Goodbye 2006

Every once in a while, check sidebar links in order to ditch all the ones that no longer lead to their original destination. Speaking of which, it appears that while the Beginning of the Internet has stuck around, its End has disappeared.

It was kind of hard to adjust the new profile picture without ending up like Violet Beauregard going off to the juicer. Mommy's camera and mine both exhibit some kind of Blue Shift phenomenon. If someday gets up the initiative to fight it out with the IrfanView color enhancer, that little cropped piece from the family Christmas picture may get modified. Of course, the ideal would be to find some way to get the whole family picture on, permanently.

Happy New Year's Eve for one more hour!

Vacation from vacation

Here we (Ardith, Jason, Kendra and I) are at Ardith's celebrating the post-Christmas festivities, or warding off post-Christmas depression, or being lazy bums during holidy vacation, depending on which extreme you like. Actually, I think I prefer this one: enjoying half a week with Ardith at her house.

We're making good use of the time, particularly those of us who don't get in as much city experience. Last night we tested out Pizza Hut's stuffed crust supreme pizza while Ardith introduced us to MacGuyver and his creative ways of using matches and maps. Today Ardith and Jason managed a laudable amount of video gaming while Kendra and I finished whole chapters of books... still leaving time for the girls to run a successful shopping trip in which they all walked away with at least one clothing item. This evening Ardith made us a very delicious supper, no leftovers. Then tonight we're off to see Eragon... depending on the person, to see it, to laugh at it, to take in the special effects, to critique it, to compare it to other fantasy films, and then maybe one or two of us are just going to enjoy it and enjoy sharing the seeing with great siblings.

For Derek, Melinda, Carolyn, Ethan, Nolan, Trevor: Hi guys! Are you getting all the Christmas cookies and fudge eaten up? Don't forget to come down on Saturday! :)

Merry Christmas Eve

As you've all been such good little children (especially the regular non-commenters), you will all be getting somewhere between one and four hundred twenty-two presents.

Oklahoma trip

Last weekend we went down to Oklahoma for our cousin David's wedding. There, that's about all you'll hear about the wedding. Don't go to weddings to visit with the bride and groom, or the bridesmaids or groomsmen. If you're one of them you'll get to see a lot of each other; if you aren't, don't go unless you know plenty of people. Fortunately for us, we went as a family, then met up with at least half the extended Hoyt family.

On the way down: Mommy drove; Daddy kept track of our progress on the GPS and every turn and interstate lane necessary; Ardith played computer games on her laptop; I wrote pages of Spanish diary; and the kids watched DVDs on the special Long-Trip Entertainment Center (which has a fascinating history of its own).

Friday night we arrived at the Hampton Inn with a good hour and a half before the rehearsal dinner to exult in its luxuries and start running into various Hoyts and Baneks around its corners, in its halls, and entering its elevators. That is, David's relations pretty much took over the hotel over the weekend... at least its lobby and pool.

(By the way, why do some people get to go to the rehearsal dinner without doing any work for it? at least suffering through the rehearsal?)

The rehearsal dinner was very delicious, and our table's party especially fine company: not just Ardith and Jason and Kendra, but also our cousins Ryan, Beth, and Chris, and Greg.

The wedding was lovely. Kendra, Carolyn and I got front-row seats, because there wasn't enough room in the row for our family and Kendra and I showed up late. Fortunately this meant being dismissed almost first, which gave me time to go find my station as punch server. It was a very fun job, greeting and serving some hundred people, seeing how many cups of punch several fathers and mothers could manage. It was kind of cold though, handling ice, punch, and ice water in a practically air-conditioned room... by the time I was off-duty I was shattering and chaking. I mean I was shaking and chattering.

Friday and Saturday night we older cousins took over the lobbies for some great games. Apples to Apples, Liverpool Rummy (left to right: Derek, Beth, Kendra, Erin, Erica), Settlers of Catan... and more Settlers of Catan (Catan fanatics, left to right of second photo: Chris, Greg, Ardith, Ryan, Jason, Taylor).

Sunday was skipping church and traveling back. Repeat paragraph #2 of this post, except include Jason among "the kids" (= everyone sitting behind the front row; does not refer in any way to maturity levels, we think).

(Intermission: waiting for video to upload, visiting Jason, Kendra and Derek in living room to see what's happening in Jurassic Park II, just to say I saw it.)

Here's a little video clip to give you an idea of what it's like to watch Jonah in the van.

Hope that let you experience the trip a little!

(P.S. I hope you have "Flash 8 or newer" so you can view the video. Guess who doesn't.)

Just Sharon the technological wizard

This was so funny I just had to share it! Well, tonight I decided to try making my computer's sound function for the second time. Tonight was a good time because Daddy and Jason were both in the room to bail me out if I couldn't find the problem. First I checked all the connections and again turned on the speaker, with no success - no little green light or accompanying depth-click. So I stared over towards Jason and Derek, laughing over something in their corner, and waited till they noticed.

"So why doesn't my sound work?"
"News to me. You must have done something to it," Jason informed me.
"Did you turn it on?" Derek asked.
"Yes, it doesn't come on."
"Did you turn on the monitor base?"
"Yes, it's plugged in," I told him, referring to the speaker into the monitor base... when it suddenly dawned on me that having it plugged into the base doesn't mean anything unless the accompanying AUX 1 switch on the front is on as well.

Jason and Derek snorted and shook their heads. "That's embarrassing," Jason told me.

What, for him or me? I thought it was great fun!

(Oh boy, another one... spelled it 'embarassing' before checking with Dictionary.com.)

That is, tomorrow

Did I say tomorrow? I meant within the next couple days. Call it the Argentina Effect. We just decided to induct Kendra and Derek into the horrors of Jurassic Park.

Vacation is busy

Did you know that?

This morning was occupied with sleeping in late, putting in a treadmill stint, and deciding it was too late to eat breakfast.

After lunch Jason and I drove in to Hampton to get jabbed in the upper left arm with a needle and injected with this year's flu virus, ensuring that if we can keep from catching it for two weeks, we may just not get it at all. The nurse told us about the year she got to give the flu shot to nearly everyone in our family, all at once.

The afternoon's activities were insulation work and breadmaking. After supper came top-secret business, which won't be described, and birthday business, which was helping Ethan prepare the Chocolate Truffle Tart for his birthday tomorrow.

Tonight is a movie with Mommy and the older kids.

So because of this busy day, as of yet I have only been able to download to my computer and then upload to the Internet a few of the trip pictures. Tomorrow I will have time to link them and write a little about the trip.

Big weekend trip!

Trevor: "Sharon, are you coming with us on the trip?"
Sharon: "Yes. You mean to the wedding?"
Trevor: "No, to the hotel."

Tomorrow at 7 a.m. we leave, to go to either to the hotel with a swimming pool or to David's wedding, depending on which child you ask. David is the oldest of our three Oklahoma cousins, and what do you know, Amy the bride is too - so everyone will be converging on Tulsa this weekend. It is lovely to be back in the U.S. and meet up with family, little by little... most of our family last Tuesday, Ardith tonight, Jason and a whole lot of the extended Hoyt clan tomorrow!

Despite the trip, don't expect Hoyts to be absent from the blog scene all weekend. The hotel has wireless and we have a Daddy who fixes us up with laptops and wireless cards.

a little Christmas vacation

Wasn't that a nice break?

Christmas vacation is like always, just how it should be. Stage I - the tree and decorations - went up a little late but very lovely. Every year there's something new, it seems, especially for the kitchen! Stage II will be Christmas cookies next week. Too bad that we didn't make them before Jason got home! (... waiting for reaction...) Stage III, Christmas photo-taking, letter-writing and mass-mailing will be accomplished at a yet-undetermined date, but of course Mommy's Christmas letter is always worth waiting for.

Vacation also means a few little work projects. The breezeway is getting insulated, slowly but surely. Ethan was helping me fill some of the smaller spaces, but now it's just big two-foot-wide fiberglass rows across the ceiling. An interesting job that requires at least three ladders and a plank, a slightly sore neck

(intermission #1: first I typed 'kneck'!)

and lots of white fairy fiberglass dust. Oh dear! Why didn't I think to wish for something?

By the way, an inconvenient place to cut yourself is on top of the thumb. I don't advise it, even with a blunt knife that just breaks the skin. Even two well-applied bandaids only survive two handwashings.

Most college students catch up on sleep during vacation. I just can't seem to get around to it. In fact, it's hard to think of the last week that had all the sleep time desirable. Life is just too interesting to sleep through.

(intermission #2: Joe or one of his friends must be messing with Ethan's computer. Some body's scratching around down there and I don't think it's Santa Claus.)

Normally we should have the climax now, but that intermission happened to show that it's after 11 p.m. More thrilling Hoyt Christmas news items to come as they decide to pop up!

Occasionally Includes Blogging

Vacation.

Good to be home

Do you know that nobody dusted off my computer in five months?!

But there are lots of good surprises. Daddy is back to working on the house, despite still-healing ribs, and has fixed up a walkman as a kitchen radio for Mommy. No matter what she says on her blog, Mommy has a very successful diet. Ardith is riding down to Oklahoma for our cousin's wedding with us in the 15-passenger. On opening my long-unused Intergate mail account, I discovered an email from Jason. Kendra found a brownie recipe that is similar to the cheap off-brand mix and that we all like. Derek is nearly as tall as Jason. Kendra and Melinda have taken over the breadmaking. Carolyn and Ethan helped clean out the breezeway, upgrading it to 'walkable' status. Ethan has a very handsome non-flattop haircut. Nolan can pick out Christmas tunes on the piano and recite word-for-word whole strips of Peanuts comics.
Trevor has outgrown naps but not cuteness.

Is that everyone?...

Tonight on the way to prayermeeting we counted farms and houses with Christmas tree lights: Melinda, Nolan and Trevor on the left, and Carolyn, Ethan and I on the right. On the way home we played a game that Carolyn thought up. Each person had to think of a word that probably no one else would know, and everyone else had to guess the meaning. Carolyn's word was rax. None of us could guess it, though Trevor made a valiant effort, once we knew that hands, arms, and stretching were likely involved (after multiple hints): "When you stretch out two hands and do a backflip."

...Oh, I forgot me. Yesterday I went to bed at 9:30 p.m. and tonight 10:30 already feels very late.

So goodnight, everyone... here's how we say goodnight in our house:

Goodnight,
Sleep tight,
Pleasant dreams,
I love you!

Arrived

It's lovely to be home! Thank God for safe travels.

I just can't keep awake to type more.

Last Friday

Dooesn't my ingenuity with post titles just make you want to cry?

Once again uploading pictures. I found the multiple upload option but that doesn't make the connection faster. So I may stop at 150 soon as it's already after 1 p.m. and other business awaits.

Yesterday was an all-day trip to Colonia, an old and picturesque city in Uruguay. Three hours of boat ride to arrive was lovely and great for getting burned. Colonia is pretty, as you'll see from a few pictures later on. The best part is crossing the main street, Flores, where the vehicles stop for pedestrians! Even around 6 p.m. there wasn't much traffic. Of course, this was in the old center of town, not the modern.

Today is a little rest before the last big rush. Saturday is all-day decorating for a wedding and the ceremony and party at 8 p.m. Sunday will doubtless be sleeping and a little packing. Monday will be last packing, changing pesos to dollars - at least enough to have the $20 required to leave let me leave the country. There's something about these Latin American countries wanting to hang on to everybody, or at least hang on to their money. Leaving Uruguay cost 5 pesos and I believe some missionary friends had to pay each time they left Haiti.

Then at 4:30 p.m. (1:30 Central, I think) we leave for the airport!

That's all for now. Looking at a screen is getting a little tiring after an hour and a half!

The last Wednesday

I was going to post yesterday, but the 20 locutorio minutes were almost up; and then it was time to go shopping.

Yesterday I cooked dinner for my friends. I started around 5 p.m. with the dessert, then around 7 p.m. with the main courses. The meatloaf turned out great, in spite of the fact that most of my brain was occupied in carrying on a conversation with a dinner guest who arrived early. So did the baked potatoes, though I almost thought they would never make it. So did the French vinaigrette for the lettuce salad. I didn't manage to get around to making the chunky applesauce. We started eating around 9:30 or 10:00 with the guests still arriving, the last one coming a little after serving the chocolate cream pie and meringues. What fun the evening was! All except two made it, which still made for around 10 people in total. We five youngest goofiest ones between the ages of 16 and 22 stayed up till 3 p.m., partly to take crazy pictures....

... which you may just get to see by the weekend. This is partly because I'm such a nice person and mostly because I want to clear up memory space before going to Uruguay tomorrow. This way we'll see if the 256 mg limit is really 350-some pictures. I already have nearly 300 on one card. Normally I would have been downloading them onto my laptop, but it's refusing to work. So I'm sitting here in the locutorio spending the horrendous amount of 2 pesos (= some 60 cents) to upload them one by one into Photobucket - one by one, because for some reason Photobucket isn't giving me the multiple upload option today. I must have made it mad. Oh, shoot. (Excuse the poor language today.) That's only the fourth or fifth time that I switched back to the Photobucket page only to find I'd selected the file without clicking 'Upload'.

Oh, you thought I was posting to post? No, I'm just posting to kill time.

Just kidding. Partly.

It's funny how little one can sleep during vacation. Saturday I went to bed at 4 a.m. Sunday was 1 a.m., but that's normal now. Monday was 1 or 2 a.m., and yesterday was 3 a.m. This plus never sleeping in till noon. What can I say... it's impossible to sleep that late, and five or six hours felt sufficient this morning. Must be the low-stress non-semester lifestyle.

Well, we're getting there, only about 15 more photos to go. I wonder how long the post will be for the 275-some on the other card.

In other news, the heat here is nice but it's almost making me look forward to winter in our hemisphere. Some days are so hot or humid (or both) that you just don't feel like doing anything, can't walk at a decent rate, and need three times the willpower to do the next thing--

(I started to say 'the force of the will', then some English succintness knocked on the door)

--This explains the siesta tradition and a lot of other things that can be exasperating for North Americans and Northern Europeans... at least for this one.

Well, that's all for now. It's 8 p.m. Maybe I will get to bed early, like midnight, since I have to get up around 5 or 6 a.m. tomorrow to get to the dock for the boat to Uruguay.

1

That's how many weeks are left between hearing planes leaving Buenos Aires and being in one.

A week

It seems odd to round off a semester of studies in sociology, history and economy with a couple weeks of fun and sight-seeing.

Saturday I went with Mayra ("My-ruh") to spend the night at Mayte's ("My-tay") house. We're a diverse bunch: Mayra came from Bolivia five years ago and is finishing massage studies, Mayte arrived from Peru early this year to study gastronomy, and I came from the States to learn how to speak like them (except Mayte still has her "tu" and "y"'s - which probably doesn't mean anything to you). We spent the evening chatting a lot and eating dessert first, then watched a slightly oldish but interesting movie on the Tribulation, ordered pizza and empanadas and the boys (Mayte's brother Juan and friend Pablo) joined us to watch The Longest Yard. It made us laugh enough that the Main House requested us to pipe down a little. The others started another movie but I had already seen it and went to sleep.

Sunday we all slept in late, ate, and watched another movie on TV (the 'nun' one with Whoopie Goldberg). Juan taught me some chords on the guitar. We girls managed to arrive at the church about an hour late.

Monday... I really don't remember what happened Monday.

Tuesday... Tuesday night Felipe came over to visit. Silvina and Emi lent us their roller blades. It was fun to skate after about a decade; but only a little on the sidewalk, as I didn't feel like trying the street and watching out for traffic. Maybe a good thing, since we had to quit rather soon when Felipe managed to lose some of the screws in his skates.

Wednesday afternoon I went to visit the Chacarita cementary, quite close, only twenty blocks or so away. It is enormous. I only visited a small part of it but took over fifty pictures. One part is a little city of tombs, like houses with narrow alleys between them... and you can see inside some of them. Will be linking pictures when I get back.

Thursday afternoon I went to visit the Museum of Oriental Art, only to discover it was being moved to another location. So I was stuck with the Museum of Decorative Art, which fortunately didn't turn out to be the semi-modern stuff we studied in Argentine Art. Rather, it was a house in a baroque French style, two floors, no photos allowed. Sorry. Afterwards I had time to go back and visit just about all of the Museo de Bellas Artes in a more relaxed manner, instead of hunting up subjects for Art homework. After that it was time to come back for our small group in the evening.

This morning I had planned to go to the city center and take photos of important things like the Casa Rosada (the Argentine White House), Plaza de Mayo, the obelisk, and the world's largest McDonald's. But yesterday we stayed up late to talk about something and then had to clean up the dishes to avoid more cucarachas. So let's hope it doesn't rain this afternoon, despite all the oppressive humidity. But then again, better if it rains today and doesn't rain tomorrow, since Silvina and I are going to a nearby city to visit the Museum of Natural Science (lots of dead animals) and walk around to see the city.

Happy Thanksgiving

¡Feliz Día de Acción de Gracias!

(Happy Day of Action of Thanks)

Temporary-hometown news

Yes, that's right, we are hitting the season of cucarachas. I'll let you look that one up. It is not advisable to leave food out in the open or go around the house barefoot in the evening. Besides, if you're barefoot you can't smash 'em when they pop out of nowhere. There does seem to be some odd tradition of leaving stomped cucarachas lying where they were stomped, so I have discreetly undertaken the job of giving them a decent garbage burial.

That delightful intolerable heat of a Buenos Aires summer is finally arriving. Taking the colectivo + finding a seat = time for a nap. Before the close of classes, our Spanish professor briefly described the January joys we'll be missing: stepping out of a store and getting punched by a fist of humid heat, or taking the subway sauna - especially developed for businessmen in suits (I was about to say 'tailored' and decided against it, knowing how people refuse to believe puns are unconscious).

No, playing the guitar is not so easy. It really hurts your fingertips to press down the strings for various chords, especially the lowest ones near the left end (nice exact description, huh?).

Christmas season is approaching. Housemate and artist Emi was getting ready yesterday by painting several small decorative boxes (to sell) with snowmen and holly. Though they don't have snow here, our version of Christmas is popular, what with all the foreign films and publicity.


In news outside of Buenos Aires, did anyone else enjoy finding out that NASDAQ wants to buy its London counterpart? Showed up in the daily newspaper El País yesterday.


And that's all we have time for today, folks. On the way home for lunch, I want to stop by a bookstore that has tablefuls of books on sale (5 pesos, or around $1.64), and this afternoon is a visit to the Chacarita cementary - only 20 or so blocks away, walking distance, and with plenty of statues, famous personages, and a big park.

Comics from Argentina

True, they're a lot less interesting without the illustrations. But a book of a '70s or '80s strip called Mafalda makes me laugh a lot and I wanted to share a couple with you.

#1

Felipe is reading the comics and Mafalda is in a chair near him.

1- Mafalda: Listening to the readio has cleared up something in the Vietnam mess for me.
Felipe: Oh, really?
2- Mafalda. Yes! It seems that on one side are the "North Americans", right? and on the other side are the "North Vietnamese". Then there are the "South Vietnamese", that...
(Felipe listens)
3- Mafalda: ... firght agains the "Vietcong", which fights against the "Americans", which in their turn are against the "Communists". There's also "the Union", and then "the Reds", that...
(Felipe listens with widened eyes)
4- Final scene: Felipe running off yelling "Help!", leaving his chair overturned and comic lying on the floor. Mafalda watches him with a ?.

#2

1- Mafalda and Philip playing chess on the floor.
2- Mafalda's dad walks by and says, "Ahhh, chess! When I used to play it nobody could beat me."
3- Same scene as 1.
4- Same, except Mafalda remarks, "Do parents say those things so we'll admire them retroactively?"

Painful

You can think of and pray for Daddy right now. He broke a rib or two. It's not comfortable or fun.