sense. I can't imagine anyone ever wanting to sit down and watch that video again (especially somebody who was actually there) but at the same time isn't it a part of life worth documenting in the modern (video) format? I guess so.

Like what I did with my office?

Most people don't realize that Windows lets you do all kinds of things with your monitor setup, like rotate your screen to portrait configuration. Actually, I can't believe I didn't do this ages ago: Most computer programs are of the top-to-bottom, scrolling type, and a portrait configuration is much better for that. I can quite literally see three times as much of any given web page with my monitor on its end like this.

Tyson has picked up some bad habits from the dogs who live across the street: He barks at things in the street, especially wandering dogs. It's one thing when you have a little mop of a dog yipping when you are walking nearby, but Tyson is an altogether different animal with a much more alarming sound and demeanor. There is a few yards of chain link fence over in the corner of the yard through which Tyson is particularly prone to scare the daylights out of people nearby (one second all is silent... then WOOF) which I had Tatay cover up with some bamboo matting. That seems to have helped a bit.

I started giving Epril motorcycle lessons this evening. I took her out to an empty road and had her sit on the electric motorcycle and then walk it forward while gently throttling the engine so that the bike would move with her as she walked. I also got her to turn the motorcycle around while doing the same thing. She's very nervous, and it will be a very long time before I'd let her go riding around anywhere other than in the immediate neighborhood, but it's good for her to learn: Nobody in my family (not even Tatay) can ride that I am aware of.

Well, it was a quiet evening in front of the television again. Ednel cooked cream dory fish for dinner, and Epril also bought some bar-be-que pork.