Yeah, so I haven't kept that new web page updated yet. I've been busy. This week and last week there is/was testing for placement at work, and since they haven't given me any groups to teach during the week (only one on Saturday), I have been raking in the extra hours to try to help feed us. Too bad it will all be over in a week, and then I have to go back to being left out at home. The cats will like it though. They get all cute and fuzzy and purry when you spend the afternoon laying around with them.

Being pregnant gives me distinct memories of that horrible Alien movie that I saw when I was too young to see it (not to self, do not let Juliãn watch horror movies before he is 10). I can sit here and watch this lump move around under my skin. It's quite facinating, and not at all distressing, but then I remember those scenes of Sigorne Weaver and the strange moving thing in her stomach, before it shoots out of her and attacks someone. I wonder why the writers of that movie decided to put that kind of parody into it. I'm sure, somewhere out there, there were some really offended pregnant women. Maybe the writer was a guy who really wasn't happy about being father. Maybe he was creeped out by being punched or kicked by his child to be through it's mother's belly while he was trying to do something kinky. Maybe he was likening the moving thing in the belly as the thing that destroyes or takes away your life, in a symbolic sense, so took it literally here instead. All in all, it is an unfortunate comparison, after having experienced it my self. I recommend having an alien in your belly. I've heard that's what some babies look like when they come out too, like small cone heads. So the comparison goes on.

I have been in and out (mostly in) my place of work for more than 12 hours now. It's starting to get to me, especially since someone's cell phone keeps ringing in here, the same one about every 3 minutes, as if the person calling doesn't really believe that that teacher is really teaching, but that she is actually standing here, staring at the phone, refusing to answer it. I had thought to look for it and answer it myself just to tell them that who ever they are calling really isn't here, so there is not point in wasting their money and energy on calling them back repeatedly. But if I did that, I wouldn't have anything to write about, now would I? There it goes again...

Nothing else terribley exciting is really happening here these days. Maybe that will change later in the semester. I was really wanting to go eat some cake at the snack bar, but it closed early. No cake for me. (The phone is ringing again) I have replaced my caffeen addiction with one for chocolate (another great source of caffeen), so lack of cake is sort of a crisis. I'm going to go home and have some chocolate milk.

Rotisserie, I have been corrected.

I was thinking of something exciting when I logged in here, but my lack of sleep seems to be affecting my memory, so I have forgotten what I was going to write. Oh well.

I have become a roticery. (I don't even know how to spell that, I hope it's right.) I don't want to be a roticery anymore. Due to stretching ligaments, or rather the fact that they are so loose, they hardly hold anything together like they should now, I imagine I know what people with arthritis feel like. I cannot sleep at night. I just turn over and over (hence the roticery), trying to find a way to sleep that doesn't hurt my aching legs, make me dizzy, or crush my protruding belly. Air conditioning seems to make it even worse, and makes my nose run, so we're not having any of that either. Poor Maridão is feeling so hot these days, I might just have to pity him and go sleep in the hammock some nights. But then again, he still sleeps, even if he's hot. I'm not really sleeping at all these days. It sort of feels like the beginning of the flu, but I know this flu will last another several months, so that's sort of discouraging.

Today we are supposed to have lunch at my Brasilian mom's house. It's like an oven in there, no shade and on the top floor. You just sit there and sweat. I only bother to shower in order to cool off now, but I get hot and thirsty just thinking about being there. At least I don't have to do any dishes. Or cook.

We have been having a vast amount of winter like rain this summer. At least in the last two weeks. The only difference being that during the summer, much like in Michigan, there is thunder and lightning and you have to run around and unplug everything electronic that you care about, and you should not take showers.

Yesterday, the rain came on so fast and so hard that the main road flooded, or rather the sewer over flowed. Maybe a little of both. Utter chaos ensued apparently, because most of the traffic started coming up our street in the back, including the buses, which alerted us that something was array. We wandered out to take a look and found a stalled car in the middle of a massive lake that covered the road, sewer channel (basically a ditch with a river of pee and poo, covered by some flimsy cement strips that the occasional pivete steals by night), and the newly cleared graveled area across the street. A bit farther up the street were two cars facing the wrong way for the lane they were in, not moving, as well as another car that apparently was trying to back out into traffic from a nearby parking lot and found it's self stuck in the lake. The dead car guy got out and tried to push his car out of the way, in all that brown and warm rain/sewer water, but was unable to move it much by himself. Shortly there after, a bus that was stuck behind him parked and several men got off to help him push it up onto our road and out of the way. With all that water, covering the entire road, in 7 short minutes, it all disappeared into the sewer ditch to run down and flood somewhere else, before being dumped either into a treatment plant (maybe) or into the river and eventually the ocean. As my mother would say "STORM WATER NIGHTMARE" - at least it's not such a worry that the water is warm when it hits the ocean here. The water is warm anyway, it's summer.

I finally updated the belly pictures page, so the gigantizing of my abdomen can be seen by clicking the link on the left. I'm also adding one that I hope to keep updated - very simple, just with random shots of whatever happens during the week. At least that will take less time to do. Check out the "This week in Bahia" link.

I realized I married a crazy man when at a party I witnessed a half hour presentation of an improvisation song about "cofrinhos" - otherwise known as butt cracks. This consisted of each of the men getting up, singing a 4 line contribution that they made up on the spot, pulling down the back of their suits, and dancing the butt crack dance.

More stories later.