Ay-up, She's Cold Out There!

After yesterday's over-exertion out in the damp chill brought on screaming pain, today I'm feeling much better. But I'll stay in all day anyway. Tomorrow will be somewhat warmer, so library and other errands such as shopping for a new keyboard and mouse can wait.

After that though, the temps are expected to really drop down, for an extended period. Funny how the presidential inauguration takes place so often on the coldest weekend of the winter.

Even cold as it's turning, el V would rather be staying here than rising Friday at some godawful hour, get to the Newark airport for a 9:25 AM flight to Port-au-Prince. Haiti is so not going to Cuba, as to be in a different class of historical, journalist, musicologist trip all together. For one thing I never had health concerns for him going to Cuba. And if anything did happen I knew how well he'd be cared for within their superb health system.

Not to mention safety and crime. We are still waiting for the cheap, used laptop el V ordered to arrive. Not taking the main work computer, o no, not with everything that's loaded in there, even though there are tons of external hard drives too, loaded with information.

He's going to be traveling all over the island, not staying within the foreign blancs' Haitian bubbles, like most outsiders do. He'll be heading to Jacmel and other regions too. I do feel better though that he does know so many people and they are showing up in droves, volunteering to be there for him.
Every day more contacts show up in his e-mail, a great support system, of people who know how everything in Haiti works / does not work.

It's still not going to be a pleasant sort of visit, whereas going to Havana in January would be -- and even more than pleasant, particularly if you go to the east (the Caribbean side of Cuba). It's one of the most wonderful places to be at that time of the year. Though Sandy creamed Oriente, so I'm not sure about now. But for outsiders it's still more than pleasant, according to our friend, chair of the George Mason University dance dept., who took students there after New Year's. I'm kind of sighing, yearning for palm trees, pirate sail cumulus clouds and splashing sun right now.