You’re retired. What do you DO all day??  Ha! I always laugh when I see this question. I don’t know how I had time to work.

Maintaining a house, cleaning, cooking, errands, etc. take a certain amount oof time but after that, your time is yours to spend as you wish. We all have to figure that out no matter where we live.

Those of you who follow me know I’m the bass player in a rock cover band. Yesterday we had two gigs in Boquete, an unusual, long day but a whole lot of fun.

The first gig was the Tapout Sports Zone grand opening. This is the BCP event center building, but totally redone and it looks great! There’s an indoor enclosed area with many TV’s showing sporting events, a bar, and a kitchen serving a variety of food (our wings were great!). Outside is a large terrace with bar seating overlooking the yard, foosball, pool tables, and more table seating. In the yard is more seating, a fire pit, and a stage for performers. They have just barely got the place ready so it will be interesting to see how it goes. It feels really good there and I hope it is enjoyed by many. It’s also a fun place for the band and I hope we can play there again.

After chatting with friends and packing up we headed over to the band’s first home, Mike’s Global Grill. Mike is a great chef and tonight was a Chinese buffet. Words was it was very well attended and we were lucky that we were in time to enjoy it before everything was gobbled up. We set up our gear again, and played an evening of music for Mike’s people. It’s usually a dancing gringo crowd who likes the more standard classic rock music, but we mixed it up with some of the newer (to us) and harder rocking songs that we usually play for our Panamanian audiences. It went over really well so maybe we’ll continue this.

Next, we went back to the Tapout. Hashtag played in the early evening. We love them but we have heard them before, so we weren’t too bummed that we were busy elsewhere. Radio Negra was playing later so we could make it in time for them. We had heard about this band for quite a while so I was really happy to finally hear them and meet them. I love what they do! Reggae, rock, original material, and a nice mix to keep it interesting and fun, and they are good musicians and super nice guys.

We usually play at the Boquete Brewing Company every weekend, but it’s good we aren’t playing this weekend. Our drummer has a cold and needs the rest after yesterday. We’re tired too and can use the day to chill and prepare for our trip to the US to see family.

And, in other news, we had another earthquake after midnight on the 26th, a 6.2, not much stronger than the one we had a couple months ago but it seemed like more. Now the media is talking about clusters of earthquakes, 9 in the last 24 hours, but we haven’t felt anything. They are educating people on being prepared with emergency supplies for power and water outages (which is routine anyway for just living here). I wonder if the warnings are helpful since there isn’t anything you can do except maybe push bottles and breakables to the back of the shelves.

From earthquaketrack.com

From the Radio Chiriqui Facebook page

But, it gives us something to talk about besides the cane toad. (https://blog.thepanamaadventure.com/2017/10/13/a-cane-toad-can-kill-your-dog/ )  We had one here. Joel caught it and threw it over the fence into the woods. Days later…. cane toad! Over the fence. This went on at least four times. Meanwhile I was cleaning dirty water out of the dogs dish and birdbath most mornings. Finally enough was enough. Joel caught the toad, put it in a bag and into the freezer (as suggested by a friend). It must have been the same dang toad because since then, no more dirty water and no more toad. Thankfully the dog seemed to ignore it, but I didn’t want to take the chance and leave it around. These toads are very bad news for dogs.

Oh, and we found fleas on the dog. We tried the flea baths and all that in the past without success, so today we went directly to the NexGard which worked perfectly before. $27.45 though? Ouch. I’m going to get a couple more in the US to bring back just in case. She doesn’t run the neighborhood so we haven’t had problems for a long time but when there are a lot of other dogs who do run around, it’s always possible.

So, this is what we DO all day 😁 See what we have to deal with here!  Seriously, not too much goes on. These really are the highlights of the week. There are plenty of days like this too.

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