Well it is a little chillier than I had thought. So I have fashioned my hat back into my pants.

So sometimes we have cable. This means that I occasionally spend my evenings rotting my brain watching the terrible, soul-destroying crap that is on television these days. At the moment, the new American Gladiator is gracing the screen. It features warriors like Venom, Adonis, and Jeff. Jeff? No one named Jeff is going to beat someone named Adonis. I think my least favorite shows are ones that involve trashy people fighting strangers for the love of a famous stranger. On Rock of Love, they invited the girl’s parents to meet Bret Michaels. If I ever hit rock bottom or have a lobotomy and decide that that is the course on which I wish to take my life, please, do not endorse my decision by appearing on the show with me. Geez.. You know what show I do enjoy? The Playboy show. Those girls are funny. Holly is my least favorite. Aside from the fact that they have to share an 80-yr-old boyfriend, they get to do some amazing things. Tonight they were detained by police trying to visit the Prince of Monaco. So I suppose I should qualify that this is a perfectly tame show on E! and it’s real name is The Girls Next Door. It’s not indecent. School has started again. The children were a bit sore that we weren’t up daily during their winter break. I didn’t bring our bag of “incentives” (okay, bribes) one day and they were pretty pissed about that too. They’ve forgiven us though and we had a bevy of little homework completers every day. We have been keeping ourselves busy with PC paperwork. Every few months we have to fill out these long forms. They want numbers, but the numbers are totally arbitrary because everyone is doing something different. Volunteers the world over have to fill out these forms and it all gets condensed into a 2 paragraph report typed up by a Senatorial aide. We’ve adopted a dumpster cat. It is gray striped with a white belly. It likes to curl up on our porch chairs. We feed it on the steps, it is not allowed in the house. I don’t think it would let us get close to it anyway. If we have neglected to feed it, it will come and look forlornly into our house from the back door. We keep changing its name. The name I feel most appropriate is Fillippe, but Patricio vetoed it on the grounds that I already named the bird that used to live under my truck Philipo. I’ll try to get a picture of him. I just keep losing the camera. We should be home in March for a couple of weeks. Woohoo. We’re ecstatic, you should be too. As regards our return to the states, Patrick would like to request that whoever meets us at the airport bring along 1 cold Budweiser and 1 cold Sam Adams. I would like to request Maggie.