Monday Meanderings

I love lists. I make them all the time and get a thrill out of checking things off, one by one -- it just gives me a huge sense of accomplishment when I see lots of little checks. I also like to use lists when it's necessary to sum up a lot of information in a brief document. Or when things are so random that a list is the only thing that makes sense. The latter is why we're going with a list format today.

~ We haven't needed to use the fans for about a week now. It's getting downright COLD at night! This cooler weather comes about a month earlier than normal. I don't mind it because days are still nice and warm, and I personally sleep better when it's cool at night and I can snuggle up under the blankets.

~ We also had a rainier than normal summer which was great for vegetation and the lake -- which is the highest we've seen it since we moved here 2-1/2 years ago.

~ The lake isn't the only thing that's the highest we've seen since moving here: Grocery prices have pretty much doubled across the board. Except for meat which has more than doubled. Needless to say, we've cut waaaaaaay back on meat consumption.

~ Another thing I've cut way back on recently is picture taking. An inadvertent result of the vertigo. Just a little hard to take photos when you spend the bulk of your time laying down. BUT...

~ I've had very little vertigo the last few days AND I've been able to hear a bit -- not much but a little -- in my right ear the last couple days so we're seeing improvement all around. Hallelujah! So I'm purposing to get back to snapping lots of photos and picking back up with P365 this week.

~ Yesterday we met a young man who's studying aeronautical engineering. He's from Salta but his family is Anglo/Argentino so he's bilingual like Ivan. His great-grandfather came to Argentina as a missionary with the Anglican church, his grandfather became a Bishop here, and his parents were also missionaries with the church (although now they're with Compassion International). He grew up speaking English in the home and Spanish everywhere else, much like Ivan did, and he's completely fluent in both languages. In the course of our initial conversation, we discovered he has an aunt and uncle working in Uganda. Not only that, but they're living in the same town where we lived during the year we spent there! [cue song "It's a small world after all"] You'd have to know how small that place is, really no more than a cluster of houses and businesses by the side of the road, to appreciate the connection. His uncle is the administrator at the hospital just 4 km from Kasana Children's Center in Kiwoko. How cool is that?!

~ The experience Ivan gained while serving as construction manager at Kasana will be invaluable as we build here. The block construction and heavy use of cement is very similar in both countries. And quite different from the dry construction method Ivan employed when building houses in the U.S.

~ Thinking about building makes me think about the architect who happens to be the brother of a friend who just had a baby...the one I'm making a quilt for; the quilt that STILL ISN'T FINISHED. For the last few days I've been quilting like mad, but still have a couple hours of quilting left, plus the binding. I'm hoping to have it finished by the time we go back into Cordoba to pick up my test results, so we can stop and drop it off then.

~ In the process of quilting this one I've discovered a tool I ABSOLUTELY ADORE. I've had it in my "tool box" of quilting items for several years, but hadn't ever tried it out. My bad! This is the best thing since sliced bread! I use a leather thimble on my right middle finger to push the needle through the fabric, and in the past I've always used the middle finger on my left hand as a bit of a guide to make sure the needle was going all the way through the three layers. But it meant my poor finger felt like a pin cushion with all the poking it would get. The UnderThimble changed all that and now my finger is poke-free :)

And that is all for this fine, sunny Monday morning...