All bagged up

...and ready to go. As was my blip for the day, until we heard this plastic bag drifting across the floor and found it was cat, and not wind, driven.

The previous blip choice was another Copacabana beach at dawn shot. Although on the way home, I encountered a severely overweight basset hound, whose paunch barely cleared the ground, but with the gravitas of an elder statesman - another candidate. Then there was the lady distributing the free newspaper. I asked her for a copy and she seemed almost taken aback to be asked politely, but gave me a beaming smile and a "But naturally, madame", before bidding me Go with God - the answer to which is "May you stay with God".

Exhausted after so much early-morning excitement, I plunged back into bed once I got home and stayed there till 9 am - totally decadent. Wasn't much use for anything for the rest of the day, but plodded through a few chores before heading for physio and then back to the phone company as the attendant had forgotten to advise us what our new numbers would be.

A massive thunderstorm has just started, with heavy rain that bodes ill for some - and of course the man who was supposed to be mending our roof this week never showed up. Apparently, Brazil has one of the highest rates of occurrences of lightning strikes. Tragically, a woman was killed this week on a São Paulo beach when calling to her children to get out of the water.

P.S. Forty-five minutes later and the storm is still raging - incredible thunder and lightning, the whole house shakes!