Pig shopping and ground breaking....

Time seems to be flying and crawling here in Paraguay. We´ve finally got a temporary 4x4 and treated it like a rented mule. It responded well and ate up all the rain and mud we could throw at it. Now we have a different 4x4 and so far it´s been a keeper as well. It has a little more clearance and that means a lot here. We´ve been taking lots of pictures and some video clips as well. Unfortunately we have to wait till we get home to post them as the internet is slow here. Besides I´ll have to edit them first (for size, not necessarily content).

Yesterday Raquel, her brother, and I went pig shopping. We bought one for about $70 and hauled back home. The plan is to slaughter it and cook it this weekend. Raquel plans to invite all the kids from Portrero Guazu to come over to eat. I´ve been around two pig preps here so far and it´s not a pretty sight and the sound is horrible. Reminds me of Silence of the Lambs. I prefer to go to the local supermarket in the US and buy the meat and poultry ready to go.

I guess the big news is the ground breaking on a little house here for us. Yep, a house. My father-in-law gave us his property and house to do as we see fit. The current house is old and a little disheveled. We contracted a guy to come and build next to the house the beginnings of a house. To start it will be one bedroom with private bath and a small all-purpose room. As money becomes available, we´ll add on to it. Anyway, this will be our comfortable place to stay instead of getting a hotel. Also we probably won´t need a rental vehicle anymore on the next visits.

Well, I´ve got to go for now. More soon.

I´m a bit behind....

Somehow I´ve let the days, weeks, and months slip speedily by without an update. Well, I did post a few photos on the flickr thingy.

I knew some might suspect something might have been wrong because my last post was in June and we were expecting our baby in late June or early July. I apologize for not posting - I just kept thinking I´d get to it sooner or later.

Anyhoo, we were blessed with a wonderful, healthy baby boy on June 26th. Everything went pretty smooth over all. Richard Theodore was born in the early afternoon and has been growing rapidly ever since.

Lots of things have happened since, but just a couple really stand out right now. First, Lourdes started her Bright Futures (pre-school) and seems to be enjoying it.
Second, a friend´s mom died recently, but it was really great to have some friends get together to celebrate life.
Third, we lost two of our three dogs. The dachshunds escaped and one was hit and killed and the other just disappeared.
Finally, we´re in Paraguay on vacation.

We´ve been here for just over a week and it´s been great over all. The family all seems to be doing well. We wanted to rent a four wheel drive vehicle, but one wasn´t available from our agency when we arrived. We´ve been getting around in a nice little sedan that was doing really well over all. Then it rained. We were out in the country visiting my wife´s parents at the time. It rained really hard. We waited for it stop raining and hoped the road wasn´t a disaster. Our trip back to the city started off a little squirrelly with some difficulty getting up a slight hill. But I made it up that hill and thought about turning around. Against my better judgement, we went for it. I drove like a champion rally racer for a long while, sometimes suprising myself with my skills. The Corsa was eating up the mud for the longest time and then we finally hit a really bad spot. I think that if I had stayed out of the ruts caused by a previous vehicle (a truck no doubt) I might have made it (probably not). We sunk up to the frame and couldn´t go forwards or backwards. Luckily we were very near a house and Raquel went to ask for help. She ended up getting a man to come with a tractor and pull us quite a distance to where we knew we were safe. Lots of things go through your mind when you´re stuck in the mud in the middle of nowhere. Oh well, we made it out and it´s just another sidenote in our Paragauyan adventure. By the way, we should be getting that four-wheel drive rental tomorrow. The roads should be dried out enough to make it out to the in-laws for a visit.

More some other time.

"verbosity - it's common sense" but I beg to differ...

In my last post I mentioned Games With A Purpose. It's a website where you can play a few different games that have a purpose. For example, one of the games is basically designed to tag pictures. You and your partner are shown the same picture and you have to use "ESP" to determine what your partner types based on the picture. For example, if the picture is of a yellow puppy with a red collar sitting in the green grass, you might type "dog" and your partner might type "green". You keep describing the picture until you and your partner have at some point used the same word. Oh yeah, you play for about four minutes and earn points for every match.

Another game is called "verbosity - it's common sense." In this game, you and your random partner take turns giving clues for the other to guess a "secret word". There are preformatted phrases that the clue giver has to use to plug in up to two words to form the clue. There are about six of these phrases, like "it is the opposite of" or "it is related to" or "it has" or "it is". For example, if the secret word is NEST, as the clue giver I might use the "it is" and fill in BIRD HOME. Hopefully my partner will understand and guess NEST.

"Verbosity - it's common sense" is kind of a bold statement. I've played this game a lot over the past week and sometimes I've been frustrated by the lack of common sense that I've encountered. Let me give you an example.

For the secret word in question, my partner's clue was "it is a kind of" SHEEP FUR.
I guessed FLEECE, which wasn't right immediately followed by WOOL which also wasn't correct.
My partner said "it is a type of" SWEATER MATERIAL
I guessed CASHMERE which wasn't correct, then YARN which also wasn't correct.
My partner said "it looks like" FOOL
I guessed WOOL again thinking that maybe I misspelled it or it didn't transmit (this is an internet game after all). What more could I guess?
My partner passed and we finished playing. After you play a four minute round you can review the game. It shows the clues given and the guesses and the secret word.
Guess what the secret word was that dealt with SHEEP FUR, SWEATER MATERIAL and looks like FOOL?
It was WOOD.
It's common sense but I beg to differ.

Assault with a deadly confectionery

Article in the Peoria Journal Star: "Galesburg man, 84, assaulted with Moon Pies." Dan, are there Moon Pies in England? I'm sure the industrious crooks, thieves and nardowells of the UK are always on the watch for a new weapon since they can't have guns there.

I posted a few (okay, I think there were 10) pictures from the last few months. The next time I post any more pics will probably be when our son is born.

I read an email from H.O.G. (Harley Owners Group) about the 1,000,000 Mile Monday. They want Harley owners to get out on Monday for a ride on their Harleys and then log on to the H.O.G. webpage to log their miles. They're hoping to get 1,000,000 miles. So I dutifully got onto the beast and rode her for just over 100 miles despite the threat of rain. At one point the skies darkened and I just knew it was going to pour. I pulled in to a parking lot and donned my rain gear and continued on. It seems that as soon as I hit the road again, the skies pretty much cleared up and we had one of the warmest days of the year. But, I pressed on in my gear. I figured if I continued, I would act like a rain preventer and everyone else could enjoy the weather while I semi-roasted in my suit. Doesn't matter, it was a good ride. So when I got home, I logged on to post my miles. Don't you know the devil is in the fine print: the H.O.G. Million Miles Monday is 30 June. Like I said, it was a good ride. One of my objectives was to find a german restaurant (The Alpine Village Restaurant) in the small town of Minier. I met that objective, so now I just need to get a handful of us together to head over there and eat sometime.

This was a long weekend for me. Friday we goofed off most of the morning, then dropped Lourdes off with a sitter so we could enjoy the latest Indiana Jones movie, something about crystal skulls. It was as good or bad as any of the other 3 Indy movies, but it was funny (in a sad way) to see Indy kind of hobble around like he needed hip or knee replacement surgery. I watched parts of a couple of the old movies and they weren't as good as they were when they first came out. This new one was a mixed bag of rubbish and classic entertainment. But I must agree that the CGI gophers were unnecessary.

Saturday, I went for a 160 mile ride with my friend Greg (not Wisconsin Greg). He recently got a newer motorcyle (03 Dyna) and he was itching to get some saddle time in. I guess I should specify that I went on my Sportster and he went on his Dyna. Good times. After I got home Raquel, Lourdes and I went to the Legion with Adam and his family. We ended up at his house for the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals.

Sunday was a lazy day until we went to a cookout that evening.

Greg (Wisconsin Greg) has read WIRED magazine for a long time, but I never got into for some reason. Then I got a free subscription to it last year and I've been hooked ever since. I read a few months ago about a website that had the intent of letting people play games with each other over the internet while collecting the data of your play to catalog words and pictures. The website was not working when I read the article and I checked back every so often to see it still not working. It looks like it finally launched and it's kind of addicting. There are a few different games to play. Check it out, but don't blame me if you stay on it for hours: Games With A Purpose. I'm looking at you Greg and Dan.

On the family front, we had a sonogram on Thursday. It was supposed to be the last one, but baby is breach at the moment. We'll get another sonogram in 2 weeks and see what's happening with him. If he's still breach, the doctor is going to ask us what option we want to take: schedule a c-section or schedule a manual inversion. The manual inversion could lead to a normal delivery or an emergency c-section. We'll see what happens.

Lourdes was screened for Bright Futures on Wednesday. I was suprised that the tester classified her as "English As A Second Language". We've been trying to get her to understand that there are Spanish words and there are English words and that she shouldn't mix them. She really understands the concept, but I guess there are some words that flow easier for her in Spanish. What is really funny is that Lourdes used ONE Spanish word during the screening and a couple of made-up words. Oh well, if it puts her higher on the priority list to get in a class, I'll take it.

Not Twit Enough to Twitter

-Greg updated so I must.
-Took Raquel to OB today, all is well, sonogram in 2 wks, then go to weekly visits.
-Got economic stimulus money last week, bough tank of gas.
-Dogs are sleeping in basement instead of our bed, they're taking it better than I am.
-How cute is Lourdes? "Too cute!"
-Recent headline in The Onion "Charlton Heston's Gun Taken From His Cold, Dead Hands".
-Survivor ending this week, why do I watch?
-Gotten hooked on Ghosthunters some how.
-Signs of the apocalypse??: Thundersnow in February, Earthquake in mid-April, then Snow, hail, rain, and sunshine all within an hour in late April; now gas getting close to $4/gallon and Britney gets visitation rights.
-Picked up sticks from the yard last night and burned them, don't be jealous.
-After this post I will go push my daughter on the swingset, just trying to be a good dad.

EARTHQUAKE!

This morning I woke up because the bed (and the whole house) was shaking. I knew right away that it was an earthquake but I wasn't worried because it was so mild. In fact I went back to sleep and forgot about it until I talked to my friend about 10 AM and he asked if I felt it. It was originally reported as a magnitude 5.4 but was later revised to a 5.2. The epicenter was somewhere in southeastern Illinois and was felt all over the midwest. No injuries or major damage were reported.

Thundersnow and earthquakes! What's next?

The Practical Joker

Yesterday Lourdes found a red Sharpie permanent marker and colored one of her fingers. Then she put on her best sad, concerned, and frightened face and ran to her mom clutching her finger. Of course Raquel thought that Lourdes was bleeding and it scared her to death. Fortunately Lourdes announced that she only joking. I swear I had nothing to do with it. Honestly.

No more THUNDERSNOW!!

Okay Greg, your post prodded me into posting. Well that and the fact that if I comment on Dan's blog, there's a link back to my last post which has been stuck on Thundersnow for a little while. I had many witty and insightful comments to Dan's posts but frankly I was too ashamed because I haven't updated in so long. But now I can comment with pride!

Everything has been going well with Raquel's pregnancy. We have less than three months left to go until our little boy joins us. That's right, we're having a boy! Time has been flying by. We'll have to do a birthing class sooner or later, hopefully not too late. We could probably get by without a class but I want to make sure there haven't been any changes to the basic techniques: the men wait in the waiting room and the women do all the work.

I'm typing this post on my OLPC XO laptop computer. I'll leave it to you to google that if you aren't familiar with the OLPC foundation or the XO laptop. It's small and difficult to type on, but it's also small and pretty cool. I use it a lot to sit on the couch and surf the internet. I'm hoping to learn some cool modifications to make it a little more usable. For example, the built-in browser was slow and didn't have many features, but I put Opera on it and works great.

I'm sure I've got more to say, but it's getting late.

THUNDERSNOW!!!

A snowstorm hit late this afternoon with nearly whiteout conditions. As I was walking to my truck to leave work, there was a flash of light in the sky followed by a loud boom. I can't recall ever seeing lightning and hearing thunder while it was snowing.

Thanks for the Christmas present!