Alfaj0r.com

Apologies for the small delay. The pictures are located in this magical link. Be back soon!

As I promised, here come the pictures! First, a typical “before” shot:

And a couple of days later, I got a call from the eye-doctor’s office, that my glasses were ready. I decided now would also be a good time to give myself a haircut, and here’s the result of those two changes on me:

I’m not wearing the glasses much, I still need to get used to them… I do admit that they make me look so much smarter, ha!

For some reason, I always remember about this at work, so here I am, typing as fast as possible and looking over my shoulder to make sure no one sees me not-working :P
At any rate, a couple of weeks ago we got a pretty excellent movie, called Valentin. It’s about an 8 year old kid in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Adorable and cute are not even close to how the kid is, specially when they do close-ups of his cross-eyed face.
I highly recommend everyone to watch it, it gives a very good idea of what Buenos Aires was like some years ago, and it’s just a good movie overall. Check out the review here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0296915/

I just installed Internet Explorer 7 Beta3, and it already managed to mess up my blog editing. The damn pop-up blocker popped up when I was trying to insert a link, and made me loose all I had written. Ironic!

Anyways, we’ve been packing a lot of stuff, getting ahead of the game for moving day. I’ve been able to bring home a bunch of boxes from work, and they’re very nice boxes for moving: from monitors, printers and computer stuff. They’re very sturdy, in excellent shape, and they’ll make the move rather easy. And I’ve also gotten some bubble-wrap from work, so we can protect our goods. Yay for free stuff from work!

What else… not much. Stef leaves for Maine on Sunday, for a whole week. She has a work conference out there, so I’ll be all by myself. Plans for that week are: eating out of boxes, farting and burping out loud, playing with Kramer and just work. I’ll also try to pack up as much stuff as possible, and perhaps cleaning a bit. I might also give myself a haircut, just in time for my new glasses. I’ll make sure to post pictures of that!

Well, it has taken me this long to get over Argentina’s loss in the World Cup. I got that friday morning off at work so I could stay home and watch it, and what a game! But once it came to the penalties, I knew it was just up to chance. However, I still don’t know why Riquelme and Crespo were taken out while we were still winning. Damn it, Pekerman!

Anyways, last week I went to the eye doctor, to get my eyes checked out (last time I had them checked out was about 7-8 years ago), and he said that everything looks very good. I have a very small far-sight problem, but nothing abnormal. He suggested I’d get some glasses, specially for when I’m on the computer for a long time (example: work), so I got me some nice looking ones. They should be done next week, so you’ll get to see a picture of me in them pretty soon.

Last night we went and saw the newest Pirates of the Caribeean, and it was quite good. Very entertaining, there were a couple of scary parts (Stef jumped in her chair a few times) and some awesome slimy looking stuff. It ended very openly, and there were plenty of unclosed sub-plots to warrant yet another sequel, but I won’t tell anything. If you haven’t seen these movies, you should!

Bah! Today, we had a little note on our door from Charter Digital Communications Inc. (aka the cable company). It says something like “We have been auditing your area and have noticed that your connection is not under a contract, thus it is being cancelled”.
BLAH! Over one year we’ve had free cable, and TODAY they cut it off? When tomorrow morning is the soccer game Argentina-Germany for the semi-finals? NUTS!

Anyways, i grabbed the good ole wire-antenna, and I think I’ll be able to watch the game on Unovision, the mexican channel. I sure hope so.

Alas! The search is over, and we have a new place to call home. Although the moving in date is not until July 24th, we’ve already been over there twice, and we are really excited about it.
Yesterday we signed a couple of papers and paid the deposit, and we also took a LOT of pictures. If you want to look at them, check out Stef’s picture album at http://www.flickr.com/photos/snaguilera/sets/72157594179457528/

More news to come soon!

So, as predicted, Argentina won. Just in case you live in a bubble, here’s one of the greatest goals in this World Cup:

Also, since I use Firefox as my web Browser, I’ve installed the StumbleUpon extension, for when I want to browse the web, but I have no idea what I’m looking for. It’s pretty cool! You should check it out for yourself!

So, Argentina has been kicking all sorts of ass in the first stage of the World Cup (of soccer, for those of you who think football is played with helmets on). Although I haven’t been able to watch a single game, I’ve listened to most games at work. I found a couple of online streams that are basically the audio of the TV broadcasts, and they’re in spanish.
Rigoberto, a mexican that works in the line next to mine, has been listening along too, but he’s not too happy with how his national team is doing… and next Saturday, Argentina plays Mexico, and that will sure give us something to talk about on Monday at work!

Anyways, it’s getting pretty damn hot here. Daily highs are in the mid 90s, and there isn’t a single cloud at sight during the day. Luckily, our apartment stays rather cool, and so far we haven’t had to turn the AC on! I foresee a change in this behavior though, soon enough, mostly due to the wants and needs of my beloved wife.

Also, we’ve been actively looking for a new place to live: a house. However, we are not going to be buying anything, as we are still not certain of what our plans for the future are.
But how, what house, you say? Oh, yes, back to that. Well, we’re thinking of moving into a big house (3+ bedrooms) and having our friends Meredith and Ryan as roommates. They’re also married (to each other, just to be real clear), and we share a lot of things that we like and enjoy, plus they have a dog too!
There’s already a few candidate places, so we might be moving sooner than later!

As a final paragraph, I’d like to say goodbye to this last year’s AFSers in the Silver area team. It’s been a great year, for all of you and for me. I’ve learned a lot about volunteering, thanks to a couple of rough situations, but I’m very proud of every single one who has completed their experience and is now an AFS returnee. Yay!

It’s been quite a while since the last time I gave this blog a serious update, but that will no longer be the case, because here comes a fat juicy one!

There’s lots of big “news” to share, that most people know about but I never took the time to write here, so I’ll just make a little list.

1. The new job is going great, and it seems that my employers are very happy with my performance. So good I’ve been that I have already been assigned special audits just for me, that only a select few run, and I am now one of those select ones. Hah!
2. I finished my Associate’s degree at TMCC, with a title in Computer Programming. Next step will be getting a Bachelors in Computer Science, most likely, but I will most likely be taking this upcoming semester (2nd half of 2006) off, and just work full-time. I could certainly handle working and studying both full-time, but I think that a 4-year college will be a bit more demanding and I’ll have to actually do some work/reading. Heh.
3. We have a new car, it’s a 1997 Subaru Outback Impreza, and it’s very nice! Stef gets to drive it around, and I now get to drive the good ole Saturn. The great thing about this new car is that it has 4 doors and it’s a small wagon, so we’re excited about using it for lots of outdoor activities, such as camping, mountain-biking and some sort of snow activities in the wintertime.
4. We are still vegetarians, and we’re pretty healthy. I’ve started putting on some weight, I think eversince I stopped working for UPS. If it wasn’t for our diet I’d be chubby chubby, but I still look quite like the usual me. However, that’s no excuse, and I’m working on getting back into shape.

I’m going to try to keep updating this more often, since it’s also nice for me to look back and see how silly I was being in the past. I’ve also tried talking Stef into being a “correspondent” for this here blog, and she signed up, but she hasn’t done much about it yet. Perhaps the few of you that still read this could encourage her!

Also, I’m not updating my blog in spanish any longer, so for all you spanish-native people, welcome to English! (hi mom!)