Andrew & Cristina

I had some toast today and discovered a piece from a latex glove embedded in my slice of bread. I know, gross. But the point I’m trying to make here is that it was only after I called Andrew to take a peek and after I finished licking the very last crumb off my fingers that I thought about taking pictures. My first thought was not to obtain photographic evidence and I feel that this is one of the many things that separate me from all the bloggers I enjoy reading. Well, that and writing skills. It seems that I go through an experience and come out with nothing to show for it. That’s yet another thing I have to work on. Oh and in case you’re wondering, I did eat the piece of toast. I just pulled the glove out and didn’t worry about it. What can I say, I love toast.

So in conclusion… Happy Easter!

I don’t know why I consistently fail to update my blog on a regular basis. I can probably come up with a myriad of excuses but there isn’t a single reason that stands out. It can’t be because life here on Saba is too boring, because I know people here still manage to write every so often. It’s not that the internet is so unbearably slow that I can’t be bothered to log on and write an update. It’s not that the things going on in my life are a big secret that nobody should be aware of. Whatever the reason, the only way to deal with this is to try to make it a habit and work at it every day. Now if only I could do that with my daily workout, everything would be perfect.

So here’s a list of updates, in relative chronological order:

• We went home to Ecuador and the USA this past winter.
• We got a new wireless router so our internet connection doesn’t drop every 15 minutes anymore. It was a breeze to install and I don’t care what the reviews say.
• We got Leopard. Pretty.
• Andrew has started his third semester, which is probably the least enjoyable of all five.
• I’m babysitting for one of his former classmates.
• I scratched the hell out of my car. She’s been so good to me and I feel like a complete idiot.
• I ordered a Nikon D40 and a used Nikon 50mm f/1.8 AI-s Series E lens.
• I’ve been growing increasingly impatient while waiting for things to get from Miami to Saba.
• This is in no small part due to the complete nightmare that it was to replace Andrew’s broken Apple Macbook Pro power adapter last month. Stupid Apple and their ridiculous policies when it comes to true international support.
• We’re anxiously waiting for April 17th to roll around because that signals the end of fourth semesters and my parents’ visit to Saba. Finally.
• We’re fresh out of Prison Break episodes to watch. I blame it on the writers’ strike.
• I’m working on our taxes and it’s making me feel like we still belong to the civilized world. The strange things that Saba will do to you. *shakes head*

I guess that’s about it for now.

P.S.: I think I know why I never write. It’s because every time I log on to this site (all three times a year), I end up having to update Wordpress and it’s such a drag on our pathetic 256k connection.

It’s been a while since I last wrote something and I have absolutely no excuse for the past two weeks. What I have is an excuse for yesterday, if that counts. My laptop’s hard drive played some tricks on me yesterday and I spend the day (and night) troubleshooting, backing up, doing a fresh OS install, and restoring files. At first I thought we’d left the restore disks at home in the US, but thankfully I had the foresight to bring them along.

Try to imagine my panic during the few minutes when I envisioned those darned disks sitting on my desk at home. Then imagine my panic when the disk utility reported that it could not repair the file structure. It said something about an invalid sibling link but I was in no mood to read about what that meant. All I could see was myself sitting at home on a dinky little island with nothing to do but flip through the 15 or so decent TV channels we get. The horror! My files, my emails, my photos, my music, my ebooks, my recipes. All gone. I foolishly had not been backing up as frequently as I should have.

At the time it seemed like a good idea to spend the money on Disk Warrior to get it to simply restore the hard drive to its original state. Anything to not have to go through the agony of reinstalling the OS and possibly losing all my files. Silly me. Disk Warrior reported that the damage was too severe for a simple restore, so I had to go about it the hard way. Archive and install did not work and my only viable option was to erase and install.

Fast forward twelve hours, few of which were spent snoozing, and I’m back up and running. The catch is that I have to install a massive system update, which is taking eons to download on our blazing fast connection. The moral of the story: backup, backup, backup!

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Yesterday’s Trunk or Treat event was pretty nice, if a bit unusual. A handful of SOS members and their medical student significant others handed out candy from decorated car trunks yesterday afternoon. It was amazing how many local kids showed up all dressed up for Halloween. Some of the costumes were really good and I definitely didn’t expect participation to be so high. The other surprising thing is that the kids mostly hung out around the parking lot instead of going from car to car trunk or treating. I’ll admit that I’ve never been trick of treating in my life, but I imagine that if I did I would want to get as much candy as possible so I’d go to every single house or car in this instance. Oh well, even Halloween is done island style here on Saba.

Here’s Pippin, my new foster dog. She’s the one keeping me busy these days. Her former owner dropped her off yesterday because unfortunately she can’t keep her any longer. Pippin is a very sweet, loving, and energetic little girl. She loves to go for walks and to be around people all the time. I am told she is a hiker and she’ll play soccer and fetch, though we haven’t tried that yet. Hopefully she’ll find a forever home really soon.

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Wednesday, November 1st? Seriously?