Adam and I went to my parents’ house for dinner last night and I actually got all three dogs to sit still for a couple of photos. (Stanley is pre- and post-yawn in each photograph, but I can’t help laughing about the second photo where it just looks like he’s grinning like crazy.)

Yep. I’m one of those ridiculous new pet owners who buys too many dog toys, gives too many treats and dresses the dog up in outfits. I decided Oliver needed to be a dinosaur for his first Halloween and made the costume myself by hand. Surprisingly, he didn’t mind having to try it on endless times as I tailored it to fit him exactly and even didn’t seem to mind wearing it. And the costume gave him plenty of attention (which he can never get enough of).

In honor of our first water bill (an astounding $130.00 for 14,000 gallons of water) I’ve decided I will be devoting a lot of my attention to water conservation through the end of this year. Call it an early New Year’s Resolution, if you will, but I hope that the methods for conservation I implement this next few months will carry on for years to come. And now I’ll mention the point that most of that 14K gallons of water running through our house was caused by a broken toilet handle in the place we just began renting and neglected to fix.

In the shower: Take shorter showers. Pretty simple, right? If you really seem to have trouble managing your time in the shower, pick up an egg timer and limit your showers to 5 minutes. A five minute shower with a standard shower head consumes around 20 gallons of water. You can go a step further and replace the head to a low-flow model which will use only 7-8 gallons of water in 5 minutes.

In the toilet: Remember and actually use the old adage, ‘When it’s yellow, let it mellow. When it’s brown, flush it down.’ Obviously, you must throw your toilet paper in the trash to keep from clogging the toilet and don’t be afraid to flush after you’ve peed 5 or 6 times because the smell will get a little overwhelming. You can also place a brick (enclosed in a ziploc bag) in your toilet tank to trick your toilet into thinking the tank is full. Most toilets don’t need to use as much water as the tank will allow. Just make sure to place the brick carefully so it won’t interfere with the flushing mechanism.

In the kitchen: Never let the faucet run continuously while washing dishes. Try to fill a sink with hot soapy water and soak dishes to remove particles before scrubbing. If you don’t have many dishes to wash, fill one of the dirty (but relatively clean) bowls or cups to be washed with a bit of soapy water and use this to dip your sponge in to wash dishes. Also, try rinsing your dishes at a lower water pressure.

In the yard: If you need to water your lawn make sure you are using your sprinklers when they will be most effective. Although most sprinkler systems are programmed to water grass twice a day, try to get by with watering it just once, and an hour before the sun rises is usually the best time to do it. In the middle of the day, the water evaporates too quickly for the grass to soak up and in the middle of the night the water can attract fungus and mold!

These are just some basic steps to help cut your water consumption and there are plenty of other things you can do to help out. Just google ‘water conservation’ to find an array of options. I’ve even tried going a step further than some of the practices I’ve outlined here. For instance, I took a couple of gallon-sized water containers and cut the tops off to put in the shower below my feet to catch some of the run-off. These water containers sit in the shower until I need to flush the toilet and when I’m ready, I remove the toilet tank lid, pull down on the flusher, wait until the valve at the bottom has closed and then pour my saved water into the tank. I’m trying to collect more suitable and long-lasting containers to keep outside to collect rain water for the same purpose.

Anyway, it’s nice to think we’re helping out by not wasting so much precious water. I’m also sure my bank account won’t mind a smaller bill.

I’ve been really lazy about my cameras lately and decided it was finally time to download all the photos from the last couple of months. I realized I have a bunch of cute puppy photos to share!

This is Oliver. Or little dude. Or sometimes little shit.

He’s not easy to photograph because he’s so dark and moves fast so I’m satisfied if I just get a few that aren’t a blur.

He was so little back then! Since we’ve brought Oliver home 2.5 months ago he has more than doubled his weight and has learned to sit, shake and roll over. I joke with everyone that I can tell he’s getting bigger because his poops are increasing in diameter. He’s a little stubborn sometimes, but generally a good little dog. He has recently been racking my nerves about not walking in the grass when it’s wet out (which is every morning) so it’s been tough to make him pee and poo in the mornings. We’re working on that. Amazing that he doesn’t mind getting bathed or getting sprayed with the hose, huh? Just doesn’t like his feet getting wet.

We left Angeles to stay our last few days with Angelita in a little apartment on the outskirts of Manila. While here we traveled into downtown Manila to see some historical buildings and also made a day trip to Taal Volcano.

A guy pedaling a bicycle taxi wouldn’t leave us alone about giving us a short tour around the city, so my mom finally hired him to point some things out and guide us around. He wasn’t accustomed to having to pedal around 3 fat Americans, though, and we even got a few laughs from his friends who referred to us as ‘caribou’. TJ and Mom decided they would help and pedal for a little while.

Lunch in the city.

When we got to Taal Lake we chartered a boat to take us to the volcano in the center.

We were pestered into hiring a guide with a horse to lead us along a very obvious path to the rim of the volcano. Mom rode for a little while and hiked the rest of the way. I guess most foreigners would rather pay the small amount for a horse so TJ and I were looked at like we were insane hiking the whole 1.5miles to the top.

Taal is an active volcano and the lake in the middle of the volcano is not swimmable, so we just looked at it from the rim.

This hike was less dusty than the hike to Pinatubo but we still managed to get really dirty feet.

This set of photos concludes the collection. So here they finally are, 5 months after the trip.

On the way to Mt. Pinatubo we passed a long set of steps that lead to the top of a hill that my mom remembered visiting. You are supposed to climb to the top, pay your respects and leave a donation.

There is a tunnel cut into the hill which deadends in a small cave with another shrine.

Lola called her friend over to give us all manicures to help clean up our filthy nails.

Red Horse is a pretty strong beer that feels like a punch in the gut when it hits your stomach.

We all helped Richard wrap soap – his community volunteer project.

And John Paul showed me how to fix broken flip flops.

Our last full day in Negros we spent hiking up another mountain to visit Lolo’s ‘girlfriend’ (a caribou getting a mud bath) and his ‘mansion’ (a 2-story bamboo house littered with coconut and corn husks).

They dug up some sweet potatoes and Lolo showed us the 200 coconut trees he planted for my mom.

We climbed a mango tree to relax in the shade for a bit, Lolo included.

Nuno brought out his rooster for a practice fight.

The girls curl their hair with twigs.

The whole family got together for some group photos on the last evening. We said our goodbyes, had a few beers and sang really terrible Karaoke (which they call Videoke) and took a bus back to the main port at 3am.

We spent the rest of our week in Negros relaxing around a pool table, drinking coconut wine and fanning away the heat.

We found a little market in a town called Asia where you could buy fresh steamed buns and loads of fresh vegetables.

A woman was processing her harvest of mung beans by letting them bake in the sun and then stepping on the pods until seeds burst out. She let us help out a little.

We learned how to wrap coconut tree fronds into little pouches for steaming rice.

I wasn’t lying when I said fish and rice was a staple for breakfast.

A bumpy and very dusty 7-hour jeep ride followed the ferry ride and we finally arrived at around 9pm. The family had prepared some barbequed fish and other small dishes with rice.

TJ meets his grandfather for the first time he can remember.

The family lives in a seaside village nestled within mountains and rice terraces. We took a hike up the mountain with fish to barbeque at a friend’s home for lunch.

We stopped for some refreshing coconut and native fruit along the way.

Lolo bought charchoal for the barbeque.

They referred to Lolo as the ‘commander’ and his uniform was this hat and a machete tied around his waist.

The hike ended with a heavy summer rain. We used banana leaves as umbrellas.

I know this post is long overdue, but my life has been pretty busy lately. I got engaged, I got a puppy, I moved to another city, and I’ve been training for a new position at work. All pretty lame excuses, right? Either way, I finally uploaded some photos from my trip to the Philippines in March and there are a lot of them, so I’ll spend the next few days posting them in sections.

Within a day of arriving in the Philippines we caught a ferry from Manila to Negros Occidental (a 26-hour ride) with my mom’s brothers and sisters and some of their children.

Most of the ferry had organized sets of bunks like this. There were no arranged sleeping assignments unless you paid for a cabin or chose to be indoors with the a/c or outdoors with the elements.

We bought some handmade jewelry from a nun.

I don’t know how often this happens, but we were invited to steer the ferry by the ship’s third mate. It was only by chance TJ and mom were smoking in this area of the ferry and maybe he had seen my camera and decided it would be fun to have his photograph taken.

Fish and rice was pretty much the staple breakfast through the whole vacation.

With each new port arrival, a group of porters would put on some music and dance for the visitors to welcome them.

And then they would grab and sling luggage in a frenzy that caused jams among the passengers exiting the boat.

You have to be careful about who picks up your bags to load them onto jeeps and taxis like these guys who we thought worked for the man driving the jeep. They hung onto the back telling us we owed them money for putting all of our gear on top of the jeep when we had never asked them to do it and actually almost had to fight them off so they wouldn’t take our bags.

As most of my readers know, I have just returned from a 3-week vacation in the Philippines. The trip happened to be less of a vacation and more of a journey. I feel like a large portion of the trip was spent in transit, but had countless wonderful experiences during each method of travel.

In the spirit of David Foster Wallace, I give you a summation of my trip.

I have used a banana leaf as an umbrella. I have consumed coconut wine at 8 in the morning. I have been for a ride on a tricycle (a sort of dirt bike with an attached sidecar). I have risen to the call of a rooster (which speaks Tagalog in the Philippines). I have come within snorting distance of a caribou. I have paid the equivalent of 3.5 cents to use a public toilet, which did not include toilet paper. I have showered in my clothes in the rain simply because it was the most convenient option. I have been utterly disgusted by the endless dirt under my fingernails, but eaten with my hands anyway. I have had juice and pulp from both young green and mature orange coconuts and decided that I prefer the green. I have learned the word for ‘good’ in at least 5 new languages. I have chased chickens out of my bed and witnessed a bonafide cock fight. I have worn the same underwear without washing 3 days in a row. I have run 5 miles in the land of a thousand smiles. I have woven pouches for steaming rice from the leaves of a coconut tree. I have seen larger cockroaches than exist in Florida. I have spent 59 out of 74 hours in some sort of vehicle, including a plane, a ferry, a taxi, and a jeep. I have seen a double rainbow after a hard mountain rain. I have seen cd-roms used as washers. I have concealed a collection of plastic bags and water bottles with the fear that someone else would come by and appropriate them for their own use. I have watched my rather unsightly ankle sock tan evolve into a sexy flip-flop tan. I have accidentally asked my mother whether she would like ‘a penis’ (when trying to be particularly clever and referring to my Tagolog-English dictionary) instead of ‘fish bones’, to which a large fit of laughter was followed by anyone within earshot. I have seen more uses for bamboo than I ever thought possible. I have climbed to the craters of two volcanoes, one of which is still active. I have jogged 172 steps up a hillside to a statue of the Virgin Mary where one is expected to leave a donation and make a confession, left a donation, did not make a confession, and returned feeling a little breathless and dizzy (which I will equate with feeling spiritual).

Photos are soon to follow.