4/9/2014 - My workplace computer has software that blocks some screens in WordPress and not others. One interesting result is that I can add a post from Add New Post, but can't edit it once I save it. I think I wrote the beginnings of something the other day, but I can't see it now to finish it.

I can't get into Xanga at all from the office.

Stuff going on:

Alicia recently discovered that she needs to get to Colombia in time for an event scheduled for April 21. This has meant scrambling for airfares and a place for her to stay while she's there and last-minute purchases of gifts or items to sell. I was a bit stressed by it, because I had thought we had until May to arrange her travel, but then I discovered that airfares are considerably cheaper in April. So that helped counter the stress.

In the meantime, I have a work trip to Panama City, Florida starting this weekend. Rather than fly, I'm going to take a rental car. It saves my agency money, and this way I can take Alicia along. We'll go up this Friday and stay until things are done, probably the next Thursday. Then we'll rush back to Tampa in time for her to catch Friday morning flights to Ft. Lauderdale and Medellín.

While Alicia is gone, I'm planning to tear out the vinyl floor in the breakfast room and kitchen and put down tile. Then I'll do the laundry room. After that, I'll tape and paint the stairway walls. I want to get as much messy open-space work done as I can before her return, since she hates dust and disorder. I can work on bedroom remodels after she gets back, because I can simply close a door to keep the dust from spreading.

In early June, my younger daughters will visit from Dallas for a week, overlapping with my sister Jenny and niece Paige who will be visiting from Lincoln, NE. We might actually get to one of the Orlando theme parks.

Also on my mind:

Finances have been tight since my Texas lake house's septic tank failed last year. The expense of a new tank and the loss of the renters mean that I struggle every month to pay my bills. I've had the house on the market but there have been no serious bites and very few visitors. I'm going to lower the price this week and see if it gets more attention. At some point I may have to dump it at a fire sale price and forget about recovering any equity. Buying it was one of the stupidest decisions of my life.

We have been planning to sell our Tampa house as soon as it is feasible. I hate the thought, because it really is my dream house, but a) we should be able to make some money on it and b) the circumstances that brought us to Tampa are changing. By the time I finish the upgrades, it will be a spectacular place, inside and out, so it should sell well.

Reading:

I am rereading my collection of Charles Williams novels. Brilliantly written. The closest thing I can think of in my very limited knowledge of modern American literature is Ted Dekker, but Dekker is considerably more flamboyant and sensationalistic. In Williams's writing, I appreciate the quiet, confident, cheerful faith of the Archdeacon in War in Heaven, and of Stanhope in Descent into Hell. Perhaps Leif Enger's Peace Like A River comes closer than Dekker in caliber of writing and the portrayal of faith, although Enger is not nearly as esoteric.

I have also read (from the lunchroom bookshelf at work) three Lee Child books about Reacher, a hobo who dispenses justice wherever he goes, using skills he learned as an MP in the army. Lots of fun, and usually a massive explosion or fire at the end.

Alicia and I have finished The Wind in the Willows and are reading Jingo! by Terry Pratchett. The translation to Spanish is quite good, although we run across terms from Spain that are unfamiliar to both of us. This is my third time to read Jingo! and I'm enjoying it just as much as the first.

Juan Manuel Santos, the president of Colombia, was at the University of Kansas at the same time I was. I never met him, although I was a classmate of his cousin Francisco, who later was vice president under Uribe. What people don't know about Juan Manuel is that before he was minister of defense or president...

...he played an alien in the hilarious movie Galaxy Quest.

Okay, I'm kidding. I didn't realize people would believe me until I started getting comments on my WP blog. Alicia and I watched this movie the other night and were struck by the similarity.

The other night, I woke up abruptly and rolled out of bed, gasping for breath. My vocal cords were being scorched by acid reflux, and it was all I could do to get air through them. After a few seconds of sheer terror, I discovered that by wheezing in, wheezing out, wheezing in, wheezing out, I was able to get the oxygen I needed. I wheezed and groaned for several minutes until my throat was clear enough to breathe normally.

It was more terrifying for Alicia than it was for me. Her first thought was that I was having a heart attack, or had something stuck in my throat. When she finally saw that I was okay, and I was able to tell her what the problem was, she brought me water mixed with soda to drink and gargle. She also brought me a hard foam pillow that we had purchased with our mattress.

The reflux was most likely caused by eating jello with pineapple shortly before bedtime. I won't be doing that again.

I drifted off to sleep again pretty quickly. Alicia had more trouble. Once she saw that I was sleeping soundly, she managed to get some sleep herself.

She told me in the morning that I hadn't snored at all after the choking episode. Last night I didn't snore much either. Apparently this is a benefit of the foam pillow, which forces me to sleep on my side and keeps my neck straighter.

The scariest thing for me was to discover that Alicia didn't know that 911 is the number for emergency services. In Colombia it's 999. So we got that cleared up.

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In other news, the two jewelry sets I first posted on eBay have been sold to a friend for his wife. Now I have to wait and see how reliable airmail is to Thailand.

On Facebook I posted photos of several other sets that will be available soon: Murano crystal teardrop pendants with matching earrings (four colors available); Murano crystal bead necklace, bracelet, earrings (three colors available); synthetic amber earrings, bracelet, necklaces; cat necklaces with matching earrings. The responses have been very positive. I'll post links once we have them up on eBay.

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Recent events have brought us to the conclusion that we really ought to sell our house as soon as we can get the remodeling done. Selling it would help us get out of debt, ease our budget, allow more time together, and free us for possible relocation. The circumstances that brought us to Tampa have changed, so we can consider living elsewhere.

Tampa's hot, humid summers are hard on Alicia. We're pondering where to move next. South California would be nice (I have two sisters in LA), but hard on our budget. I don't want to return to Dallas, but I would like to be closer to my kids. Austin or San Antonio would be interesting, not as humid as Tampa and with relatively easy winters. I would love to be in the mountains, all else being equal, so we might consider New Mexico. I'm hoping that there will be temporary work assignments available in some of those places this summer. That would allow us to get to know new areas and escape the Tampa humidity for a while.

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We watched Turbo the other night. It made us laugh over and over again. Even funner than Despicable Me 2.

Bye. Have a great evening

In Colombia, Alicia supplemented her half-time university professorship with clothing and jewelry sales. She still takes clothes and perfume to sell to her clients every time she visits Medellín. When I visit the university where she used to teach, I can spot her clients because they're the best dressed ladies there. She remembers each client's sizes and preferences and every single thing she has sold to them in the past. She will assemble full outfits for them: blouse, slacks or skirt, accessories. It's amazing how she can remember the precise shade of a blouse and coordinate it with a skirt from a different store, a necklace and bracelet from another source, earrings from a third, a scarf  from a fourth.... She's a master.

From Colombia she brought handmade jewelry to sell here, but has not been very successful because we only know a handful of people in the Tampa area.

The other day I listed one of her pieces on eBay. It sold immediately to a friend of mine who wanted it for his wife. Here's a photo:

Right now we have these for sale:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Murrina-necklace-bracelet-and-earrings-set-/191079827564?pt=Fashion_Jewelry&hash=item2c7d3ec86c

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Unique-sterling-silver-ring-w-14-karat-gold-tinted-zirconia-stones-size-7-5-/191082001543?pt=US_Fine_Rings&hash=item2c7d5ff487

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sterling-silver-pendant-and-earrings-w-14-karat-gold-tinted-zirconia-stones-/191082021460?pt=US_Fine_Jewelry&hash=item2c7d604254

We will be listing her entire stock in the coming days. You can see what we have under the See Other Items link. We chose to start with eBay but will also list the items on Etsy and other sites soon.

Most of her jewelry is made with natural stones and stainless steel or silver. The workmanship is outstanding. I'm sure it will sell well once we find the right venue.

I'll keep you posted.

Don't worry, Xanga. I won't be trying to sell here. Not that you care. If you did, I wouldn't get spammed constantly.

The other day at Dollar Tree I noticed that the wool detergent bottle had the same shape as the regular detergent. When I turned them around and read the ingredients, they were identical! In other words, there is no difference between these two detergents except packaging.

I wonder how many other product scams like this are perpetrated on us every day.

I am by nature a packrat. I left behind a garage full of junk when I moved to Tampa, and my garage here is full of boxes that I have yet to unpack. This hoarding instinct even applies to relationships.

My parents were missionaries. In the 1960s and 1970s, missionaries typically spent 4-5 years on the field followed by a year back in their home country, so it was normal to have classmates vanish to the US or Canada after a couple of years. Often they came back a year or so later, but sometimes they stayed up north or were reassigned elsewhere.

I treasured my friendships, even when they were far away. I wrote faithfully to my good friends and even to some that weren't close. I collected their responses in a file drawer at my parents' house, and later in shoeboxes at college. When I first got married in 1985, I still had nearly every letter I had received in my life.

A few months into marriage, I worked my way through my college mail accumulation and threw out letters from ex-girlfriends. This was important because I had now committed myself exclusively to my wife.

Many years later, when I was doing some serious soul-searching, I sorted my lifetime accumulation of mail and threw out most of it, keeping only letters from family and a couple of very close friends. It was part of a process of uncluttering my life so God could do new things. I didn't need anchors binding me to my past.

Perhaps because of the transitory nature of missionary-kid friendships, I have clung to relationships as I did those old letters. I have hundreds of Facebook friends, from nearly every slice of my life. My cell phone is full of numbers for people in Dallas that I may never have occasion to call again. I track the blogs of people I have met here and on Xanga to see what news they post.

This clinging has not served me well. After my divorce in 2002, I continued to do major repairs to my ex-wife's house, help with her rental properties, stop by for long Sunday evening chats, celebrate family birthdays and holidays with her... This set me up to be hurt over and over and over.

In the last decade, I've finally been learning the value of a clean break. In 2005 I somehow committed to working several times a week for a handyman client that I dreaded visiting. Finally, after a week in which every single day she did or said something that bothered me (including interrupting my Sunday afternoon with my kids with a call asking me to unload her car, which was full of laminated flooring she had just bought), I had it out with her. It felt very good to drive away from her house for the last time.

At my previous office, I used to be easygoing and open with people. After discovering that things I had told someone in confidence had spread to other co-workers, I pulled back and stopped talking to all but one or two trusted colleagues.

A relative for whom we found and subsidized an apartment became persistently rude and aggressive, so we regretfully cut off contact and financial support. A couple of other close family members have also demonstrated a serious lack of integrity and required us to distance ourselves. These are people with whom we used to spend lots of time.

My wonderful wife Alicia has helped me to see how important it is to break off nonessential contact with my ex. I now communicate with my children's mother only in writing. As a result, my buttons no longer get pushed, I avoid being manipulated, and I can see clearly to free myself from unreasonable commitments made when I was vulnerable.

Cutting ties goes against my nature, but has turned out to be very healthy. I treasure good and healthy friendships and no longer waste emotional energy on relationships where there is clearly no hope for reconciliation.

Leaving people to the consequences of their actions is often the best thing for them as well. We usually learn more from hard knocks than from explanations.

As a linguist, and having grown up reading the King James Bible and Shakespeare, I get extremely irritated when ignorant people goof around with “thou” conjugation and add “-eth” or “-est” to adjectives, nouns, wherever they think it might be funny. There is a mystique associated with “thou” because of its use in the King James. But its use was not complicated, although its conjugation can be. “Thou” was originally the singular form, and “you” plural. With time, “thou” became the familiar form and “you” the respectful form. By the late 1600s, “thou” fell into disuse, and now we use “you” for everyone.

Spanish has a more complicated pronoun history, and remains more complex than English. In school you were taught “tú” and “usted” for “you”. “Usted” conjugates with “él/ella” and is the respectful form, “tú” is the familiar, paralleling “you” and “thou”.

However, in real life, vast sections of Latin America use a third form, “vos”. If you hear it in a song, the singer or songwriter is probably Argentinean. But in conversation, you'll also hear it in parts of Central America, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay... It's rare in the Caribbean, and in Spain “vos” is only used in court.

I learned Spanish in the southwest of Colombia (Pasto and Puerto Asís). Nearly all of our conversation used “usted” (or “busté” as my buddy Pedrito would say). When we moved to Medellín, we had to start using “tú”, plus they also used “vos”, which we had never heard at all before. This took a lot of getting used to.

Roughly speaking, “vos” is familiar/casual (like “dude”), “tú” is familiar/standard (like “you”), and “usted” is respectful (like “sir”). People are not necessarily consistent, plus it varies by region and even family. My wife Alicia, however, is extremely systematic and consistent in how she uses the terms of address.

She always uses “tú” with her son. He also addresses her with “tú”.

With shop girls and street vendors, she uses “vos”. They will respond with ”usted” or “tú”, depending on where they're from.

With her siblings, she uses “usted” if it's a serious conversation (like if she's lecturing or advising them, which is frequently the case). She uses “vos” for casual or joking conversation with them. (Her siblings use “tú” or “vos” all the time, and rarely use “usted” with family.)

With friends, she uses “tú”, and occasionally will joke with “vos”.

With me, she always uses “tú”. I sometimes use “vos” with her, especially if I'm being silly. Once I used the “usted” imperative form (asking her to hand me something), and she was hurt. (I grew up using the respectful imperative and didn't learn the familiar “tú” imperative until college. I still have to think about it sometimes.)

Here are examples of the three in imperative (command) form. The respectful imperative uses a subjunctive conjugation (another feature that has largely disappeared from English). The familiar imperative uses the same form as third person singular present tense, excepting a few irregular verbs. The “vos” form is usually a modification of the “vosotros” form (plural of “tú”, used primarily in Spain), with some exceptions, as you can see below. Sometimes it's appropriate to add a pronoun suffix (-te, -se, -os, -me):

Usted           Tú           Vos            Vosotros
¡Venga!      ¡Ven!     ¡Vení!        ¡Venid!         “Come!”
Coma          Come     Comé         Comed          “Eat”
Vaya           Vete        Vete            Id               “Go”
¡Cállese!   ¡Cállate!  ¡Callate!  ¡Callaos!      “Shut up!”

(And I see Xanga has messed up all my formatting. What a cheap editor! No way I'm going to renew my subscription.)

Simple, huh?

The chairs we bought for our breakfast table came with these hideous striped cushions. We decided to re-cover them.

We bought some nice green fabric at Old-Time Pottery, unscrewed the seats (four screws each), and got to work. The fabric is simply pulled tight over the cushion and stapled under the seat board. It looks like these chairs had already been re-covered at least once. The original material was yellow.

We attached the new fabric over the old. It's best to start with the corners, at least when you have this kind of corner, which is notched for the structure of the chair. The fabric should be stretched tight so there are no wrinkles.

The opposite corner is next, to ensure fabric is pulled tight over the cushion.

The sides are last. If you pull the fabric tight by the corners, wrinkling and puckering is minimized. The result looks quite elegant, especially compared to the ghastly blue stripes of the previous covering. This one had a lump on the front edge from the original upholstery. We undid that corner and tightened up the old fabric so that it ended up smooth and straight.

Quite an improvement, I'd say. The chair looks much more elegant.

My wife will probably be upset that I've let you see our ugly kitchen floor with all the paint drips. Don't worry, it will soon be torn out and replaced with ceramic tile.

This morning when I got in my new car, I turned up the volume on the radio to look for a station, and discovered that it was playing the music I have stored on my phone, in random order. So I listened to that instead of the radio. This is what is on my phone:

Alicia Isabel Santacruz: A mis amigos (My wife! Her first album, produced in 1983)

Alicia Isabel Santacruz: Migas de silencio (Her second album, from about 1988. The weird thing is that the title song is about her. The songwriter had a crush on her for years and finally realized nothing would come of it, so he wrote a goodbye song I translated here on my Xanga site a couple of years ago. He's 30-some years older than she is.)

Carlos Vives: miscellaneous songs (Great music from Colombia's north coast, mostly modernized vallenato)

Chris Rea: The Best of Chris Rea (Fool If You Think It's Over is on this one, but the ones I really like are The Road To Hell, Auberge, and Going Fishing)

Crosby, Stills & Nash: CSN

Juan Fernando Fonseca: Ilusión (More lively modernized vallenato music)

José Luis Perales: 30 grandes éxitos (If I could be a singer, I'd be this guy. Lovely ballads)

Los Loney Boys: Los Lonely Boys (Texican rock and roll)

The Monkees: The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees (Mostly obscure songs and alternate takes)

Coco Montoya: The Essential Coco Montoya (Bluesy rock)

The Moody Blues: Seventh Sojourn (One of the great albums of all time. No flaws)

Willie Nelson: Willie and Family Live