Saturday, October 27, 2007

El que tiene mucho, porque tiene mucho?

I'm becoming a soap opera addict here, we only get one
US network channel (cbs), the only channels we get with
non-crap programming in english are Sony and Universal.
After watching House and 2 1/2 men reruns, the only thing left
are the novelas "nuevo rico, nuevo pobre" and "monte christo"

I'm stuck watching Nuevo rico, just to find out what happens
to the lead idiot on the show, Brian. Who started out poor, now
is rich and will probably end up poor again by the end of the show.

Monte Christo I couldn't bring myself to watch, wasting two hours
per night on soap operas isn't a good idea, instead I picked up the
book 'Count of Monte Christo', that sat at my parents house for 15
years and now has traveled with us for the past 7 years.

The book was even better than I remembered, better than the movie
that came out a couple of years ago and certainly better than the novela
version that I'm avoiding to watch. It's interesting that I read it when I was
18 in high school and I clearly emphasized with the young edmond dantes, and
I thought the characters after the passage of 24 years were impossibly old.
(42 years old, that's nearly dead!) Even the shipowner Mr. Morrel was 34 yrs
old when the book started...he seemed ancient.

Now I think, holy heck he was the richest man in Marseille and he was only
34! I'm a freaking loser. All these years have passed and I didn't even spend
any time in Chateau d'if, unless you count 15 years offshore as sort of moving
french prisons. Now I just need a monk in the adjoining cell to tell me where
his 401k is hidden.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

LSU loses, Bobby wins

I was pretty disappointed last week when LSU lost to kentucky,
no national championship this year. Not all is dim in tigerland though,
Bobby Jindal won the governship yesterday. I haven't felt so hopeful
about louisiana since Buddy Roemer won back in 1987.

here's his victory speech.

"The only barrier to success in Louisiana is the willingness to work hard and follow the rules"
"We can change, we must change, we will change"

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Rainy taxes

It's that time of year again, after a couple of extensions I finally
have to try and figure out my taxes. Instead of a nice relaxing day
watching football and drinking beer with my faithful dog at my side,
I'm trying to remember what happened last year while hunting for
documents on the web. Most of the paper records are sitting in a
green trash bag at my parents house, or at the picayune city dump.

Note to self: keep better records next year.

My efforts aren't being helped by the steady rain that just increased
to hail, what they call here in spanish "graniso", but's probably closer
to sleet in size. Our study has a sky light with a small air gap that is precisely
designed to allow all the hail that hits the roof to bounce under the skylight
and into the study. My faithful dog is cowering in the corner while the
hail and w-2's bounce around me.
[insert cowardly dog photo here]



















Oh, well, what's the worse that the irs can do to me, i'm sure they're all
bark with no bite.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

de, de da da... Go tigers!

I'm watching the LSU florida game in a hotel in quito.
The touchdown that LSU just scored is being reviewed, I'm hoping I didn't put
the Joe Jinx on them by watching this game, they were behind, but now they
appeared to have scored...
"ruling on the field is confirmed - touchdown"
...
Now just a minute or so to win the game, which will make up for my sadness
about the saints not knowing where the goalline is this year. I made the mistake of
watching the saints games on espn in colombia...they've lost three, so I think I am jinxing
them. After the first half of the lsu game I thought my jinx was continuing, but luckily, LSU just won!