Some pics !!!

My pics end at the end of June, about 10 days into my La Mariposa stay.

So ... it starts with the tail end of Belize (and my brief, but illegal, foray into Guatemala), and goes through the first 1/3rd of La Mariposa.

I'll caption the pics as I can, and -- being a rather good sport -- try to ensure they're oriented vertically.

Shockingly, I DO appear in a couple of these -- primarily on the little Isleta in Lago de Managua, swinging in a couple of trees.  Neener, neener !

Harry the Parrot - Benque Viejo del Carmen, Belize.  We were just friends :-)

There's a lady who's sure, all that glitters is gold, and she's buying .....

Ruth (foreground), Sage (background).  When you reach for an Intern ... reach for one of them (metaphorically.  Puh-lease !)

Cemetery - Granada, Nicaragua

LOTS of graves of fallen soldiers, during the Revolution.

The Jewish section -- literally.

My peeps !!!

Some fort ... famous during and before the Revolution.  I sort of tuned out the lecture, and took pics :-)

It's possible he has some illegitimate kids, down here !  Ooooooh.  Sorry, Arnie :-)

Tom, disappointing his daughter, while sharing a newly-rolled stogie among Richard, myself and maybe another of the guys.  A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke (Groucho).

My peeps ... again !

Terry and Karen, with kids Annika and Reba (great kids !)

Lucy and Nick (Tom's kids -- great kids) on the outside, Bridget in 2nd position, Tom in 3rd.  Great people !

Nick, Lucy, and ... er ... maybe Georgia (Christina and Richard's daughter), at the Museum.  They're fascinated, just like I am :-)

Joinery, folks.  It's what's for breakfast !

On the boat trip to Las Isletas (the little islands) in the Lago Nicaragua

Wanna' own an island, off the coast of Granada ??  I do :-)

The right side of Henry's head; the left side (technically, this is wrong, but ... work with me) of Christina's !

A Portrait of the Blogger .... a series.

We found a swimming hole.  Well ... THEY did.  I found a bar :-)

Richard: physically, the largest of the children, and ... the father of Henry and Georgia :-)

So ... that's kind of that.  I'm in Granada, but still pretty darned peaked.  Lingering virus ??

And ... I think I'm going to try to find an ophthalmologist in this city.  While it would have been great to have had some "dry eye" testing done when things were much better (eg, Honduras), I think there's still value in seeing what's going on.

The miracle of Ultra-High Humidity ... is kind of leaving me.  I ran it by my Ocular Surface Guru, who said:

"Your dry eye-like symptoms are caused by the sensitized nerves in your corneas that make them hypersensitive to tear evaporation. Scleral lenses blocked that. I do not believe that any degree of humidity will give you sustained relief."

This guy's dedicated the last couple decades (he's probably over 80) of his life to my kind of issue.

I do NOT take his as the Last Word, and throw in the towel, but ... I think there's a feedback loop that's downregulating tear production even further, in response to the intense humidity.

Which ... is why I'm so paralyzed in terms of making A Next Move.

If I try to build my little dry eye sanctuary here, or in the Pacific Northwest, or somewhere else ... I'm building it on an ever-changing ophthalmologic picture with an uncertain trajectory.

Dr. Rosenthal has been extremely hesitant to make any recommendations to me, based on his sense of what my eyes might do in the near-, mid-, or long-term.  He just keeps telling me to "hang in there."

Which is just about exactly what I'm doing .... in the Nicaraguan bastion of Conservatism (they'd call it liberalism; they reverse the terms, here), at the NWC of the Lake ... in the Granadino Offices of ... The Gulag.