My WFMW is DELICIOUS!

Delicious Library that is. For anyone with a Mac, keep reading; for the rest of you, sorry but my Works For Me Wednesday tip won't help you. But you'll find plenty that will if you hop over to Rocks In My Dryer.

I have a few books (okay, those who know me, get up off the floor and stop laughing). When we knew we'd be moving overseas I got rid of about 800 but that still left a few (pause) Hundred.

With all that was going on in our lives this last year, the thought of getting my books organized and catalogued did not fill me with joy. But I knew it was necessary, if for nothing else, then for the shipping process.

As when we shipped all our worldly belongings to South America.

So when the son gifted me with The Delicious Library and showed me how easy it was to use, I might have spontaneously burst into song. Not really, but I did feel IMMENSE gratitude (and therefore did NOT burst into song since that would have been painful for all involved, most especially the son who has on occasion asked me not to sing when I'm next to him in church).

Bottom line is: What would have taken DAYS can now be accomplished in minutes and hours. The built-in web camera on your Mac will take a picture of the bar code on the back of your book (or CD or DVD or game...) and automatically pull up all the information from the internet and "place" the book (or CD or DVD or game...) on your virtual bookshelf. You can decide if you want to see the book covers or just simply a list of titles, perhaps organized alphabetically by author? (this is not my bookshelf, but an image from the Delicious Library website)

I L-O-V-E it! I can see at a glance that we brought 667 books and 34 movies with us (haven't catalogued our CD collection yet but that's coming). I honestly have not explored the full capabilities of this program but when I have time I'll definitely be sitting down and playing with it to see what else it will do.

Now, I will say I had one itty-bitty problem. But it was not because of the software. Oh no, it was because of the book publishers who opted for a cheap alternative to doing their job right. A line of paperbacks will often carry the same bar code, no matter the book. This is annoying and I hope they stop doing that soon. The book that kept popping up while scanning books from a particular line of mysteries was one I don't even own, nor have ever owned. So all of those had to be typed in.

BUT it's a simple matter of typing in either the title or the author and a list of options pop up and you merely double click on the one that matches your book. Voila!, all the information on the book is immediately there.

For anyone with *ahem* a few books, CDs, DVDs, games...this is a program you cannot, SHOULD NOT live without. Keep track of what you own in an easy, efficient and FUN way (while scanning books you can take time to make faces at the camera and practice your various 'mom' looks to alternately scare, intimidate or show that you'll brook no nonsense from your little rugrats).

And son, THANKS AGAIN for the gift of Delicious Library, my favorite software EVER!

Las Flores

After spending almost twenty years in the frozen north, a.k.a. Michigan, we are really enjoying a more moderate climate. That includes a wide variety of plant life, and especially flowers. While looking through photos yesterday I thought perhaps y'all might be interested in seein' some of our real purty pictures :-) So in no particular order...






I've seen air plants before but never their flowers until the neighbor was showing us around her yard. The pink and purple are so vibrant! I'd already selected these pictures and then today my tutor took us with her to Tanti, a small town nearby where she teaches an English class. While she was busy we wandered around and snapped photos with my cell phone (since the camera is back in the U.S. for repairs) and I decided to include a few of those as well.

The hubby's eagle eyes caught a glimpse of a familiar plant, a passion fruit vine like we had growing behind our house in Uganda. Have you ever had passion fruit juice? It is SO good! And we're pretty excited to know we can grow it here, too. A little farther down the road we came across some HUGE cacti. This particular cactus was probably six feet across and nestled in its spiky leaves was a single bloom. And finally a shot of wild roses growing along the fence of an old church. Not bad for a cell phone camera, eh?

From The Insomniac Side Of Things (and keep reading for the recipe at the end of the post)

It's really quiet at o'dark in the morning. I woke up way too early and after tossing and turning for an hour I decided to just get up and get busy. Good time to get a little blogging done. And since I've been speaking a lot of Spanglish lately, I'm gonna write like I talk. Only maybe not so much since I usually do use more Spanish and that might get really confusing for those who don't know any. I figure a word here and there will be understandable from the context of the sentence. Comprende?

The streetlights cast interesting shadows over our little barrio. Have I ever told you that our calle is only one block long? And some taxi drivers don't know about it so we have to describe where it is, between such and such streets and almost to the lake... One calle goes one way (south) to the lake and the other goes one way (north) away from the lake. And as you're coming south, our calle is "la ultima" (last one) before "la costanera" (coastal road). Once we turn onto our calle we tell the driver "Casi Estrada, casi, casi, a la derecha" (almost to the end of the block, almost, almost, to the right) and if he still appears confused we describe our fence which is "verde".

Since it's only una cuadra, it's really not hard to find.

Our barrio es muy tranquilo. Most of the time. Except when the young guy across the street has friends over and they work on un auto. The vrrrooom, vrrrrooom of the engines doesn't bother us so much but when they're working on the horn, radio or speaker systems it can get a little annoying. This doesn't happen too often, mainly porque su abuela no permite.

We still haven't met la vecina en frente. We're thinking she's a single mom who works in Cordoba because she's gone all day, leaving early in the morning and arriving late in the evening most days. And since her gate and garage door are automatic, we've never actually seen her outside except once when she had visitors and she came to let them in the smaller gate which is not automatic.

I think my hubby's back is starting to feel a little better and we plan to start back with the painting this week. I can't begin to tell you how anxious I am to get the living room painted, make the curtains and get them installed. With todas las ventanas, it's sorta like living in a fishbowl. In case you didn't see the post with the picture of my living room, you can check it out here.

Aside from the privacy issues, we also want to have the curtains installed before summer really hits and this room becomes a sauna. We've already experienced it a bit on a few of the warmer days this Spring. And during the winter las cortinas will help keep the room a little warmer. Without any insulation in here and single-pane las ventanas, cuando hace viento we'll need an extra barrier against the cold!

This is a pretty long post already, but I'm going to make it a little longer by including a recipe the daughter makes that's always a hit at parties. And it fits in well with Linda's Fall Into Flavor theme this week of "football finger foods". Linda herself has posted three, count 'em: THREE recipes. No doubt there'll be muchas recetas by the end of the day that we can all enjoy this football (or futbol in our case) season. So stop by 2nd Cup of Coffee and don't miss out on any of the yummy goodness.

Bacon Wrapped Water Chestnuts

1 cup ketchup
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
16 ounces sliced bacon
2 (8 ounce) cans water chestnuts, drained

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).Cut bacon slices into thirds. Cut some of the bigger water chestnuts in half. Wrap chestnuts in bacon and secure with toothpicks; place in a 9x13 pan. In a saucepan, combine ketchup, brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce; heat just to boiling. Pour sauce over bacon and water chestnuts. Bake in preheated oven until bacon is completely cooked, about 45 to 50 minutes.

These are muy delicioso!

Worship Time: "A Living Prayer" by Alison Krauss

Alison Krauss has such a pure, lovely voice and her Gospel music is simple but beautiful. The video is merely a compilation of pictures from the rural Georgia mountains which look enough like Kentucky to make me homesick for the hills.