Presented Without Commentary

Back in Brazil

Well, I am back "home" in Brazil. I had a great time with my mom, family and friends. The trip back really wore me out, more so that the dozen other times I have made a trip down. I got home and just near passed out on the bed after I took a shower. The kids were really happy to have me back and asked me "never to leave again". I have a lot of catching up with translations so I can't write more now. Just an update to let everyone know..
take care..

I'm Going Home

After close to 4 years in Brazil (I arrived this last time on Jan. 30, 2006) I am going home for a short visit. Funny that, even though my life is here (Garanhuns) now, I still consider my mom's place, and the States home. Anyways, to celebrate, I present my favorite part the Woodstock documentary. Ten Years After doing I'm Going Home..

Page Updates

Slowly but surely I am revamping the site layout. I am changing most of the links to RSS feeds, so if you had a link it is now on the feed thingamajigger by subject. Stay tuned..

The More Things Change...

WOW!! Haven't posted in over a year. And, while a lot has changed, nothing really has. I am still in Garanhuns. The last time i posted, I had just moved into a new house. Guess what? I just moved into another house. Got a job teaching English. The kids are fine, but Adriana is a bit sick and needs to go to the doctor, female plumbing type problems. Hope to be able to keep this up now. No promises on how often I will post.

Updates, Updates, Updates

Well, I want to start off by saying sorry I did not update for a while. After the season ended a lot of things came up and I truly did not have the time. I thought the season ending would mean a lighter load, and nothing could be further from the truth. Let me recap the situation with the team. It won its final game and we got the result we needed in the other game, and Sete stayed in the first division. It went down to the wire, but the balls bounced our way. We are already working towards next season, and hopefully we can do better.

On the family side, I had to play a huge "daddy" role today. One of the dogs that lives at the stadium had puppies some time back, and little by little they went missing. One day when I went to take food for her, I found the head of one of the puppies. I don't know what was worse, the fact that I found the head, or the fact that I did not find the rest of the body. Their pen is separated by fences from the rest of the stadium, but I thought maybe the guard dogs, real mean pitbulls, found a way in and got to them. I took the remaining puppy home for the night to clean her up and keep her out of the cold (winter is starting here, more on that later). The next day I took her mom up to one of the press boxes where I know the other dogs could not get to them and put the puppy with her. The kids enjoyed taking care of the puppy for the night, and they took turns staying up and holding her so she would not be cold. Today, when I went to take food for them I found the puppy in bad shape. It seems it was their mom who was the guilty one. The puppy had some bite marks, but she wasn't bleeding or anything and was whimpering. I carried her back home but I knew she would not last long. I thought maybe we could make the last few moments a bit calmer. The kids laid her in a basket and wrapped her up. They started to pull some fleas off her. In about half an hour she just gave out. The kids of course were sad, but I explained about the circle of life and The Lion King and how nothing lasts for ever, but the important thing was we helped the puppy when she needed us. After some crying and a talk about doggie heaven they felt better.

In regards to Garanhuns, winter is starting to creep in. People joke that Miami has two seasons, Summer A and Summer B. Well, Garanhuns has two seasons, Summer and Winter. No in-between changes at all. One day the sun is blazing close to 95 F, the next it is raining, the wind is blowing and you can kiss the sun goodbye. I happed to love winter here. The rain is usually a fine mist, sometimes heavier, and constant. The wind blows hard, and since the city is tucked into 7 hills, it can be pretty hard at times. During the day the temperature is in the mid 50s and at night it is in the 40s. Never freezing but it can feel very cold at times. Some days it rains for 24 hours. You have 3 or 4 days of light rain and then all of a sudden you have a whole day which is beautiful, only to have the rain start up again once the sun sets. A curious thing is most of the people who have lived here all their lives never seem to get used to it, they all bundle up looking like something out of Nanook from the North.

Well, today I will spend the day putting the blog together, adding links, playing around with the layout. I hope to have everything together for the first of the year. I am considering mirroring the blog on WordPress, but that might not be necessary. There are things I like about both, but Blogger offers more customization, especially with widgets and gadgets. You cannot play with HTML over on WordPress, at least not that I am aware, but maybe I can figure it out.

On the cricket front, both Tests ended and were rather one sided. Australia dominated India and got their 15th consecutive Test win. The West Indies bested South Africa in "the other" Boxing Day Test. While India looked strong on Day One, Australia is, well, Australia, and showed why they are the best in the world. The Windies came out strong, and the South African bats challenged a bit towards the end. Some feared a Windies collapse, but strong bowling from Fidel Edwards sealed the victory. I will go more into detail on other posts about the remaining Tests, but I just wanted to get a quick post up.

UPDATE 11.51
Well I added most of the widgets/gadgets, whatchmacalits that I was looking for on the side. Still need to add some links but tihs is more or less what it will look like.