Parties and the beach

A party Saturday night and a walk to the beach today for relaxing and
some sun. Is that all Chris and I ever do you ask? Sometimes I have to
wonder, LOL!
It's time for us to have a party, this will be interesting indeed!

Oh, a lady brought this chocolate cake with a cream topping and Heath
Bar crumble bits on top to the party, ymmmm.
Chris made a apple and blueberry crumble, ymmmm.
Chris also made nandu fajitas the other day, MMMMM, MMMM, MMMM!

TRivia, who remembers what nandu is?

Churros' y chocolate

Also the name of my year one Spanish class book in high school. I
always wondered about the delightful fried delicacy with chocolate
inside, and here it is decades later still wondering!

There is a small amusement park near our apartment with plenty of churro
stands. Chris mentioned she wanted a churro and I told her I had never
had one, she didn't believe me.

We went to the first churro stand, and that one year of Spanish at
Kempsville High School paid off as I ordered my churro y chocolate : )
It was soooo good!

Chris and I spent the afternoon in the park and decided to go through
the amusement park on our way home, a churro y creme, churro y queso and
a churro y dulce de leche later, we were home!

Big chocolate footballs

The other week when I was at the grocery store I noticed these big
chocolate footballs nicely decorated all over the store, most in nice
cellophane packaging, I had no idea what this was all about. All I
could think was that it had something to do with back to school presents.

Well today Chris and I are shopping and take a better look at the "big
chocolate footballs", no, they're not footballs, of course not, they are
big chocolate eggs!

Some are small, but most of them are really big, as big or bigger than
footballs! They looked yummy!

We skipped that, did get some ice cream, which can be expensive. There
is some ice cream here that is $8 per liter! I guess Ben and Jerry's
costs as much?

Happy Tourism Week!

Woo Hoo, another long weekend coming my way, and I have to say thanks
to the tourists! How's that? Well unofficially, but officially this is
Holy Week in probably another South American country, except for Uruguay.

To keep with the politically correct them of our time, this is "tourism
week" or in espanol, semana de turismo.

So after tomorrow I get Thursday and Friday off, cool.

I had yesterday afternoon off and to day was my first full day since our
summer schedule ended. My coworker in turn had today off. Well, come
closing time I have a sign out sheet on my office door, I sign out and
noticed that my coworker had signed out at 5:30 yesterday, I was signing
out at 6:00, then I realized, DOH! I forgot about the summer schedule
being over and I could have left 30 minutes earlier!

One of the many pains of being an expat

Besides missing family, besides not being able to buy the things you
like on a regular basis, besides the exchange rate against the local
currency, wow now what was I going to write about?

Oh yeah, hospital bills.

Thankfully we do have a good hospital system here, an old established
British Hospital. Problem is, you just don't go and see the doctor and
give them your Blue Cross/Blue Shield card and all is well, no, first
you have to pay the bill (Use my airlines credit card and get some
miles, LOL), then comes the paperwork to get reimbursed by the insurance
company and hope there is no problems with the billing amount.

So far we've been pretty lucky. I dare say the dental care is another
matter altogether, that's pretty much a cash only deal.

Greeting someone Uruguayan style - aka - kissy kissy

For newcomers to Uruguay (And I imagine Argentina) there is something
you have to quickly accept and get over. When you meet a woman (In some
instance men too) you give them one of those European cheek kisses, you
know what I'm talking about.

If you extend your hand out for a handshake to a woman they will shake
your hand, but you'll get a strange look.

The fact is, the cheek kiss is how it' done here. Of course you don't
really kiss their cheek, you just kind of go through the motion and make
the kissy sound : )

Children are taught this from day one here, so even when it comes to
meeting children, same thing, no handshake ; 0

Blogger hacks

I don't know how many of you have Blogger blogs but if so I have ran
into a couple really neat hacks, per se. You may have noticed one.
You RSS readers won't : )

No Google navigation bar on top! Woo Hoo! Much more browser space : )

Getting ready to implement another hack (Not really a hack, have to quit
saying that) tonight. Should only take a few minutes.

Drop a comment if you want to know any of these tips : )

Another nice weekend and...

Another beautiful weekend here in Uruguay! Nice warm sunny days, wish
it would never end! So I took a trip to the local supermarket and
wouldn't you know it they were still out of our cats favorite food!
I'll make a trip to the pet store, now that I know where it's at : )

Surprise, surprise, I cooked! You heard right! I used cooking utensils
and actually used the oven! I made a pizza, granted the dough was
already made but I did chop up the vegetables, grated the mozzarella
cheese and added the sliced salami. It was really good! Almost as good
as the one Chris and I had made : ) But not as good as a Chi Cho's
pizza from Virginia Beach!

That is good pizza!

When I go back to the States there are some foods I have to eat right away:

1) Slice or two of Chi Cho's pizza
2) Vietnamese Pho soup (I love it!)
3) Some good North Carolina BBQ (Very true when I came back from Saudi,
as there was no pork)
4) Big delicious Korean meal
5) Yes, of course, obviously, Mexican!

Now I'm hungry!

So, I have been thinking about some stuff to blog about, would probably
help if I got it off my mind on onto my keyboard! I'm contemplating
making a podcast : )

On top of the tower

Me.jpg
Originally uploaded by njaneardude

Baghdad days revisited.
Me on top of crazy Uday's tower with the Green Zone in the background.

I found a bunch of photos on my Flickr account and they have a pretty neat Blogger blog posting interface so I'll probably post a few pics here and there.

History Channel - 80's Tech

So I just finished watching the History Channels 80's Tech (Modern
Marvels). As I watched it I thought how amazed I (we?) were at things
that won't even raise an eyebrow today! I remember when the Walkman
first came out, I just thought it was the greatest, now, iPods. The old
Motorola "Brick phone", portable (sic), now, Blackberry's.

I think the 80's stuff was better!

Comments : )

Lightbulbs

We use 220 volt electricity here in Uruguay and I don't know if it's the
culprit but I go through at least 1 light bulb a week! It wouldn't be
so bad except usually the light bulbs are expensive.

Last night was the third time a bulb went out in the bedroom, I thought,
hey, something to blog about : )

Ice Road Truckers revisited

I just went to the History Channel's official "Ice Road Truckers" web site.
Click the Frozen Oddities link , incredible!

Ice Road Truckers

I've been watching "Ice Road Truckers" on the History channel and it's
really neat. If you have ever watched "The Deadliest Catch" on the
Discovery channel it's much like that.

They show you grid points on where the truckers are, how many loads
they've made, how much money they're making and of course on-board cameras.

These guys are some brave souls! It's incredible listening to the ice
crack as they drive these trucks, some weighing as much as 60,000 pounds
across these lakes!

Check it out if you can.

Another beautiful day

The weekend started off with plenty of rain and howling winds on
Friday. Yesterday a little cloudy, then today, beautiful! I love this
weather!

Back home in Virginia, cold! But I'll get my share when winter rolls
around here!

Book Corner - Finished Reading

Lost Soldiers by James Webb. After reading Field Of Fire this book
almost felt like a letdown, but it was a good read. I don't want to
ruin it for anyone interested in reading it, but I'll just say it's
about an American expat who goes to Vietnam in search of some MIA's.

The neat thing about the book is that it takes place in modern day
Vietnam and many of the scenes the author describes reminds of the week
or so that I spent there.

Honestly, given the chance, Chris and I both would like to go there : )