He said "Little girls aren't very smart!"

Yesterday, we decided to go to Lenscrafters. Actually it was decided for us when my glasses finally completely broke. They had been limping along, all bent up, for quite a while. Lourdes has been very rough on them. With lightning quick reflexes, she grabs them right off my face and wreaks havoc on them. She hadn't done that for some time, but did so a few days ago. She bent one of the temples and actually broke it at the hinge, but not all the way through. It gave up the ghost yesterday.

So we went to Lenscrafters because they normally get you the glasses in the same day. Not having a spare set of glasses, I needed new ones and pronto! After getting the exam, I started looking at what kind of frames I wanted. I chose some, as well as some sunglasses. I've had small, rectangular lenses for a couple of years and I'm tired of them. They are too small, which is normally a good thing, but being smaller meant there was a smaller area to see through, so they were in the way. So I chose some slightly larger (yet still sort of small) frames with a bit of a roundness to them.

Anyway, we were waiting for the regular glasses to be made and Lourdes was playing with some toys they had to keep youngsters occupied. A little boy that seemed to be about six years old came along and wanted to play with the toys as well. Most toys were for toddlers, but there was a rubber whale/shark that Lourdes was playing with. The little boy desperately wanted to play with this whale/shark and kept trying to get Lourdes to give it to him. He tried bribing her with other toys. We tried to help him a little by telling Lourdes to share, but she didn't want to give up the toy. The boy complained to his mother and she was unsympathetic to his plight. She told him to play with other toys but he insisted that the whale/shark was the only toy there for bigger kids. He tried and tried and Raquel laughed at his efforts. He said it wasn't funny and then he said "Little girls aren't very smart!" As his mother was collecting him and his brother to leave, she commented that she didn't like the way he was acting.

Later we went biking on the Rock Island Trail. It is an old railway converted into a trail for biking, walking, running, and cross-country skiing (although I'm skeptical that it gets much use in that capacity). We've been trying to go out biking a couple times a week when we can. We've gone several times on the River Trail of Illinois in East Peoria which is also a converted railway line and last week tried the Rock Island Trail. We went about 12 or 13 miles round trip the last time and decided to push it a little further this time. Somehow we just kept going and ended up putting in about 18 miles round trip. Both trails have lots of mulberry trees all over and they are producing tons of sweet fruit right now. We found one tree that had mulberries about the size of large grapes. Lourdes couldn't get enough. She also couldn't get enough of them in her mouth and had mulberry juice stains all over her face!

I posted a couple more pictures on Flickr.

Gravity: Not just a good idea; it's the law!

Lourdes likes to throw things in the air. Most times the things will go up a little ways and fall to the ground behind her. Sometimes the things fall in front of her. Occasionally, she gets hit in the head.

She has become a bit of a rock collector. We walked to the post office on Saturday and she tried to pick up several rocks because she thought they belonged to her. There were some really nice white rocks at the base of the flag pole at the post office that she really wanted but I wouldn't let her have them and she couldn't convince me, try as she might, that they belonged to her.

Tonight, she brought one of her rocks inside and started throwing it up in the air in the living room. I was in the kitchen bringing a dead PowerPC Mac back to life and Lourdes began crying. She apparently hit herself in the head with her rock. I know she's young, but I hope that teaches her to not throw rocks straight up, not to mention in the house.

I uploaded a few pics to Flickr.

Baby Jesus in my underwear

Raquel is easy to scare. I can tell her that I'm going to scare her and still scare her. Yesterday she had my cell phone in her pocket. It's set to ring and vibrate. She was outside watering the flowers and I called her. The phone started to ring, but more importantly vibrate. This scared her. Of course I knew this would happen, so I watched her from the living room as I called. She jumped a little bit.

When she was finished watering and was coming in to the house, Lourdes and I hid by the kitchen table and jumped out to scare her. Of course it scared the pee out of her (almost literally).

Raquel had laid out a pair of my underwear for after my shower. When I was finished showering, she grabbed my underwear to give to me. There was something in it. She was scared because she didn't know what it was. She hurriedly gave me the underwear and was saying excitedly "What is it? What is it?" I took the underwear and shook it. Baby Jesus fell out. Well not the Baby Jesus, but a really small Baby Jesus from a really small Nativity scene that we have. Lourdes loves to climb up on the dresser where these little statues are and play with them. Somehow Baby Jesus ended up in my underwear.

Adam invited us over Saturday night for some brisket. Adam loves to cook and we love to eat his food. Lourdes loves to play with Zoey and Zoey seems to enjoy playing with Lourdes. So we ate some delicious food, watched Heavy: The History of Metal (I think that's what it is called) on VH1, and the kids played. Finally we put in the DVD The Ringer starring Johnny Knoxville and laughed our a$$es off. Johnny Knoxville plays a man who enters the Special Olympics even though he's not "special". Don't worry, it was made with the support of the Special Olympics and several special athletes.

Sunday, we went to Godfrey for a family reunion and ate too much.

Today, we'll probably see Over the Hedge and swim in the pool.

PS As I was putting on my shoes, I found a little angel from the Nativity Scene stashed away in one of them.

The end is near...

...well, the end of our trip is near. We arrived in Asuncion this evening without too much confusion or delay, despite the darkness, the lack of clear road signs, and the weird driving habits of the locals. We fly out tomorrow evening but I wanted to make sure we got here to avoid any unforeseen circumstances that might prevent us from getting to the airport on time. We could walk to the airport now. It would be a long walk, but we could do it if we had to.

We are staying at the beautiful Portal del Sol Hotel here in Asuncion. It´s a really nice place and the price is very reasonable. I would recommend making reservations as both times I´ve been here, we´ve been very lucky to get a room.

I had another Trans Chaco Rally moment on Sunday. We went out to Potrero Guazu for a final visit. It had rained on Friday and the road was in decent shape on the heavily used parts. We stayed late and headed back to Caazapa in the dark. Now, the road is a bit of a challenge to drive in daylight to avoid the worst parts. At night it´s a lot more difficult. The headlights cause shadows or hide ruts making it even more challenging. Throw in the fact that the not-so-used parts of the road are difficult to judge for driveablilty and you´re asking for trouble. Well I found it. A car was approaching in the other direction and I had to get back on my own side of the road. In this case it was the unused part of the road. It was rutted but look passable...in the dark. We got sucked over to the farthest right side of the road and just sank. Fortunately I was able to go back and forth a bit until I was able to get back on to solid road. The little Daewoo pulled through!

Lourdes hasn´t been feeling well. She started with the standard runny nose, cough and a low fever just after Easter. Somehow we didn´t bring enough Little Colds multisymptom medicine with us and we had to buy some medicine here. It doesn´t taste very good and it´s a battle to get some down her. I´m not sure how effective it´s been. She improved, but not for long. She had a bloody nose yesterday evening and that was a little puzzling. I have to assume that with all the activity she´s had in her nose (runny nose, blowing the nose, picking the nose) that it just couldn´t take the abuse any longer. Other than being runny, her nose has been fine today. I think she may have strep or some virus as she has had a sore throat and has a couple sores in her mouth. The pharmacy reccomended an antibiotic (although if it´s a virus, the antibiotic won´t do any good) so hopefully she will show some improvement by tomorrow evening´s flight. I´m not sure what time we get home on Wednesday, but I´m sure it will be too late to get her to the pediatrician. Poor baby.

The Rivermen are in the first round of the playoffs and aren´t doing very well. They´re down 3-0 in a best-of-seven series. They play again Wednesday. I´m going to try and get to the game, might be the last of the season.

I don´t plan on posting on Tuesday, but I might do so to kill some time as our flight is in the evening. Regardless, once back in the states, I´ll probably have a bunch of catching up to do so don´t expect a post for at least a couple of days. I know, Greg and Deb will say that I´ll fall back into obscurity as far as posting is concerned, but we´ll see. I´ve got lots of pictures that I want to go through so keep an eye on the flickr.

Ciao for now!

Trans Chaco Rally x 2 (cont)

Raquel´s sister Abrelia had come home for Easter. Two of her sons live in Caazapa to go to school. She brought her two youngest daughters with her. I had never met Abrelia before because she lives way off the beaten path. It seems Abrelia got married and went away when Raquel was really young and so they have rarely seen each other. Needless to say, it was a nice reunion.

In fact, it was quite the family reunion. Veneria was the only missing. She went to Brazil in 2002 with her boyfriend and hasn´t come back yet. Avelino made it in from Asuncion. He took the bus as far as he could, then had to walk hours and hours in the dark, without a light to get to Potrero Guazu at about 2AM. I don´t think I could do that. Crispin lives fairly close by so he was able to make it. Diosnel lives in Potrero. Lourdes (the sister) still lives at home, and we took Juaquina. After the fact, I realized I didn´t take a picture!

So after Easter, Abrelia and her daughters Maria and Pricila made their way to Caazapa. I believe a relative gave them a ride. We decided we would take them on home. One of my brothers-in-law cautioned against going in the Daewoo. He said there was too much red dirt road to make it out there in the car, that it sat too low and that the roads were in bad shape, worse than going to Potrero Guazu. Abrelia and my nephews said that the road was in good shape, better than going to Potrero.

So off we went in the little Daewoo. Just me, the two woman, and three girls all under eight. No cell phone. No map. Of course from Caazapa to Caaguazu was all paved and we arrived in good time, about an hour and a half with a short stop in Villarica to raid the ATM. In Caaguazu, we made a potty break, filled up the Daewoo, and started down the dirt road. I remember asking how far it was to Abrelia´s house. She responded through Raquel something about 80 kilometers. The road wasn´t too bad, especially by Paraguayan standards. We were probably averaging about 45 kph, so I thought we would be there in no time. Did I mention that it had rained very hard three or four days prior to this trip? Well actually that didn´t really seem to come into play until after about 50 km on the dirt road. The road was really decent until we hit a long stretch of what was pretty much sand that probably was about 1.5 feet deep. By the time I realized that we were in the middle of it and losing traction, it was too late. The car just stopped. It wouldn´t go backward or forwards. We were perched on the center and the wheel ruts on either side were just too deep. Great! We were in the middle of nowhere and had no real options. There was a house close by, so Abrelia went to ask about borrowing a shovel or some implement to maybe dig ourselves out but there was nobody there with authority to lend anything out. We were still freshly stuck and were pondering what to do when a Nissan Pathfinder (or something similiar) came around the corner. There were three young men in it and they agreed to try and help us. First we tried pushing by hand but it wouldn´t budge. Finally the guy got some rope out of his vehicle and tried pulling us out backwards from the sand pit. No luck. Several motorcycles and a couple of four-wheel-drive trucks went by. The young man who was helping us changed tactics. He hitched up to the front of the Daewoo and quite easily got us to firm ground. In the mean time an old large farm type truck tried to make it through and also got stuck. I think the truck was too old and underpowered to get through, because it definitely had the clearance. The guys that were in it were well prepared as they got out and each had a shovel to dig themselves out. So we thanked our rescuers and offered them a couple of bucks for their kindness, but they refused saying to give the money to the poor.

Okay so we had our little setback. We were guaranteed that the rest of the way would not present any problems except that a bridge along the way was in poor shape. We went a little further and stopped in a little town to eat and pick up some supplies for Abrelia´s family. That took a little longer than I wanted but thought that it was no big deal because we only had a few kilometers left to go. We finally hit 80 km distance travelled. Abrelia said we still had a long way to go. Hmmm. We continued on. And on. And on. Finally at the 120 km mark, we made it. I think there was a slight gap in communications on the distance we needed to go. I guess Abrelia had actually said that her town was 80 km from another town along the way. Anyway, we made it and her family was glad to have her back.

We went with the intention of spending the night. When we were making good time and the distance was thought to be substantially shorter, I had started to think that maybe we would be able to get there, visit a little while and return to the paved road all before dark. The reality was that we didn´t get there until between 3 and 4 and that there was no way to visit, leave and make it back to Caaguazu before dark and then go on to Caazapa.

My brother-in-law Rosalino is a very nice man. He greeted us warmly and made us feel very welcome. Lourdes and I went with him to get some mandioca. He hitched up a small cart to a horse and off we went. Lourdes loved it. She couldn´t stop grinning. Rosalino and I talked about his land, how he used to make charcoal from wood in a big oven but it was too much work and besides the oven collapsed. His primary use of the land is to grow herba. Apparently, the leaves of this tree are harvested, dried, cut, and sold to make a sort of tea. So we got to where the mandioca was. Rosalino made short work of cutting the plant with his machete and pulling the roots out. Lourdes helped carry the mandioca back to the horse cart. We climbed in and made our way back to the house. Again Lourdes was in heaven. Along the way, the horse let out some gas. Lourdes mixed her english with her spanish and said ¨horsey pedo¨.

Abrelia and Rosalino live way out in the middle of nowhere. I don´t even know the name of the little town (if you can call it a town). It turned dark and we had duck for supper and by 8 we were getting ready for bed. Raquel and I were outside brushing our teeth and I was astounded by the stars in the sky. It´s very difficult to find a place near my house where the night sky doesn´t prevent you from seeing the stars clearly. The sky was clear and I could see every star, not just the bigger brighter ones. It was amazingly beautiful. I wish I knew more about astrology, I mean astronomy.

We made it home the next day without incident. Abrelia was very proud that we stayed with them since we´ve never stayed with Juaquina or at the parent´s house.

Time for now. We´ll be arriving home next Wednesday. If anything else comes up, I´ll try to post.

Trans Chaco Rally x 2

I was out of touch for a short while. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of Holy Week we went to the in-law´s house. We didn´t spend the night there but I didn´t have the chance to make it to the Internet Cafe to post any updates, then it was closed on Saturday and Sunday. Monday and Tuesday were travel days to visit a sister-in-law´s house far, far away.

The family tradition here for Holy Week is to get together and make chipas for the Friday when they can´t eat meat. So Wednesday they made hundreds of chipas and Thursday they all got together to grill chancho. Okay, I don´t know how to describe a chipa, but I´ll try. A chipa is made from corn-meal and made into little cakes and bagels and baked in an oven. The oven is a round earthen oven that is superheated by burning wood inside. All the ashes and wood are removed and then the cakes get cooked from the heat that built up. Chancho is pork.

On Good Friday, we were out in the country again and it looked like rain. To me, it looked like rain before we went and the whole time we were there it looked like it was going to rain. Finally, we decided we better hit the road before we ran into the rain. The reason it´s so important to beat the rain is because of the 40 plus kilometers of dirt road that is in pretty bad shape without rain and becomes a quagmire when wet. Well, we didn´t beat the rain. It came down hard. I couldn´t see a foot in front of the car in most places. We crept along slowly, trying to stay out of the worst parts of the road and making sure we didn´t hit anybody or anything. We decide to continue to Boqueron which is about two-thirds of the way to Caazapa. The road to that point had lots of rocks so we weren´t too worried about getting stuck. We safeley made it to Boqueron and the rain, correction, the downpour subsided. My brother-in-law said we should be okay to make it to Caazapa if we continued. If we waited, the road would really soak up the water and be impassable. Off we went. The going wasn´t too bad and as we got close to Caazapa, we came upon a four-wheel drive vehicle. It was going much slower than me but I couldn´t risk passing it because there wasn´t a good place to pass. I slowed down and stayed behind it. The closer we got to Caazapa, the sloppier the road became. The vehicle in front was creating a nice rut for me to follow in and we were doing well. Then we encountered a long rut that was full of water. Too full. The car, a Daewoo something, sputtered to a stop in the water. It wasn´t too deep, just deep enough that with our momentum, the engine got doused and died. It wouldn´t start. We waited and tried to start it. No luck. It was acting as if the battery was dead. We waited and waited and tried again still with no success. After about thirty minutes or more, it finally started and we were on our way. We made it to Caazapa. The little Daewoo came through.

Well I better go for now. I´ll try and continue on later.

Sir, your Armani suits have arrived.

If I forgot to say so in an earlier post, our baggage arrived in Asuncion Saturday afternoon. Our rental car agent was able to retrieve them and put them on a bus to Caazapa. We got them that night at midnight and it seems as though everything arrived in good condition. Gracias a Rene Palacios de Sudamerica Rent-a-car!

Stampede, Sunday Bingo, Pikivoli and Attack of the Killer Chicken

I tried to blog yesterday but the connection here was really slow for some reason. Today it´s going reasonable fast so I thought I would catch up. I´m blogging from an internet cafe in Caazapa. It was here last year but was terribly slow so I only used it once. I hear there are a couple of other internet connections here but I haven´t tried to find them yet.

For Deb: Our neighbor is looking after the cat and dogs at home. She´s been a terrific help in the past and we´re lucky to live next to such great people.

We´ve been out to Potrero Guazu several times and Lourdes loves being outside in the warm weather and the family loves spending time with her. On one of the trips, we stopped to visit a relative and we were parked in the street talking to a couple of aunts. An uncle was nearby trying to corral some cows. It seems that one of the ex-bulls was a little randy and wanted to fool around a little and was after some of the cows. In the process of keeping the peace, a mini stampede came our way. Nobody got hurt and there probably wasn´t much danger but it´s still unsettling to have a large, determined bovine headed your way.

We also got to play bingo. I didn´t really come close to winning anything, but my nephew won an entire fried chicken so lunch was free. I think everyone enjoyed playing. My nephew also came close to winning the final grand prize of 300,000 Guaranis in a blackout game. The rate is currently just under 1 to 6000, so it was roughly $50. He didn´t win but there were some anxious moments as a couple of people thought they had the entire board covered only to find out that they didn´t so there was a second and third chance.

Later I went back with a brother-in-law and a nephew to watch pikivoli. Pikivoli is similar to volleyball in that you play with a volleyball and play on a volleyball court (in this case grass), but you can´t use your hands. The players must only use their chests, head and feet to play. I´m not sure which is more popular here, futbol (soccer) or pikivoli. It was pretty entertaining to watch and there were some pretty talented players. Raquel said that kids grow up playing pikivoli and it was obvious. I wouldn´t mind trying it sometime but I think it would be difficult for me since I can´t see very well without my glasses. I would also be at a real disadvantage since I have no talent at this sort of thing. Maybe someday I´ll have corrected vision and be able to give it a shot.

Last thing and I´m going to go. Lourdes loves all the animals out here and has no fear of them. At her grandma´s house she got to chase chickens all day with no problems. However when we went to visit an aunt, a rooster took exception to someone trying to grab one of its kin. Poor Lourdes ended up with a couple of welts/scratches on the back of her leg. She didn´t cry or at least didn´t cry much and said "chicken bad girl" and still has no fear of the animals.

Ciao for now!

Fish soup and spaghetti with beans

It´s Saturday and my Armani suits still have not arrived. I have an insurance policy for this vacation and after what seemed like no results from the airline that brought us here, I decided to call the policy´s Travel Advisor or Travel Assistant or whatever they call themselves. They allow you to call collect. FYI to make a collect call from Caazapa, Paraguay to the US, dial 0012. Let me backtrack a moment. We flew from home to Chicago and then to Miami on an AMERICAN AIRLINE whose name shall remain anonymous so that I am not libel or committing libel or whatever you say when you write something bad about a person or company. From Miami to Sao Paulo, Brazil and on to Asuncion, Paraguay, we flew on a non-AMERICAN carrier. The folks in Asuncion tried but didn´t seem to get any help or response from the American Airline.

My travel insurance dude connected me to the American Airline and stayed on the line to help me. The lady at the American Airline was not very cooperative or helpful at first. I didn´t have the baggage claim tickets with me because we left them in Asuncion with our rental car agent. Our rental car agent is going to claim our bags and put them on a bus so that they get to us eventually. So the lady on the phone from the American Airline said she couldn´t help us if we didn´t have the baggage claim tickets because otherwise she just had a blank computer screen. Even though I wanted to reach through the phone line and strangle her with her own headset, I managed to stay calm. I explained to her a little of what happened and she miraculously was able to search recent claims by my last name and found out that the bags were still in Chicago and that they were scheduled to go out that afternoon with a possible arrival in Asuncion on Saturday afternoon. I then asked that if they didn´t arrive on Saturday, and I call back, would they be able to tell me with certainty that the bags left Chicago. She said she couldn´t because they would be transferred to another non American Airline once they arrived in Miami. I couldn´t get it through her thick skull that I was not concerned about the other carrier, that I wanted to be able to know if the bags left Chicago. Finally she relented that superivisors could do a sort of world trace that goes beyond the American Airline and might be able to help me with that. Geez! I think there have been terrorists who have given more information with less prodding than this lady. Afterwards my travel insurance dude said that now that we have the baggage claim numbers again, he will be able to help us track the luggage if it doesn´t arrive.

Our drive to Caazapa in our rental car was a bit of a mess. We were given directions from our hotel to get to the ¨ruta¨ but the lack of clear street signs or road signs or city signs got us all kinds of mixed up. Raquel doesn´t know the way, and the last time I drove, my brother-in-law was the navigator. We got really good directions from a gentleman who was waiting for his wife/girlfriend/sister/friend. Those directions got us to a fork of two rutas. I don´t know why, but I got my thinking all screwed up and took the wrong ruta. By the time we found out we were headed in the wrong direction, we had travelled a good ways out of the way. Fortunately we were given some good directions on a short cut to get us back on the correct ruta.

So we´ve been in Caazapa a couple of days now and Lourdes loves being out in the nice weather playing with her family, chasing chickens, and showing off how cute she is. The food has been pretty good over all. The meat is usually a little tough, but tolerable. We had a couple of traditional meals to include a fish soup one time and spaghetti with beans another time. They were both quite good, the only complaint about the fish soup would be the tiny bones that are inherent in certain fish and the fact that the skin was left on it.

Time to go.

Lost in Translation

Day 2 in Paraguay. Still no luggage. We were advised this morning that it was in Brazil and would arrive this afternoon on another airline. We called again and it seems that our stuff is still in Chicago. I don´t know why it´s in Chicago when we were told that it was in Brazil. Maybe it went to Brazil and back to Chicago. I don´t know. Don´t know when it´s going to arrive. The airline said we have to claim it when it arrives so it can go through customs or we can designate someone and they can claim it, go through customs with it, and send it on to us.

After finding out that our stuff isn´t here and there´s no guarantee it will arrive, we´ve decided to rent a car so we can get to Caazapa and back at our pace instead of relying on the bus.

I´ll post when I can.

Blogging in Spanish

I´m blogging from Asuncion, Paraguay tonight. We are spending the night here at the Hotel Portal del Sol instead of going on out to Caazapa. The in-laws don´t know we are in country or that we are even coming.

It´s been a long trip so far and not has gone smoothly. Our first flight was delayed due to bad weather in Chicago causing us to miss our connection in Chicago. Fortunately there was another flight departing about the time we got to Chicago so we were switched to that one. The flight out of Miami wasn´t delayed significantly but we had to wait in line to get our boarding passes reviewed. We were late getting out of Sao Paulo, Brazil, but it didn´t matter because we didn´t have anyone waiting for us.

The biggest problem so far has been that our luggage is still in Chicago. We went shopping this evening at the Shopping del Sol and that was a trippy experience that makes me appreciate shopping at home. First, if you find something you like, they take it away to the counter and do up a ticket while you continue shopping. They give you a copy of the ticket and when you´re ready to check out, you present your ticket(s) to the cashier. She then rings it all up and you pay. She then stamps all your tickets and gives them back to you. You then give your tickets to another person and that person collects all the items (already grouped together by ticket) and compares your ticket(s) with the ticket(s) of all the items already ticketed and bagged. She removes the ticket(s) that are on the bag, puts your stamped ticket on the bag and then she stamps the tickets she removed from the bag. After all the ticket exchanging and stamping is over, you are free to leave with your hard-earned purchases.

I will never complain about shopping in the US again.

Chicken Lourdes

Lourdes saw Chicken Little at the movies and now it's out on DVD. I thought she would be excited if I bought it for her. It came with a couple of PEZ dispensers. Well she really enjoyed having the DVD and the PEZ dispensers. She took them with her when we went shopping at Kroger. When we got home, we opened the DVD and put it in the player and thought she would sit there enthralled. She didn't care.

Today, Adam brought in some Chicken Little glasses for Lourdes so I thought I'd post a pic.

You suck!!

We were at a Rivermen game a litte ways back. The referee made what seemed to be bad call, at least in the eyes of the fans. They expressed their disappointment with the ref by chanting "REF YOU SUCK" for a short time. After the crowd died down, a little voice chimed in "You suck! You suck!". Guess who it was.

Well if you guessed Lourdes, then you are correct. She hasn't forgot it and still says it. In fact, I think that she thinks it's an appropriate salutation. I've called from work to see how Raquel and Lourdes are and she'll answer the phone "You suck!" So if she ever says that to you, please don't take it the wrong way.

The 3 foot giant

Lourdes had her 2 year checkup with her pediatrician. She measured a whopping 36" putting her in the 94th percentile. She weighed 28.5 lbs on the day of the visit and that was a little lower than her normal weight. She had caught a bug the previous week and was spewing from both ends for a few days. Even after she was over the bug, she easily gagged and spit up for a few more days. She's all better now and weighed in at 31.5 lbs this week. She also has big feet.

By popular demand

Here's my fearless circus performer. Sorry the picture is a little grainy, but we're still getting used to our new digital camera. Our previous little Kyocera died after almost a year and it was still under warranty. When Radio Shack couldn't fix it, they offered us a new Casio.

Lourdes turned two last Sunday. We waited until this weekend to celebrate since I had to work last weekend. She had a Blue's Clues cake and Chicken Little place settings (couldn't find Blue's Clues stuff at the last minute). She really enjoyed having "Happy Birthday" sung to her and blew out her candle like a big girl.

Mother Nature also turned on the "Terrible Two's" switch recently. Even so, she's not too bad...yet.

Winter Wonderland

This past week saw some pretty low temperatures and a pretty fair amount of snowfall. Not a whole lot to report otherwise. The Rivermen have lost the last three games that we have attended. Are we bad luck or do they need to work on their defense? I think they've got to work on their defense because we'll be going to a few more games I'm sure.

They lost last night to the Milwaukee Admirals. The only highlight of the game was when D.J. King beat up someone on the other team. As I type, they are playing in Chicago and it's tied up 1-1. Hopefully they'll pull out a road win.

The Survivor season finale starts in a little bit. Who will win the million? Tuesday night will be the end of The Amazing Race. Which family will win? What will I do with my Tuesday and Thursday nights now?

She'll probably get a lump of coal

Lourdes likes characters like Chuck E. Cheese and the Rivermen mascot named The Captain. Last year she even liked Santa Claus. This year she didn't seem to like Santa so much or at least that's what her crying seemed to indicate. We had to settle for the following Polaroid of us holding her behind Santa and Mrs. Claus.

Santa Claus arrived at the base on Saturday afternoon after a long flight on his C-130. He brought presents for all the little boys and girls. Lourdes must have been a good girl because she received a baby doll and a Mary-Kate or Ashley doll. Everyone commented on how pretty Lourdes was in her dress. Some couldn't believe how big she is. Other than crying at Santa, she was a very good girl. We rewarded her by taking her to see Chicken Little. She was very interested in the movie and didn't make a peep. I have to give it two thumbs up.

So cute!!

Lourdes loves little animals. This is a dachshund puppy from my mom's dog Cindy.

Cindy actually had 6 puppies, but 2 did not live. There are 3 males and this little female. This pup is a little over 3 weeks in this picture. They've all started to open their eyes and are moving about. Lourdes was thrilled to death and did not want to put any of the puppies down. She did a pretty good job of gently handling the pups but had a problem with picking them up and putting them down.

The female pup is already spoken for, but the three males are available for purchase. There are two males that appear similiar with sort of a grayish color and black spots. The other male is a fawn or isabella color (kind of a yellow-tan). The sire and dam of the litter are both long-hair dapples so we hope the pups have long hair. Anyone interested in buying one of the males can leave a comment and I'll see what I can do. Many people have said they are interested but nobody has made a firm commitment.

Our Thanksgiving went smoothly. Mike and Marla did a fine job of hosting. The spread included deep-fried turkey, baked ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, green bean caserole, pumpkin pie and cheesecake.

It will be Christmas before we know it.

Just playing with flickr

No, that's not the horse's name. Flickr is an easy-to-use, on-line photo organizer. Hey, it's free!!

Sliding down the links page....

Greg has slowly moved my blog down his list of favorite links. I'm now second to the last, just above his link to Funky Winkerbean. It's my own fault; I haven't posted since February.

I closed my Prodigy account quite some time ago, but my neglected webpage is still there. I also used it to store photos that I link to in my blog. Now I'm going to try FLICKR to store and link pictures. Let's see how it goes:

I loved this picture...

...so I thought I would share it. Raquel took this picture of Lourdes. Seems like she's in the middle of a statement or blink or something. Or maybe she's really tired. Or part Asian.

Scooby-dooby-doo, where are you?

At the hockey game of course!

We went to see the Rivermen this afternoon and Scooby Doo was there. When Lourdes saw him, she went nuts over him like she did when she saw Chuck E. Cheese. She screamed, she jumped, she completely went rigid with excitement. Scooby was kind enough to let us take a picture with him and Lourdes didn't want to let him go. We followed him a little bit and when the kids cleared out, we set Lourdes down and she ran over to him and grabbed his legs and wouldn't let him go.

The Riverman have a mascot called the Captain. One of these days we're going to have to introduce him to Lourdes. She's already crazy about him, I'm sure she'll love to meet him.

Part baby, part flying monkey

She's a daredevil!!




No fear.

How much does a Fisher-Price horse eat?

Please let us know!!

Cold water

I've been a member of the American Legion for several years. One of the benefits of being a member is to receive The American Legion Magazine. I don't always read the entire magazine. I usually thumb through it and occasionally read an article. There's always a page (most times it's the last page) of jokes. I almost always read the jokes because the majority of the time the jokes are not funny. I don't know why I enjoy reading these bad jokes but I always torture myself with them. Every so often there will be a joke that I consider funny. I've often thought that when I find a joke from this magazine, I should post it here to share with everyone. So here goes the first installment of "FUNNY JOKE FROM THE AMERICAN LEGION MAGAZINE".

This one is from the February 2005 issue and the joke is not credited to anyone.

Jim went to visit his 90-year-old grandfather. The next morning, his grandfather prepared a breakfast of eggs and bacon. Jim noticed a filmy substance on his plate and asked, "Are these plates clean?" His grandfather replied, "Those plates are as clean as cold water can get them, so go on and finish your meal."

That afternoon, while eating hamburgers his grandfather made for lunch, Jim noticed tiny specks around the edge of his plate and what appeared to be dried egg yolk. He asked again, "Are you sure these plates are clean?" Without looking up from his hamburger, his grandfather answered, "I told you, those dishes are as clean as cold water can get them. Don't ask me about it no more!"

Later that afternoon, Jim left to get dinner in a nearby town. As he was leaving, his grandfather's dog started to growl and wouldn't let him pass. Jim yelled, "Grandpa, your dog won't let me out."

Without diverting his attention from the football game on TV, his grandfather shouted, "Coldwater, go lie down!"

This has been the first installment of "FUNNY JOKE FROM THE AMERICAN LEGION MAGAZINE".

Part baby, part monkey

Okay, Lourdes has grown a lot in the last few weeks, but check this out: SHE'S TRYING TO CLIMB THINGS!!

Now for something completely different: I noticed that in one of my many, many postings last year, I talked about our new arrival Pancho. I said that he's a cutie and maybe I'll post pics later. Well I guess it's later cause here's finally a picture of him. Just a quick reminder, Pancho is a wiener dog (miniature dachshund) and in Paraguay they say Pancho for hot dog, so that's how he got his name.

Chuck E., The Sequel

Angela brought in some pictures of our Chuck E. Cheese adventure. Thank you for sharing, Angela!

As I was scanning a picture into the computer and then manipulating the size, Lourdes went bananas. She pointed and screamed at the following picture.

So I had to print out her own copy to put in her little photo album!

Who knew my daughter could love a rat?

Saturday was a busy day. We got up and moving fairly early. Fairly early for us that is. Usually a day off is spent sleeping in or lounging around most of the morning. But we things to do, people to see, places to be.


We first packed up our laundry and went to the laundromat. We left directly from there to go to Chuck E. Cheese's to meet some friends. Our friend has a little boy who is just a few months older than Lourdes and he apparently had a terrific time at Chuck E. Cheese's not too long ago.


Lourdes seemed to enjoy the little toddler rides - as long as they weren't moving. When the ride started moving, she had a look of not-quite-terror-but-close-enough on her face. But she definitely like looking at everything. The funny part was when we went to see Chuck E. while he was admiring all the patrons who were adding to his 401k. Lourdes saw Chuck E. and went absolutely bananas! Her face turned red, she stiffened her body and started shaking and screaming! She LOVED Chuck E.! All her commotion was like someone winning Publisher's Clearinghouse. We thought she would be scared of him, but she was completely drawn to him. She touched his face and grabbed his hand. A little later we watched Chuck E. with a bunch of children gathered around him dancing. Lourdes was still going nuts, screaming and kicking. On the way out, we bought her a Chuck E. doll which she immediately hugged and would not let out of her hands.



From Chuck E.'s, we went home to relax for a while before heading out to a Riverman game. We've been to several hockey games this season and the Riverman are turning things around a bit. They got off to a slow start, but have won a high percentage of their games lately. Saturday night they were playing Toledo. The Rivs had moments where they looked really good and more where they looked bad. Toledo would score, then the Rivs would score. In the third period, it was tied at three and the Rivs looked like they might salvage a win. Suddenly, a defender fell down and it was a breakaway, two on our goalie. Toledo handled the puck well and snuck one in to take the lead. Peoria had about a minute to try and answer so they pulled the goalie to have an extra man trying to score. Unfortunately, there was a faceoff near center ice and Toledo managed to put the puck in the open net out of the faceoff! That was it for the Rivermen. Less than a minute left, there was no real chance of a comeback so people started to leave the arena. I wanted to wait until the bitter end in case there was a fight. I wasn't disappointed (well I was disappointed about the loss) because with about 15 seconds left a couple of guys started duking it out. I don't think a hockey game is complete without a couple of fights. If we don't win the game, we should at least make them pay for it.

Later!

Everybody was kung-fu fighting

I know it's been a while since I posted so you don't have to remind me.

Guess what?! Lourdes is walking!! She pretty much started right around Christmas with a couple of awkward steps followed by a fall. In no time at all it turned in to trips across the room. Now she's completely mobile and pretty smooth at it as well. I think she'll be running by February!

Latest word on our upcoming trip to Paraguay is...it's on hold until we get some paperwork from Immigration. We're hoping that in March or April we'll be able to go. Cross our fingers! The family is very eager to see their little grandbaby.

Our little Christmas elf

You can leave comments now

I just changed the setting for my blog so that anyone who wants to can leave a comment. I didn't realize I had it set for members only.

So go ahead, leave a comment.

I'm dreaming of a White.....Thanksgiving!

It snowed today. It started off as rain, and then became snow and rain, and finally just snow. There was quite a bit of accumulation in a short period. Radio reports said the roads were slick, that there were lots of vehicles in the ditches and many collisions. I drove to the gym in the thick of the snowstorm. People were being very cautious, but I did see one Camaro in the ditch (just enough off the road to be stuck).

My workout was pretty good; I put up some good numbers without feeling completely drained. Maybe Friday I’ll have to work a little harder, especially since I’m skipping the cardio workout tomorrow (it is Thanksgiving after all).

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I’m going to do one of those cheesy lists of things for which I am thankful.

1. My wife Raquel – she’s beautiful, loving, and I’m blessed to have her.


2. My baby Lourdes – she’s a beautiful, beautiful baby and I couldn’t possibly love her more than I already do.


3. My family – you have to love your family, no matter what, and I do


4. My friends – some are coworkers, some aren’t but they’re all special.


5. My job – I’ve got a really great job: good pay, diverse work.

My coworkers – Adam and Jerry are the greatest coworkers. We work hard, we have fun, we make fun of each other, we support each other, we teach each other, we learn from each other and we respect each other. But mostly we make fun of each other. I also work with and for many others that are also terrific people that keep things interesting.

6. My pets – they are always happy to see me (especially P-p-p-p-peanut!).


7. My truck – hello, it’s snowing out there!


8. My motorcycle – didn’t put much time on this summer either, but I’m not getting rid of it!

Well have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Election results are in, and the winners are.....

Who cares, wanker. This ain't no political blog.

I've taken to calling my baby Lourdes Banana. It rolls off the tongue with ease. Say it. Not 'it'. Say 'Lourdes Banana'. Wasn't that fun?

Lourdes Banana is standing. She'll probably be walking by the time I get done typing this. She's going through the stage that makes every man cringe: She's touching buttons that power various electronic toys (tv, xbox, ps2, vcr, computer, and printer). I'm going to have to put things out of reach, or put oversized mittens on her hands to prevent her from being very dexterous.

Just sent a package to Paraguay today. Very expensive, over $30, and it's not going to get there for another 4-6 weeks. From now on, we'll just Western Union money. It's cheaper, easier, and guaranteed.

On the immigration front, Raquel's green card is going to take another couple years. I don't understand it. We applied for her green card and the application was approved. However, she either goes back to Paraguay and gets the green card there, or we apply here for a change of status. I don't know if it would be easier and faster to do this through the embassy in Asuncion or wait the two plus years here in the states. We're going to do the waiting thing here. In the mean time, her VISA expires in April and then her passport expires in October. Why can't this be easy?

I think I might go play xbox for a while.

Don't be scared....

I know it's been a while since I last blogged. No excuses. And I won't make any promises to get back into blogging on a regular basis. I'm just going to apologize for not being regular (no bathroom jokes please).

Lourdes is crawling! She's been at it for about a month now. She's not extremely fast but she's fast enough to grab a doggie chew and sit happily and chew.

Pancho

So we've got an infant, two dogs, and  a cat.  What else could we need?

How about another dog?

Mom's dog Cindy had her second litter a couple months ago and we decided we wanted another dog, so now we have Pancho. Pancho is a long-haired blue speckled miniature dachshund and he's Peanut's half-brother. He's a cutie, maybe a picture to follow in another post.

I decided on the name Pancho because that is the word often used in South America (or at least in Paraguay and Chile) for hot dog.

Blogging shouldn't be this tough

Apologies to all who read my Blog (both of you) for lack of updates. It's been since early June and here it is towards the end of June. To be fair, one week of June I was "deployed" to Volk Field, Wisconsin. The rest of the time, I was just lazy.

I wanted to write about taking my daughter to the mall and all the misadventures we had there, but alas, we didn't go to the mall and we had no misadventures.

I could write about the "deployment" but nothing too interesting happened to me there. I hung out a little with my friends, but found myself missing Lourdes more than I was enjoying myself. To sum up the trip, I taught CPR for five days and fought the most ferocious mosquitoes this side of the Mississippi. Within three minutes of arriving at Volk, I was bitten three times. Needless to say I fought back with some variant of Off with a twenty-something percent DEET that I purchased at the Tomah WalMart. I didn't really like the idea of wearing a chemical repellent but it was better than suffering the wrath of those blood thirsty insects. If I lived there, I would have to plant those anti-mosquito plants all around my house. The scent of citronella candles burning would lead you directly to my house. I would figure out a way to screen in my entire yard. I'm not exaggerating, those mosquitoes were thick.

But I'm a survivor. Hopefully there are no long-term effects from DEET exposure and the twitching will subside. Hopefully the half dozen bites I got won't result in West Nile virus. Or Lupus.

Hey, I celebrated my first Father's Day! Lourdes was kind enough to give me a Father's Day card..in Spanish! ¡Qué inteligente! She also gave me a big box of Hershey's candy (Pot o'Gold I think). What a little sweetie she is.

That's all I can muster right now. Maybe I'll be a little more attentive to my poor Blog in the future and not let down my reader(s) as well.

A cap in your a$$

I'm a lean, mean Air Force trained killing machine. Sort of. I'm not so lean at the moment. I'm not too mean most of the time, but I can get a little cranky. I'm definitely Air Force trained. And I can be a killing machine, especially if you are a paper target located 7, 15, or 25 meters away from me and my M-9.

Today at drill, I fired the M-9, nine millimeter handgun. I've shot a nine millimeter once or twice before, but this was the first time trying at a military firing range. To be considered "qualified" to shoot the M-9, one must put a certain number of bullets on the silhouette at the aforementioned distances. I think the number was 30 out of 36 but I'm not certain. However, to be considered an "expert", one must put 30 out of 36 bullets in a circle in the center of the silhoutte. Somehow I was able to put 33 out of 36 bullets in the center of mass making me an "expert" and eligible to wear the Air Force Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon. In almost 20 years of military service, I have fired the M-16 several times and I although I have always qualified with the weapon, I have never earned the Air Force Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon with the M-16 and now in my first attempt with the M-9 I've finally got it!

In other news, we are going to get another puppy. That's right Dover and Peanut are going to have a little brother. Actually this will be Peanut's half-brother and Dover's foster bother. Peanut's mom had a litter of five (actually six but one was stillborn)puppies recently and we are going to get the only male. This little guy is kind of a blue-gray color with black spots (a dapple) and is full-blooded dachshund. His mom is a long-hair dapple and his dad his a long-hair black and tan. It's still a little early to tell if any of this litter will have long hair.

Not much else to report at the moment.

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!

Yesterday, we drove to Godfrey, just north of Alton for a family reunion. It was raining as we were heading there. We actually got into some heavy rain early into the trip. It was bad enough that we were driving quite slow on the interstate. Fortunately we only had to endure the storm for a short while. The rest of the trip there was beautiful and we safely arrived at the reunion.

The reunion was nice although I really don't know many of the people. I know a few faces and some names, but I'm not clear on who begat whom. Regardless, Lourdes was a big hit.

We were in no hurry to get home. For example, last year we had the puppies and a great aunt, so we needed to get home. Even having a little baby with us this year didn't put us in a hurry. So we decided to take the long way home. We took the two-lane country roads just to see what we could see.

It was a nice leisurely drive. The radio (on a St. Louis station) was calling for thunderstorms and tornado watches in Missouri. I was pretty confident that we were not near the bad weather. So we meandered in a northerly direction in the beautiful countryside. Our route took us through several small towns. The kind with the old brick buildings all interconnected on Main Street, kind of the original stripmall.

Off in the distance, to the west, we could see it slowly getting darker. I wasn't too worried because I thought it was too far away and that we would eventually be heading in an easterly direction. Actually, we ended up heading in a northwesterly direction before we could start heading northeast. That took us into the eye of the storm.

We crossed the Illinois River at Beardstown. As we were crossing the river, the wind picked up and it started to rain. There was a tugboat pushing several barges up the river. Just in front of the barges, there was a "cyclone". It was like a "dust devil" but it was huge and over water. Very cool, and a little scary. We got to the other side of the river and it started raining very hard. I had to slow down because it was difficult to see. A Dodge Ram was right on my butt, but I wasn't going to go any faster. Then we started up a hill and there was a slow vehicle lane. I took it and the Ram sped by me. We crested the hill and seemed to be back out on the plains. We went through an intersection and then it started raining really hard. I could barely see in front of me. We came to a crawl and then suddenly we couldn't see anything in front of us. Fortunately we came to a stop right by a side road so we pulled off on the side road to wait out the storm (and to get out of the way of any crazy people who wanted to continue).

We waited for a few minutes on this side road. The rain and wind rocked the truck and I was worried about what we needed to do. We were in the middle of nowhere and a huge storm was on top of us. Who knows if there was a tornado as well.

It was only a few minutes but it seemed longer. The rain and wind let up a little so we hit the road again. The rest of the trip was fine, no hard rain, no strong winds and we arrived safe and sound at home.

Pretty Little Lourdes

The crack of the bat....

...over Jerry's head.

I know I already said good night, but after I signed off I was telling Raquel what happened to Jerry last week.

Jerry loves baseball and he coaches a boys baseball team. He was coaching first base and his player got walked. Jerry started to annotate something on the lineup and was engrossed in the sheet. The boy who was walked started to head towards first. He wanted to throw the bat towards his dugout. It hit Jerry in the head. I wasn't there but I can just imagine the sound of an aluminum bat resonating after thwacking a skull.

Jerry's got a tough nugget. He's hit it several times. He cut his forehead on a ladder at work and got stitches (about a year and half ago). Last summer, on at least two occasions, while mowing his yard with a riding mower, he hit his head on a low branch of a huckleberry tree. Not sure if he tried ducking too late or didn't see it all. Either way, both times (or possibly more) resulted in a good scrape on his noggin.

Poor Jerry wasn't thinking straight and told his dad to take him to the wrong hospital. Fortunately, he had to wait a while before being seen by the doctor. I say fortunately because he came to his senses before seeing a doctor and incurring an emergency room charge that might not be covered by his insurance. He went to an emergency room in his HMO and got 5 staples in his head.

Good night again.

Drop and give me 20 (pounds)!

We went to visit Greg and Deb and their two beautiful daughters this weekend. Greg took some pictures and posted them. There were a couple of me in there that were none too flattering...I wasn't able to suck in my big belly.

I mentioned in a previous post that I had put on quite a bit of weight over the winter. I like to think of it as sympathy weight. Trouble is, Raquel had the baby and I still look pregnant.

I've started running and walking a couple times a week after work. Now, I know I need to go more often. It's really disheartening to try to run. My shins hurt from the extra weight. I get winded easier. My time for running 1.5 miles is 20% slower than last year...and last year was less than spectacular. But I'm going to fight through this. I'm not going to succumb to a fad diet diet like Crapkins. I'm not going to count calories and determine if they are from protein, carbs, or fat. I'm just going to eat better (less sweets, smaller portions), drink fewer sodas, and drink more water. And work harder during exercise.

I'm a little tired now and can't think of anything funny or interesting to write.

Good night.

Help, call the police, my baby is on fire!!

A few years ago, a young man that I worked with was married to a young woman who was deaf. I bought a book to learn a little bit of sign language so that I could talk to her. "Help, call the police, my baby is on fire!!" was the first sentence I put together. I don't think she was overly impressed.

I know it's been a little over a month since I last posted. No real excuses, but the transition to a new(er) computer was one delay. Greg left a few questions:

How's Raquel and the baby? Raquel and baby are both fine. Raquel loves being a mommy and she's good at it. Lourdes has been such a good baby. She doesn't fuss a lot, she has slept a few times through the whole night (otherwise she wakes once), and she's really cute to boot. She had her two-month check-up yesterday. She weighed in at 11lbs 9oz and was about 22.5", putting her in the 50th percentile. She's in the 99th percentile in cuteness. Who am I kidding, there's not a cuter baby out there. Oh yeah, she had her first immunizations yesterday. She didn't enjoy them but she recovered quickly.

Dogs learned any new tricks? Not that they've showed me. But I suspect they are secretly trying to gas me at night.

Anything pissing you off lately? Not really, nothing of note.

What are the specs on this new computer you got? It's an emachines T2245, 2.2 Ghz Celeron processor, 768 MB of RAM, 160 GB primary hard drive, 40 GB secondary hard drive, DVD drive, CD-RW drive, 10/100 Mbps ethernet card, and Windows XP Home. A friend gave the computer to me sans hard drives and only 256 MB of RAM. I pumped it up to it's current configuration. Probably the most important thing I did to it was load vcom System Suite 5 software. It includes a firewall and Trend Micro antivirus software. If you run Windows, I highly recommend System Suite 5.

Had any time to take the Harley out for a spin? Well sort of. I fired it up a couple weeks ago and took it for a spin around the block, but I didn't have the current license sticker at that time. Now I'm legal, and I hope to start riding to work, especially since gas was $1.95 today. If it's nice tomorrow, I may take a short trip over to Morton.

How about those Cubs? I'm sure you're referring to the Chicago kind, so a quick look at their official web page shows them in second place, 2.5 games behind the first-place Astros

Let my people go, you damn dirty apes!

The Ten Commandments is on tonight.

Friday night we went to see The Rock in Walking Tall. Not the greatest movie in the world but not bad for an action flick. I wished The Rock would have kicked some more butt.

I had drill this weekend, things went smoothly. The only problem was the time change. I can't remember the last time I had to spring forward and it wasn't a drill weekend.

We went to see Hellboy tonight. I found it to be pretty entertaining overall. The main character was played by the same dude that played the Beast in Beauty and the Beast. I feel sorry for the guy, he's so ugly he has to play freaks in films.

Lourdes did just fine in both movies and is doing wonderfully in general. Still growing.

Lourdes says hi.

Well, she didn't say it, but I'm sure that she would if she could. I was sitting here holding her and didn't know what to write and she was intently looking at the screen so I interpretted that to mean she wanted to say hi to everyone.

This weekend was a full plate. Friday night we went to see The Ladykillers at the new Rave Motion Pictures cinema. The capacity for the movie was 442. I had Pibb Xtra and SnoCaps. We enjoyed the movie thoroughly and Lourdes slept through the whole show. She's such a good baby.

Saturday we got a late start but we went south for the day. We first stopped to visit my Grandma and to introduce her to her 45th great grandchild, but Grandma wasn't home. So we went to Kim and Randy's house to show off our little Lourdes. Katy was there with her little girl. Cammie is a couple months older than Lourdes but not a lot bigger, apparently she was pretty tiny when she was born. Poor thing is getting over a bit of a cold and seemed a little fussy, but not too bad.

From Kim's house, we tried to visit Dave and Marcia. They weren't home. We next tried my dad's house, but he wasn't home. So we went to the El Matador in Mt. Zion to eat and to show Lourdes to a Paraguayan lady who works there. Next we went to mom's house but she wasn't home, but that was ok because I wanted to work on her computer. It won't print, and I know it's not the printer. It's not the USB port, because other USB devices work. I think the operating system has gotten itself corrupted. After toiling with the computer for awhile, we went back to visit Dave and Marcia.

Today we went to see Secret Window. Again, Lourdes slept through the whole movie. Such a good baby. After the movie, we went to WalMart and bought, among other things, a vibrating bouncer for Lourdes. She seems to like it. I wish I had one big enough for me.

Back to work...

Today I went back to work. It was very different leaving home this morning. Raquel always sends me off with a kiss and tells me to hurry home. Today, Raquel and Lourdes sent me off with a kiss and told me to hurry home.

Time went by very slowly today. 9 a.m. felt like 11, and so on and so on. After work I was going to exercise. It's been since early December since I've worked out at all so I was going to ease in to it by going for a walk. I ran in to a guy who had a baby in February and we ended up talking about our babies and I didn't get any exercise.

I've chunked up over the last few months. I weighed in at 235 today and it's not a good 235. Since early December, I've come straight home from work and watched a lot of TV and played a lot of Playstation and eaten lots of sweets. I'm going to get back on track.

Last night I couldn't sleep. I went to bed at a reasonable time and fell asleep fine. Unfortunately at 10:20, Peanut stepped on my left testicle and woke me. It wasn't a pleasant way to be awakened that involved my genitals. For some reason I couldn't sleep after that. I tossed and turned for an hour, then I got up and read about math on the internet for about an hour and a half. I read about speed arithmetic. I might look at that a little closer. In no time, I'll be helping my girl with her homework.

Hopefully, I'll sleep better tonight. Watch where you step Peanut.

Growing like a weed

Yesterday we took Lourdes to the pediatrician for her 2-week checkup. She weighed in at a whopping 8 lbs 2 oz and measured 21 inches. That's over a pound since she was in the hospital. Doctor says Lourdes is perfect, but we already knew that.

Lourdes did seem a little clingy yesterday. She did not want to be left in her bassinet, not even when she fell asleep. Maybe she was cranky because her umbilical cord fell off.

After the doctor visit, we went to a new movie theater close to the doctor's office. Rave Motion Pictures Grand Prairie 18 just opened last weekend. They boast that there is true stadium seating so no one will ever block your view of the screen. They also boast about 48 inches of legroom between each row. When we pulled in sight of the theater, I was impressed. It's gimongous! And they weren't kidding about the roominess. There's enough space in the rows that if the theatre is crowded and someone has to get a refill or use the facilities, they can walk, not sidestep, to the aisle and not once trip on someone or put their butt or crotch in another person's face. And the screen was huge as well!

We saw Taking Lives starring Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke. It was pretty good. I had Pibb Xtra and SnoCaps. I didn't even have to smuggle the SnoCaps. Oh and baby was perfect through the whole movie, not a peep.

I've been playing MX Unleashed on the PS2 lately. It's been very entertaining. I had been playing an old PS1 game called Syphon Filter with the intent of finishing it and playing the rest of the Syphon Filter series (through SF3, all designed for the PS1 console) in anticipation of Syphon Filter 4 for PS2 which is due out sometime this year. Maybe I'll get back to it again soon.

The dogs have been really good with Lourdes. They are definitely interested in her, but have been behaving. Unrelated to interaction with the baby, Dover has picked up a cool little trick. If the water bowl is empty, he picks it up and brings it to us to remind us that we need to take better care of them. Hopefully Lourdes will behave similarly.

Family Night Out

We went to see Hidalgo last night. Yes we took the baby and she was perfect. She slept through the whole movie until about the last 10 minutes, but Raquel fed her before she got very loud.

The movie was pretty good and I had Pibb Xtra and smuggled SnoCaps. I have to smuggle in the SnoCaps because the movie theater suddenly quit carrying them. Deb and Greg may also question Pibb versus my usual Cherry Coke. Well the theater doesn't carry any kind of cherry cola. Besides, Pibb Xtra is really good.

There was a cool looking trailer for a movie coming out this summer, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It looks like 1930's sci-fi movie, only modernized.

Baby's sleeping the night better than I am. I have to get up at least a couple times to pee or let the dogs out. The last two nights, she's only got up once after we went to bed.

The dogs seem to like their little sister. They are definitely interested in her, they want to smell her and lick her, but then again who doesn't. Well everyone wants to smell a new baby, anyway.

Today, we'll be visiting Decatur/Mt.Zion and showing off our beautiful little Lourdes.

Welcome Lourdes!!

Lourdes Dianna came into our lives on 5 March 2004, weighing in at 7 lbs 7 oz and measuring 19.5". She's beautiful!!!

Not so miniature...

So you know we have two dogs a miniature dachshund and a miniature pinscher. They were due shots last week so we took them in on Friday. Peanut, the dachshund weighed in at 12.3 pounds and Dover the MinPin weighed in at a whopping 19.6 pounds! He's solid.

Friday night went to see the Rivermen play Johnstown. Awesome fight that got 2 players from each team thrown out as well as penalty time for others. The Rivermen won the fights and the game.

Saw Stuck on you on Saturday. Some funny parts but not as funny as I had hoped.

Sunday we cleaned the carpet. Puppy training took it's toll and it was time. The dogs still aren't 100 percent trained but they aren't that bad.

Played a lot KillSwitch this weekend and even finished it. That was both cool because everytime I got stuck, I eventually figured out what I needed to do to get through that section. It was also kind of disappointing because I've always had difficulty finishing these shoot'em up games. Maybe it just means I've progressed as a gamer. Who knows?

We had quite a bit of snow on Saturday, second time this season. The first time was the day after Thanksgiving and it melted the next day. This time it melted on Monday. Raquel thinks the snow is beautiful. Peanut loves playing in it. Not sure what Dover thinks of it.

Well I'm going to eat now. Talk to you later.

Did you have a good Día de Acción de Gracias?

That's Thanksgiving Day in spanish. We went to my father's house and enjoyed the turkey he made. My dad has hosted Thanksgiving for us for a long time now, kind of a tradition. My mom often does a Thanksgiving meal as well, but the acutual day depends on her work schedule, so this year she hosted on Wednesday evening. We live just far enough away that it would have been difficult to make it there since I had to work Wednesday, but fortunately plenty of others made it so her efforts were enjoyed by others.

This weekend was a PlayStation and movie weekend. I recently bought KillSwitch and logged several hours this weekend. It's a pretty cool shoot'em up game. It's very challenging for me, but I've made significant improvement. I can't believe how complicated it is to walk/run and aim/shoot. The directions said that it becomes second nature after some playing time. Hmmm...it's getting close to being second nature for me. Guess I better log more time. It's funny, in one section you have to get from point A to point B in certain amount of time. Well along the way, you have to kill about 25 or more guys who are shooting at you and throwing grenades at you. At first I couldn't make it through the first room because I was so concerned with time and there were at least eight guys shooting at me. I learned eventually that if I just take my time and just relax and stand out in the open and pick them all off one at a time, it's not so bad. I eventually made it through and on to a more difficult section.

The movies we saw were Timeline and The Missing. The first movie wasn't much to brag about, not a thumbs up nor a thumbs down. However, The Missing is really good. Opie directed this one and he did a terrific job, Raquel and I enjoyed it. Clint Howard makes his usual appearance in his brother's film, but it was kind of different, he was actually good (didn't hurt that his screen time was under 5 minutes.

You should be scared.

Last week we went to the dentist. Raquel couldn't get her teeth cleaned because she has a heart murmur (we already knew) and she has to take an antibiotic before the cleaning due to the possibility of infection. This required coordination with the obstetrician to get an approved antibiotic. So we've got the medicine, now we need to make another appointment with the dentist. Who knew a heart murmur could be dangerous for something so common as a trip to the dentist?

Friday night we went to the movies. Gothika is pretty chilling. The theater was packed and the audience was really in to the film, letting out collective gasps and shrieks. This was another movie that I didn't really think I would want to see but Raquel wanted to so we went. I thought it was pretty good.

Saturday, I helped Jerry a little bit. He's been working on his house for years, and this weekend he wanted to get the siding finished. I've never done siding before, so I don't know how much help I really was, but I was there. We stayed for pizza and wings and I played Playstation with Jake. We played football (not sure which version) and he creamed me the first game. I really wasn't sure how to play (meaning what buttons did what) but then Jerry showed me a play. The second game was all mine. I kicked his butt! The poor kid was dealing okay with getting beat, but as the game wore on, I kept scoring and he couldn't do anything. To make matters worse, Jerry and another guy were teasing Jake relentlessly. Suddenly, Jake couldn't take any more and burst into tears and couldn't breath right nor talk. Sound cruel? Well Jake had been talking smack the entire time he beat me the first game, so he was getting a taste of defeat. But I wasn't talking any smack. But in the end, Jake sucked it up and finished the game so he was a trooper in the end.

Sunday we went to see the Looney Toons movie. It was really quite funny, but I got really sleepy while watching it (no reflection on the movie). After the movie, we went to Menard's to buy a toilet snake, you know, one of those roto-rooter things. We were having problems with the sewer backing up into the basement. Yuck. So we bought this 25-foot long snake thing that you connect to a drill. I snaked out a bunch of stuff from the drain, mostly roots. After doing this a few times (and being generally disgusted both from the task and from lack of major success) I gave up.

Today, Roto-Rooter came out and snaked out (with their powerful snake) our sewer to about 110-feet. Now we can flush with confidence.

Aim for the mizzenmast!

So we went to see Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World yesterday. I must say, it is a very impressive movie. It appears they went to great lengths to make it look look authentic. I don't know what made me go see this movie, because the previews didn't make it appealing to me at all. For some reason we went, and I'm glad we did. It's one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. The only complaint I have is that the accents took a while to get used to. If you go, keep in mind that it is about two hours and twenty minutes long.

That's all I want to write about. Good night!

Going in circles

A lazy Sunday afternoon. Temperature isn't too bad, but it's damp out. Flipping through broadcast tv and there's not much. NASCAR's final race of the season, so they're going in circles at 170 MPH. Bears vs. Rams on another channel, and neither team is playing well. Golf on another channel, just not interested at the moment.

We're going to see that new Russell Crowe movie, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World today.

Saw Elf last week. It was good. I had Dots.

I love the Budweiser Real Men of Genius commercials. My favorite is Mr. Foot-long-hot-dog Maker. Cuz he gives us what we all really want - a bigger wiener.

I read someone's blog saying that last night's Saturday Night Live was one the worst ever. Hmmm. I thought it was rather funny. I especially liked the way they made fun of the latest Prince Charles scandal. Seems the British press can't come out and directly talk about some accusations about Charles' private life due to libel laws. So this skit talked around the accusations. Another skit was Roy's comeback performance with the same tiger that injured him. I laughed out loud.

We've started work on finishing the attic. Not in any hurry. Before putting in insulation, we need to provide ventilation between the insulation and the roof. We're putting in Styrofoam rafter ventilation channels to begin.

Raquel's belly is getting bigger as Lourdes is growing inside. Everything is going fine with the baby. Raquel hasn't had any problems. She'll still get nauseous every so often, but nothing like the first few months.

Maybe Greg will put me back on his favorites.

Survivor night

Just a short note tonight, gonna watch Survivor in a little bit.

We have a tentative name for our baby - Lourdes Diana. It's still early but I like it so far.

Went to Spooky Hollow Friday night as planned and Raquel really enjoyed it. We were going to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Saturday but never made it that day. Saturday night we went to see the Peoria Riverman lose in overtime to Toledo. It was a good game until the very end. Sunday we did see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and I must say it was pretty good. I normally don't care much for horror because they are usually just plain stupid. But I was really into this one and it was pretty chilling.

Well this weekend, not sure what all we have on the schedule. But it's time to go now.

The cube still lives!

I have a small Rubik's cube on a key chain. When I was in high school, and the Rubik's cube craze was in full swing, I bought a book on solving the cube and I memorized the moves I needed to do so. I was able to solve the cube in about a minute. Of course, I haven't seriously touched a cube in 20 years so I can't solve it anymore....for now. I looked on Google and found a website and solved my cube. I hope to get proficient again. Long live the cube!

The worst drill weekend ever...

Last post was just before my drill weekend. It was the worst drill weekend ever. I'm not going into details because I don't want to be accused of gossiping. Let's just say that next drill weekend will be better.

Raquel is in the kitchen beating up chicken. I promised Adam and Jerry that I would ask Raquel to prepare some chicken and mandioca like her mom makes. It's really yummy.

Peanut is trying to hump Dover. Shame on him. Maybe it's payback because Dover always tries to hump him. Stop that, Peanut! Put that thing away! No, not there!

We saw Kill Bill Volume 1 last weekend. We loved it! Lot's of blood and kung-fu! Can't wait for Kill Bill Volume 2 next February. Still more members of the Deadly Viper assassination Squad left to kill, plus Bill.

Great smells coming from the kitchen. Raquel is a really good cook, especially considering she doesn't have a lot of cooking experience. I think the guys are going to enjoy Friday's lunch.

This weekend we have several things on the plate. Friday evening, we are going to meet several people from the base at Todd's house for a bit of a cookout followed by a trip to the nearby spooky woods and haunted house (a jaycees type of thing, we're not just traipsing through some random woods and an old house). If Raquel is good with that, we may continue on to another town and try their haunted house. Saturday, we will probably go see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Saturday night we'll go to the opening game of the local hockey team, the Peoria Riverman. Sunday will either be a day of relaxation, or a day of shopping for materials to work on the house.

Adam is going to help me transform some of the house over the next three or four months. We will probably convert the living room into a bedroom, and the dining room into a living room. We will also work on finishing the attic. The unfinished attic should yield a small den/library/computer area, a play area for the kid(s), and a half bath. Adam is quite good at this stuff.

I need to call it an internet night. We recorded Survivor earlier and are going to watch that before going to bed.

Blah, blah, blah, blog.

Not a much to say today. It's just after nine. I'm tired. I have drill tomorrow. Not really looking forward to it either. It always creeps up until it just pounces right on top of me. I never seem to be prepared, but it never seems to pay to be prepared for drill. I can never count on being able to do what I want to do because there are external forces at work to put a wrench in things. Regardless, I hope we get some good training accomplished.


So how about this weather? It's turned rather cool here. Even had a frost the other night. I kind of like it when it gets a little cold so I can get out the long-sleeve shirts. The dogs are reluctant to get out from under the warm blankets and go outside to take care of business. But then again, so am I.

Told you I didn't have much to say. Good night!

Four days in a row, this must be some sort of a blog record.

We went to the OB today. She (the OB) thinks the bleeding that Raquel has experienced is not too big of a deal, but is concerned none the less. We go back again in less than two weeks and will get another sonogram just to make sure everything is good. By the way, we are due on 3 March 2004.

After finishing with the OB appointment, we went to Steak 'N Shake for lunch, and then to the Driver License Facility to get new plates. When we got home, I was able to start the final stretch of fence. I got the last two holes dug and set the posts and concreted them. This last section is chain link, and I would have just driven them in with a fence post driver, but there were too many rocks to do that. I was also able to concrete the last couple of wooden fence posts, as we had run out of concrete the other day. I also concreted in the center part of the ten foot chain link gate. It's actually two five foot gates that have a latching post mechanism thingie between them. I concreted where the latching post mechanism goes into the ground. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to put the last bit of chain link up. Adam stopped by and help cut off the tops of all the posts. He's definitely a good friend to have as he knows how to do so much around the house, and he likes doing them as well. We will be doing some modifications in the house before the baby gets here. I'll post as those happen or start to happen.


Well I have to go put the new license plates on the truck and clean up to go meet friends for a late dinner. Bye.

Three days in a row.

I can't believe it, after almost a month of no posts, here's the third one in a row.

But now what to say?

Tomorrow we go to the OB again. Raquel has had a couple episodes of bleeding and the OB wants to find out what is going on. I'm going to take the rest of the day off and take care of some stuff, with emphasis on finishing the fence.

This past weekend we went to see The Rundown starring The Rock. Raquel and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Plenty of action and humor. What more could one ask for?
The weekend before, we saw Underworld. I liked that one as well. Plenty of action and Kate Beckinsale in leather. What more could one ask for?

I can't wait for Kill Bill Volume 1 to come out on October 10th.

I said I helped Adam put up our fence this weekend. He told me Monday that he had a dream that he was at my house working on the fence and we needed something so I went to the store to buy it. While I was gone, Raquel told him not to tell me but she could speak and understand english perfectly. He said he woke up immediately.

I'll probably post tomorrow with the results of the OB appointment.
Bye.

It's been a year...

Today is our anniversary. Raquel and I have been married for one year. Raquel believes in low-key celebrations of birthdays and anniversaries so I got her a dozen roses and we went out to eat. Nice and simple.

Greg, I sincerely apologize for missing your birthday. So please accept my belated happy birthday wishes. I hope you had a good one.

This weekend was very busy. Adam came over and we put up a fence for the dogs. There was already a fence between our house and the one neighbor's house - a chain link fence with privacy slats. We decided to put up a privacy fence between our house and the other neighbor's that also blocks the back alley. We were able to get about 95 percent finished. Still need to finish one small six or seven foot stretch, but we've got it blocked off so the dogs are fully contained. We'll get that part finished and then it will be just a matter of some finishing touches. The fence project was spurred on by the need to keep rabbits out of the yard and keep the dogs in. Dover the MinPin escaped a couple of times and the neighbors didn't seem too pleased. Also, seems the dogs didn't like being left outside on their chains and expressed their displeasure by barking which in turn disturbed some neighbors who work nights/sleep days. Now, everyone should be happy. The dogs can run free, don't seem to bark as much, stay in the yard and we have some privacy. Now maybe when we have our baby, she won't need a shock collar.

This sucks, part II.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but once again I had typed a post and was ready to publish it when I hit the wrong button and lost it all.

The long and short of the post was that we went to the OB today and found out we are going to have a baby girl. The sonogram shows a nice little 7 ounce bundle of joy minus the hardware! Didn't want to know the sex just yet? Too bad, pretend you're dreaming, tell everyone you dreamed that Raquel is going to give birth to a little baby girl, and be amazed at your psychic abilities when she does.

You may ask yourself why another sonogram when we just had one done not too long ago. Well, Raquel seemed to menstruate this morning. The OB wanted a sonogram to make sure everything is fine with the baby. And it is, everything appears normal in the baby's house, no blood in there. What caused the menstrual-like bleeding? Not sure, but it could be just about anything. The OB said it could be anything from lifting something fairly heavy to walking up stairs, and that it isn't uncommon.

Time to let the dogs out before we all turn in for the night. Bye.

This sucks.

I had typed a post and was ready to publish it when I hit the wrong button and lost it all. I decided it wasn't very interesting so forget about it.

Actually, I did write about my little alien baby. I think Raquel was abducted by extraterrestrials and they implanted one of their babies into her. You can clearly see the photographic proof on our web page. Even if it is an alien, I will still love it.

Then I wrote about Family Day at the base today. Raquel didn't want to go so I spent the afternoon drinking beer. Not much beer. I don't drink very often or very much. Just don't feel the urge or the need. After a hard day of work, I'd rather eat ice cream than drink beer. Don't get me wrong, I like a good beer.

After that I wrote about Raquel and liver. She apparently loves liver so she made liver and onions tonight. For her. I don't eat that s&!t. I've tried liver before and it tastes bad. She was having difficulties preparing it tonight because the smell made her a little nauseous, but she really wanted to eat it. She made it through and enjoyed eating it, yum yuck. I'll stick to the regular meats, thank you.

Too bad I lost this post.

The answer, my friend, is duct tape.

I was thinking about diapers today. I'm not very familiar with the latest developments in diaper technology so hopefully what I was thinking about doesn't even matter. I was thinking about how sometimes a diaper comes undone on one side or the other and what to do to resolve this problem so as not to waste a perfectly absorbant diaper. The first thing that came to mind was a hot glue gun. After careful thought, this didn't seem like a good idea because I don't have a glue gun. Besides, if I did, I would have to wait for it to heat up and that would probably take too long.
I thought about SuperGlue, but I was worried I might glue my fingers together. Boy would I feel stupid with my fingers glued together.
So then I thought of stapling the diaper. But I ruled that out rather quickly, sharp edges, might cut myself.
Rope? Not practical.
Belt? No loops on a diaper.
Duct tape? Of course, the handyman's secret weapon as Red Green would say. And duct tape comes in various colors now so it could conceivably blend in with whatever fashion statement the baby is making.

I don't think so.

Well another week has gone by. We survived the babysitting ordeal last Sunday. Actually Adam's kids were really good except the little one constantly wanted to pick up Peanut. Three year olds just don't have the agility to properly handle a puppy. Poor Peanut is not very big overall, but he is surprisingly long, especially when he stretches out. Zoey loves Peanut and would not let him be. She was very good with him when she was sitting and he was on her lap, but she couldn't pick him up without choking him. He tried to escape under the bed once and I saw her drag him by the tail before he could get far enough under. I tried to explain to her that if she doesn't leave Peanut alone, he will become scared of her and will simply hide when kids come around or even worse, bite them. I don't think it sunk in entirely, however she does remember that my cat scratched her face a couple of years ago under similar circumstances.
We didn't go to a movie with the kids because there weren't any suited for kids that Raquel and I hadn't seen already. We took my niece to see Freaky Friday (which I actually enjoyed), we took another niece to see Spy Kids 3D and Finding Nemo. We actually had taken Adam's kids to see Nemo previously, and the little one said she wanted to see it again, but I really didn't want to see it for a third time right now. Maybe I should have gone to see it again, and again, and again to get used to watching the same thing over and over in preparation for our kid. Maybe I'll just lie to my kid and say the VCR/DVD player can only play a movie once a week. Maybe I'll just give in and let the TV/VCR/DVD player babysit my kid like so many other parents do.

We'll know more about our kid this Wednesday as we go to the OB for the first time. Poor Raquel has had a lot of morning sickness but 7-UP and crackers seems to help. We should start bargain hunting for baby stuff. Soon it will be getting cooler and the garage sale season will be over. We also need to buy some maternity clothes for Raquel. So many things. If only we knew what size diapers the kid will need, we could start buying some now and start stocking up. I can just see me at Sam's Club next year hauling out a case of Pampers every week. And baby food. Maybe our baby will be born with teeth and will eat real food right away. There's always plenty of our food left over. Maybe our baby will get potty training done in record time. I think 2 weeks is reasonable. Don't you?

What do you expect from me?

So it's Friday and I'm finally posting something. But what to say?
Well, I changed the look of my web page, finally. It was looking rather antiquated and Greg's page is looking good, so I knew I had to do something, but what? I know one thing is for sure: I don't know squat about Adobe Photoshop.

I know what you're thinking: Dwayne, even my preschooler knows how to use Photoshop. Well good for you and your protogé! Maybe junior wouldn't mind stopping by and showing me how to use it then.

Today we got a book (my very first online purchase, fyi) delivered to our doorstep. Seems like every mother out there says to read What to Expect When You're Expecting. So we purchased said book online but in Spanish so Raquel can read up on what's going on with her body and what she can expect to happen. And they say kids don't come with owner's manuals. Guess those cost extra.

Don't know what all is going on this weekend, but we may have to babysit a few hours on Sunday. Maybe we'll just take them to a movie and McDonald's to eat up a couple of hours. Wish us luck.

Well that's enough for the moment. See you next time.

Thanks to Greg for ignoring remembering my birthday. Yes, I'm another year older, but I think I'm mostly a year better. I don't feel any older than I did on Saturday, or even last year for that matter. In fact, I still feel like I'm in my twenties, except I have to pee in the middle of the night a couple times.

And speaking of birthdays, today is my older sister's birthday. She is one year older than me. That's right, I was her early first birthday present. Happy Birthday, Sharon!

I can't say enough good things about the new look for Greg's blog as well as Deb's blog. Spot on!

I get a three-day weekend this coming weekend followed by a four-day weekend for Labor Day. Maybe I'll get my blog a new look. Maybe I'll get the webpage somewhat modernized. Maybe I'll sleep a lot and play Playstation.

A belated happy birthday goes out to Deb. I always forget it's her birthday and this year I've got more things on my mind than normal so I hope she understands.

Greg has updated the look of his blog as well as Deb's blog. He's also put a nice new look on his web page that matches his blog. By the way, the new look for Deb's blog is really good. It was very difficult to read before.

I know my page looks old and cheesy. I need to play around a little and get it looking better. I actually think I prefer the blog. It's easier to maintain and update and has a clean look to it. Plus I can display pictures in it as well. If I can't get a satisfactory look to my web page, I may abandon it and just go with this blog.

Unfortunately I don't have much to say at the moment so I'll close for now.

I read Greg's blog all the time, just as I've always read his web page. Occasionally I read some of the blogs that he has links to from his blog. Today I read Donna's blog about her piñata experiences. I gave a chuckle about how the first one was really hard, literally hard and was almost impossible to break.

My beautiful wife Raquel asked what I chuckled about. Before I could explain, I had to ask her if she knew about piñatas. She said she did and I told her about the difficulties of breaking open Donna's first piñata. Raquel thought it was strange that kids here in the U.S. hit their piñatas with a stick, why don't they use a knife to pop it open? Just to make sure we were on the same page, I had her tell me about the piñatas in Paraguay.
Keep in mind that I'm not the best Spanish speaker nor do I understand everything spoken to me in Spanish.
Apparently piñatas in Paraguay are somewhat pressurized so that when the birthday boy/girl uses a knife to "pop" the piñata, it "explodes" or perhaps "bursts" the goodies among the partygoers. Not a large blast but enough to spread the goodies out a little. Sometimes for fun, they put flour in the piñata along with the goodies so that the revelers get covered in white powder.
I think that would be hilarious to see. Maybe more fun than a blindfolded kid whacking someone in the groin or about the head and face with a stick. Someday I will experience a Paraguayan birthday celebration.

In other news, we went to the doctor on Wednesday to confirm that we are going to have a baby. Now we need to get an OB so when our baby decides it's time to leave the cozy confines of Raquel there will be someone to catch it.
Everyone has been happy for us. Many ask if I want a boy or a girl. Well of course the first priority is to have a healthy baby. I think I want a little girl until about age 9 or 10 and then I hope she suddenly becomes a boy. And I don't mean becomes a boy like she goes Melissa Etheridge on us. I just think a teenage boy is easier to deal with than a teenage girl. No matter what, we just have to do our best and hope the kid becomes a good person.

The boys just came in and are excited to be back indoors.

Of course this photo is a couple months old, they are much bigger now.

Look what we've done!

Well sort of. That's me as a baby. I don't know how old I am in this picture but I sure am chubby. Anyway, Raquel and I are going to have one of those soon.

That's right. Dwayne is going to be a daddy. According to Greg, it's going to be a great thing. I suppose he's right. By then, Dover the MinPin might be out of his shock collar and so we won't have to buy a new one. Just kidding, I wouldn't put Dover's collar on my baby, I'd buy a new one.

I don't know if I can handle the pressure of keeping a blog.

It really is stressing me out. I don't see how Greg can do it. I suppose I really could post more often but what if I don't have anything to say?

Actually I have to praise a product that Raquel and I bought recently. As you may have previously read, we have a MinPin and a Min Dachshund. The Dachshund is really quite calm and when we are outside with him, he generally doesn't need a leash or chain. The MinPin, however, is quite spastic. Given the opportunity, he will dash away to see what the world has to offer in the way of smells with absolutely no regard to his safety and oblivious to our calls for him. Usually, the only way to catch him is if he finds something really interesting to smell or has to pinch a loaf.

Anyway, after a few escapes, one of which took him all the way to a busy road (luckily there was a cat nearby to distract him long enough for Raquel to snatch him), I decided to look into a shock collar. Not for me, for the dog.

Okay, I know some of you may think a shock collar is cruel, but let me explain a little first. This collar has a remote with two buttons. One button will cause the collar to emit a warning tone. The other button is to deliver a "shock". The idea is that the dog will do it's bad behavior, you send a warning tone. If the dog continues with the bad behavior, send another tone. Finally, if the dog still doesn't respond, zap him! Trust me, Pavlov had it down pat. Our MinPin quickly associated the warning tone with the shock and he responds to the tone. He's rarely disregarded the tone and is a different dog. He's so much calmer now and we feel confident letting him loose outside under supervision. Sidenote 1: the shock is adjustable and should only be turned up enough to get the appropriate response from the dog (pissing himself or yelping is not an appropriate response--TURN IT DOWN!) Sidenote 2: I put the collar on my leg and tested it before putting it on the dog. I turned it down after yelping and pissing myself.