Weeks 30-32: Project 365, the 2015 Edition

Tuesday, July 22

Return visit to the hematologist gave us the opportunity to stop and get some photos of this new sculpture. It's some kind of memorial to firemen but we don't know what Bird Lady has to do with it. Maybe once it's all done we'll find out.

Good news from the hematologist: my white blood cell count was back to normal, my iron is edging up and, while on the low end of the spectrum, it's now within normal parameters. So I didn't get an infusion of iron after all. We're trying to eat more iron-enriched foods and hope it will cause that number to keep rising (it's 69 on a scale of 65-175).

Wednesday, July 23

The river has gotten really low (we're in the middle of winter, the dry season). There's a section along the river that's quite popular with tourists during the warmer months and when we went to the clinic to see my doctor, I snapped this shot with my phone. If you enlarge the photo, you can see a flat area and stairs across the way.

On this side are lots of picnic tables, concrete boxes for grilling, and new playground and exercise equipment. I'll try and get some pictures of that area for next time.

Monday, July 27

We began working on the bedroom today. Ivan took outlet covers off...

...and I started painting. Today I painted by myself, but on Tuesday Ivan helped and we finished off the room. So nice to have that project checked off the list!

Friday, July 31

Went to Sta Rosa for a long weekend. First thing on the agenda was to meet with Miguel and Mari. They take care of the house for us, and are dear friends who help in other ways too. The men with our mission are going to get together at the house in September to keep working through policy issues and other items of business. Mari is going to fix and take lunch to the men each day, and Miguel will prepare an asado one evening.

We've had such an abnormally warm winter but I was still surprised to see flowers blooming in Mari's yard!

Sunday, August 2

While in Sta. Rosa I worked my way through the many boxes we have stored out there. The back storeroom had gotten out of hand, to the point it was hard to open the door. It was time to get those things organized again! Plus we had a bunch of boxes stuck up in cubby holes above closets that we put out there when we moved from Canning Street to our casita (there just wasn't enough room in the garage). What was in all those boxes I wondered? While I worked on that, Ivan prepared meals. When I make a salad, I literally toss it all together. When he makes a salad, he creates art!

Almost too pretty to eat, isn't it? But that didn't stop us :) It was sooooooo good!

Wednesday, August 5

Ivan prepared asado for lunch, grilling a chicken and a variety of vegetables. We are sure enjoying the grill he built!

Thursday, August 6

I have a weather app on my phone and snapped this screen shot to show you what kind of winter weather we're having.

I think there have been days when our temperature has been about the same as where we used to live in Michigan, where it's summer!

Saturday, August 8

Self-explanatory collage:

Monday, August 10

Lots of other stuff going on but I have been slowly progressing with the baby quilt. I finished "framing" the bottom (blue) section today and then laid the three sections out on the bed to see how they looked together.

I'm not positive this will be the final version. I may trim down the wide "frames" and add sashing and a border. The verdict is still out on that. I quite like the color block effect; it has a mid century modern feel to it, in my opinion. But I'm waiting for input from my artistic sister-in-law as well as Tina. Tina, especially, since she will have to look at it every day for a year or two :)
[Edited to add: Tina loves it!] 

Tuesday, August 11

Today ended up being our once-a-month shopping trip to Cordoba. We made a loop through the city, stopping at Walmart, a health food store that carries a lot of gluten free products, had lunch at Viejo Lobo, and did our bulk shopping at Tadicor. Across from Viejo Lobo is a new store and the sign caught our eye. It's a play on word(s). Carnear is the verb "to butcher", carne is the word for "meat" and "AR" is the abbreviation for Argentina. Cute, heh?

[I was never quick enough to get a picture, but as we traveled through the city we saw a number of flowering trees just loaded with blooms! Normally this doesn't happen until mid-to-late September, but the warmer weather has tricked the flora into thinking it's later than it is.]