pre-Honduras meeting….

Posted on July 21, 2011 by admin

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dogs with attitude…

Posted on July 21, 2011 by admin

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walk in the rain

Posted on July 17, 2011 by admin

One thing we really enjoy living in the North of Tucson is taking walks. The dogs surely love this more than we do. It has been a hot summer, but with the monsoons, it cools down quite a bit in the evening. It rained hard at the house tonight. Once it stopped, we took a walk.

I love the smell of the desert after a rain and the various cactus that grow in abundance everywhere.

Unfortunately, it started to rain while on our walk so we had a long run home….

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fiesta!

Posted on July 10, 2011 by admin

Last night we had 40+ people over for a fundraising dinner in an effort to help raise money for a trip for a short-missions trip to Honduras. We were able to raise a good sum of money and had a lot of fun with so many people in the house. We came to the conclusion that 40-50 people is about the maximum capacity for dinner inside the house. We could have another 100+ people over if we could have people sit outside. Unfortunately, it is far too hot for such things these days.

The first course was a pan-fried quesadilla from hand-made tortillas and hand-made cheese. After that was a delicious bean and tortilla soup. We offered two main courses: enchilada or chilles rellenos. For dessert we had flan and chocoflan. Beverages consisted of horchata, jamaica, and a lemonade/cucumber drink that was surprisingly awesome.

I would definitely like to do this again sometime soon.

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growing desert plants

Posted on July 9, 2011 by admin

Roughly 2 years ago (Aug. 1st, 2009), Yun and I went hiking up Mt. Lemon with the dogs. I wrote about it here. On that little adventure, we found some cactus that we liked, so we dug it up and brought it home to plant.

Here is the photo from 2009:

And here is a photo of it today:

It’s getting big. Not the fastest growth, but it will be impressive in a couple more years. We have thought about adding it to the landscaping of the new house when we get to that point. I think it is called an Argentine Hedgehog

We have done the same with a number of other desert plants we have found. I started two more today.

This little one was found near the house we’re currently living in – it looks nearly dead. I planted it in a bucket. At least you can see roots, so perhaps there’s hope. Its hard for me to tell, but I think this is a Paleleaf Yucca.

This other one I snapped off from a cactus already flourishing. I have no idea how one properly propagates one of these things, so I am hoping that simply placing a piece of it in a pot will yield success. It might be an Argentine Hedgehog, but it is significantly thinner.

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canine cuisine

Posted on July 9, 2011 by admin

We ran out of our dry dog food last week – but prior to that we had been mixing in some wet stuff. Basha’s grocery store unfortunately doesn’t have the regular kidneys and livers and random pieces of animal that the dogs love, so we had to try something new. We went with the turkey giblets and turkey necks. The neck has a lot of vertebrae, so it’s a bit of pain to prepare for consumption. I probably won’t go that route again any time soon.

Tila loved it though.

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food from the sea…

Posted on July 3, 2011 by admin

I’ve never been an enormous seafood fan, but recent trips here have grown my appreciation for it. We discovered the market in Guaymas last year and along with it, good fresh food.

On Friday, we picked up a couple kilos of shrimp and a kilo of scallops. The shrimp I love, but I wasn’t so sure about the scallops. I wasn’t aware scallops were caught in the area. The guy selling them prepared one raw with salt, salsa, and lemon. It was incredibly good and was enough to persuade me to by a kilo of those as well.

That’s a lot of seafood. The dogs are fans too. Yesterday Scout was found catching a fairly decent size entity from the sea. We also found a number of small sardine looking fish which were caught by hand that the dogs inhaled.


The market has a section for butchers. Last time we were there we were given some enormous bones for the dogs at no charge. They chewed on them for months and we actually still have them back at home. This time we paid 10 pesos (roughly a dollar) for 10 bones that had a good amount of meat on them. This sort of thing would run about $5 each back home. What a deal.


It almost looked like it was going to rain last night. It probably did out at sea just off the coast. It was beautiful and the temperature came down a bit (it has been extremely hot). This helped build our appetites for a nice dinner at Bonifacio’s in San Carlos. The food was exceptional and this place remains our favorite.

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fresh bread…

Posted on July 2, 2011 by admin

We dropped off the boat in a small town just south of Guaymas yesterday morning. On the way back we saw a small store advertising bread and we could smell it from outside. Fresh bread. Yum.

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Endless Journey a Guaymas

Posted on July 1, 2011 by admin

Holiday weekened. Yun and I traveled south to the beaches of miramar with Jeff and Beth and our pack of dogs. It was a really long trip.

We took our boat with us this weekend. It esentially doubled the amount of time it took to get here. It was a lot of little things.

As we attempted to depart Tucson, we were pulled over by the police due to the driving lights on the trailer not working. Just a warning, but we couldn’t continue until the lights were working. It was around 8pm at this time. Fortunately, it was just the bulbs that needed replacement, so within 30 minutes we were on our way.

We made it across the border into Mexico and were off to the customs building south of the city. As it was nearly 11pm, we had assumed the lines for importation would be minimal. Sadly, that was not the case.

The last time we waited in this line, we left with a permit for the boat that lasted a week. We were told we couldn’t get a lengthy permit due to the length of the boat (just under 15 feet).

This time we had a different approach. Rather than have Yunuen try to obtain the permit with me by her side, Yunuen suggested I obtain the permit myself. This proved to be a wise approach. Without any problem, we fairly promptly were on our way with a 10-year permit for less money that we had previously paid for a week. I’m convinced these people simply make it up.

Roughly four hours later, around 4pm, we were making our way through Hermosillo when we found ourselved being pulled over by the police. The allegation was that my trailer lights were flickering (they’re weren’t) and that I was speeding (I wasn’t). We were told how inconvenient our citations were for our vacation and then were given an expectant look. Yun wasn’t about to offer them a bribe (which is what they wanted) and asked that they take us to the station to resolve the citations. Moments later we were told we were told we could go due to their graciousness – apparently they didn’t want to go to the station to resolve our ‘citations’. Calling the bluff seems to be the way to resolve these situations.

A little over an hour later, we rolled into Guaymas. It was 5am and the sun was just starting to come up. We have never arrived this late, nor has it ever taken this long to get here. Even so, it is so worth it.

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eBooks….

Posted on June 30, 2011 by admin

For the last 6 months, I have changed the way I read. I now do it only (when able) electronically. I read with word flashing. This is where one word flashes on the screen (or my phone) at a time at variable speeds. The average reader is somewhere around 100-150 words per minute reading a physical book or piece of paper. Reading with word flashing, I can read comfortably at 500 words per minute. Not only is it faster, but my retention is exponentially better.

When I read conventionally, my eyes go back and forth. After about 20-30 minutes, my eyes get rather tired. At regular speeds, 20-30 minutes has yielded about 2500-3750 words. Because my eyes get tired, I lose concentration. I find myself having to go back and re-read certain parts.

With word flashing, my eyes don’t move back and forth, so they don’t get tired. Also, because of the speed, I’m not sounding out the words (which isn’t necessary for comprehension). Therefore, in 20-30 minutes, I am reading 10,000-15,000 words. That’s a substantial increase in a manner that allows me to retain what I’ve read much better.

For reading on the computer, I use spreeder.com and for reading on my phone, I use speed reader lite.

The options for electronic books are huge. I have nearly my entire physical library (~1600 books) in electronic form, along with nearly 9000 additional books. I add about 50-100 books to my collection weekly.

I just backed up my books to an external drive and found they consume nearly 6gb of drive space!


Reading physical books is a thing of the past….

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