Pugly

Meet Pugly, I don't know his real name. I just sort of smashed together the words “pug” and “ugly.” How am I sure it is a “he” you ask? You will soon find out.

He is the neighbor's dog that regrettably stays leashed under their villa's carport all day. He has a habit of knocking over his water dish and then hyper-actively snorting and barking until someone (usually me or one of my roomates) goes and fills it back up. So this morning I was walking to my car and could hear the characteristic snorting that has become synonymous with my waking hours. Except this time there was a sight, much sadder than just a dog with an empty water dish...

As you can see, our friend Pugly has what we call in medicine, a “custodio-centric auto-erotic asphyxiation” fetish (not bad for making it up on the fly huh? He's one sick puppy...ok ok I'll quit, it was just there I had to). Disgusted and appalled by this, there was only one thing I could do. I laughed and took a couple of pictures. Of course I took the broom away, filled his dish with water and then started to leave for school. I THOUGHT I had put the object of pugly's affection far enough out of reach but alas, I took this one out of my window as I drove off.

So this afternoon after class, I had errands to run. You can't run errands on the weekends because everything is closed. The same goes for anytime after 3:30 pm.....and also 11-1 pm.... and well, just whenever the hell St. Maartener's feel like they don't want to be bothered with you. Regardless, I had to get my car inspected, get a haircut, and get groceries. The car inspection went OK I guess. I went through, he told me my tint was too dark, that it failed inspection, and that I owed him $21 dollars. Then he peeled the tint off, kindly told me I owed him another $10 to “re-inspect it,” I was sure to throw in a “yeah, ok....aaaaannd... you're serious....” over the top of my sunglasses as I handed him the last 10 dollar bill in my wallet. What can you do... Then I went to Grande Marche', probably this island's biggest asset

Its a lot like an Albertson's or a Kroger, the prices really aren't that far off the mark from those places either. I got the essentials: Diet Pepsi, orange juice, some frozen chicken breasts, Febreeze, bread, etc. Fellow Louisianians will be interested to know that they also carry some Zatarain's products and even Tony's Roux Mix (but sadly not the seasoning), I also bought some of these there, it says they're made in Gramercy, Louisiana (same co. as Zapp's?). I guess it's a small world after all.