Wii've scored a Wii

Actually it was my mother-in-law who asked at the local Target on Saturday morning. They had one left from a shipment the night before. So now Laura can stop asking when we're going to buy one. Not that we hadn't been trying to, but in Trinidad they're about the equivalent of $600 U.S. And I'm just wasn't willing to look online every waking minute of every day to find a video game system.
There's a problem with Kevin's laptop connecting to the wireless network at my in-laws' house, so I probably won't be posting any photos from our trip until we're back at home. But so far there has been a lot of eating and grocery shopping and visiting.
Just as there should be.

I (heart) museums

In Houston, we'll likely visit at least one museum. But which one? Art? Nature and Science? A wild card? It's hard to decide.
In Washington, we belonged to the Smithsonian. That was true even before we moved there. New York is great for museums, too, of course, but the Smithsonian is great because everything's right there together -- and because they're all free even if you're not a member.
The Smithsonian recently held a contest to see who had the best story about its museums. This, by Brenda Neece, was the winner, and I think it's great:

My Smithsonian story is really part of the story of one of the greatest passions of my life: musical instruments. When I was ten, my class took a field trip to the National Museum of American History, and we saw the musical instrument exhibit. There I fell in love with the "Servais" Stradivari cello. I told my classmates that one day I would play that cello, and that "it will be mine." Of course they laughed, and the "Servais" will never be mine, but in a sense, this statement predicted the course of my life. I went on to specialize in the history of the cello, completing an undergraduate research project on cellos (including studying the "Servais" and playing it!), followed by a cello performance master's degree, and finally a doctorate on cello history at the University of Oxford. Now I curate a musical instrument museum at Duke University – the Duke University Musical Instrument Collections (DUMIC). Now I am the keeper of many instruments, including an early American cello.
That school trip nearly 30 years ago shaped the whole course of my life. The “Servais” sparked my life’s passion for musical instrument history, in particular that of the cello, and led to my career as a curator of instruments. In that sense, by devoting my life to the work of keeping these instruments safe for the next generation while making them accessible to inspire the present, I have made at least the idea of the "Servais" - mine.

Commenters beware

I've been getting a lot of spam comments (nothing related to posts, just malicious links and such). Obviously those irritate me, and I delete them as soon as I see them.
But I just deleted a comment off the previous post that may well have been written by someone I know. If so, repost and include some ID. Even if I don't know you, feel free to leave comments, even negative ones. But provide some indication of who you are, even if you call yourself "Someone who disagrees with the person who writes this blog."
It's only fair.

What time is it?

Eastertime! It's Easter vacation!
See, they should have made High School Musical 2 about spring break.
Laura's last day of school before the break is today. We have the embassy Easter party tomorrow, which I helped plan as part of my new job, so it's hardly a good start to the break. But then bright and early Friday, we're off to the airport and a six-hour flight to Houston.
Woo hoo! Restaurants! And things we need to buy that aren't marked up 300 percent! And the temple!
Yeah, perhaps the combination of me and the whole living-on-a-Third-World-island thing wasn't the best idea.

March of the (delicious) crabs

Each member of Laura's class was assigned a poem to memorize and present. Hers was about blue crabs marching from their holes to the sea. I made a big blue crab for her to put on her head. I don't know how she'll do on the presentation, but the crab definitely is cool.
I love blue crabs. Eating them, that is. One year we went to visit my great-grandmother in Ponchatoula, La., and some relative or another had gone crabbing and brought their catch to her. They were great, although of course it was a lot of work just to get to the meat inside the little shells.

Insert evil laugh here

It's snowing in Denver today. The heavy, wet snow that I hate shoveling. The kind that freezes solid and makes driving even more difficult.
Ah, the tropics.

Bring birthday candles when you move to a developing country

Remember this lesson!
Saturday I picked up Laura's birthday cake and then went on a shopping spree. The things I needed were simple: candles (which I'd forgotten to buy before), ice (which we hadn't had a good place to keep), rope (for hanging the pinata), chips (because Kevin didn't think we had enough), and beef hot dogs (because all I'd been able to buy in bulk was turkey franks).
I thought the hot dogs would be the thing I'd have trouble finding. Wrong! Apparently all the stores here stocked number-shaped birthday candles at one time, but they've all sold everything except 0s. And obviously 7 doesn't have a 0 in it.
Finally I broke down and went to the party store in the mall, which I knew had birthday candles but I'd been too cheap to buy previously. (Later we couldn't get them to light, but it may have been the wind -- or it could have been that they were crappy candles.)
Nonetheless, it was a lovely party.

Bright, shiny objects

Laura's class at school has been learning about money. One of their reading assignments recently was a passage about what people used for money before paper bills and coins were common. The question they had to answer at the end was something along the lines of "What do you think we should use for money if we didn't have bills and coins?"
Laura's answer: Diamonds. Because everyone likes them because they're shiny.
Am I really this child's mother?
Sorry for the lack of birthday party photos. My computer is being uncooperative, but I don't want to give up on it (and put photos on Kevin's) just yet. Plus, the whole having-a-job thing has reduced my blogging time.

All hail the birthday girl

Yesterday Laura turned 7. Her party will be Saturday. Of course, she thinks every day is a party. I feel differently because I made the party invitations myself.
Some people might remember Laura's birth announcements. They were stamped with her footprint. Yes, using her actual foot. I think I made 75 of them. It was like a little assembly line. I'd paint her foot, stamp a few papers, repaint the foot, repeat, repeat. As I recall, it took a few sessions to get all the announcements stamped.
Somehow the hand-colored tropical fish that I made for this year's invitations seemed simple in comparison. Of course, I also had the assistance of a color photocopier.
Gotta love technology.
Our friend Valentina also is going to use some of the fish designs on Laura's birthday cake. I'm sure it will be lovely.

I'm too lazy to take a photo, but ...

Friday was an important day.
No, it wasn't my first day of work. That's tomorrow. And no, it wasn't Laura's birthday. That's Tuesday. And no, it wasn't the day we got our tax refund -- although I'm hoping that'll be soon, too.
But it was the day we got our new vacuum cleaner.
When I left Colorado, I took our vacuum cleaner to Goodwill. It was perfectly functional, but there just wasn't room for it in the car. In D.C., our apartment complex furnished a vacuum cleaner (and weekly cleaning). When we left D.C., I thought about buying a new one. But I knew there would be one in our embassy-provided house.
But that vacuum cleaner is horrible. It spits out more dust than it sucks up. And for the past few weeks, our housekeeper has been sweeping the carpet. Not good for actual dirt removal, mind you, but at least it looks better than it would otherwise.
I was very excited to see her today at church and to let her know the vacuum cleaner had arrived.
Kevin points out that the vacuum cleaner box exceeded the size limit for the diplomatic pouch. Maybe they figured that anyone who was ordering a vacuum cleaner through the mail had to be either 1. insane or 2. desperate. Regardless, it got through.
Ah, the small victories.

12 things you didn't know

Dee tagged me, so here are 12 things you didn't know about me ... or maybe some of you knew some of them. No matter.

1. My favorite color is yellow.
2. The fact my mother is a conspiracy theorist drives me crazy and makes me laugh hysterically -- often at the same time.
3. I failed my first driver's license test.
4. I took five semesters of Italian in college. (And yes, it would be great if Kevin could get posted there. But no, it's probably not going to happen.)
5. I minored in international relations in college. (I don't keep this a secret, but Kevin recently saw my transcript and announced he hadn't known that.)
6. I was born the day Richard Nixon was re-elected president of the United States. (Anyone who didn't know how old I am now can do the math.)
7. I've lived in eight states and visited a total of 37, lived in one foreign country and visited a total of nine. But I've never been to Alaska, Hawaii, Canada or Mexico. (That last detail is odd because I lived in Arizona and Texas for seven years.)
8. My middle name, Marie, is from my aunt Eva. (My mom used her sister's names for girl middle names until she ran out of sisters -- or had too many daughters, depending on how you look at it.)
9. I'm a stickler for grammar and punctuation and even correct people's grammar in my head during church.
10. As of this moment, I have 25,530 names in my Personal Ancestral File genealogy program. But I'm not related to all of them.
11. I hate grocery shopping -- and that was true even before I moved to a place where it often is an exercise in futility.
12. One of my more selfish/material goals in life is to live in a house with three bathrooms. (One for Kevin and me, one for Laura and possible future siblings, one that has to stay clean for company.) Our last house in Colorado did have 2.5 baths, but the cat claimed one. But since we no longer have a cat, perhaps 2.5 bathrooms would do.

I'm not going to tag anyone -- I know, I know, I'm a party pooper -- but feel free to list random facts about yourselves on your blogs or in e-mails to me.