Since the last entry I became a graduate with 5 letters behind my name: MBA/MA. That's $20,000 of debt per letter. The graduation was nice and those unbreathable gowns were a great equalizer....everyone looked like they might be 7 months pregnant! The speaker was Robert Zoellick the head of the World Bank who I thought would be a little more inspiring given his stellar resume. Instead he provided a litany of what life was like in 1908. And about half way through the speech Kumquat started kicking my bladder which made the speech and event feel even longer.

In the meantime Carlos has been working away on the house. We chose house colors - but unfortunately the green machine was sacrificed even further as a quick braking for a police sighting caused a paint can to tip over and re-decorate the interior of the car....The scaffolding was taken down from the front so we can now enjoy the pretty colors. The neighbors can also enjoy the new view, but they don't seem to enjoy anything but calling the police to complain about us. One neighbor yelled "compadre, shut up! stop making noise!" (which is tough on a construction sight) and another menacingly asked the workers for their "papers." Of course Carlos isn't their compadre and he let them know that (with a few expletives)....The lovely lady next door re-hired her lawyer and served us with a letter saying that we owed $5,000 for the fact that her chimney MIGHT NOT draft correctly because our house is bigger than it was when first built in the 1860s...

Here are some pictures of the house, the flowers Carlos gave me for graduation and my BIG belly.