Updates
Hmm... it's been a week. What's happened? We've had loads of clouds, cool weather (brr - in the 60s and 70s if you can believe it!), moths ('tis the season?), and school work. I took my first Spanish exam, but since it has to be snail-mailed back to the professor, I won't know the results for a bit (I'm sure I did fine).

I tried to take another exam, but the school forgot to give the proctor all the materials, so now I'll be taking that one tomorrow morning. I also hope to take an at-home exam later today, or tomorrow at the latest, for my fourth class. Progress is slower than I'd like, but it's beginning to pick up.

The weather today is a vast improvement: no rain, lots of sun, highs in the mid- to upper-80s. This weekend is going to be gorgeous: sunny, low 80s. Really, I'd rather have the 40s that my family is dealing with in Virginia. Honest. ;-)

Yesterday was a mix of sun and rain. A butterfly decided to take a rest on our front porch area. Getting a picture with its wings closed was easy, but open took a while. I'd see the wings beginning to open, try to get a shot, but by the time the digital camera actually TOOK the shot, the wings were closed again. This happened a lot.



I've also seen Monarch butterflies here for the first time, so I guess they're migrating through en route to their wintering grounds south and west of here.

Yesterday we got cable TV (somewhere, while interviewing a tourist visa candidate, Emily finds herself cheering for no apparent reason). Not to go into gory details, but we tried to get satellite TV for a while and finally abandoned it. Since the cable TV lineup didn't appear to carry ABC or SciFi (sob!), we bought a season pass for Lost and, thus far, the first three Battlestar Galactica episodes. So last night Emily is merrily flipping through the channels and finds... wait for it... Lost. As in the current episode that should come in via iTunes today!

I think it's going to take a while to figure out why some channels are in Spanish, some not, and what's on and when. We have channels such as WB (Warner studios, not the new CW) and Sony (also studios) that have an odd mix of current and recent (last 2-10 years) shows, many of which are also available on DVD. There's a channel called AXN that reminds me a lot of the old USA network, before it was "familyfied" and still aired La Femme Nikita, Xena, and other such shows. AXN airs Highlander, Andromeda, Lost, and other scifi and drama shows.

Now if I can just figure out how to get Cartoon Network and Animax in English, I'll be fine. Okay, it would also be nice to get the various Discovery and History channels in English, too, but I have to set priorities!

And the best part of having cable TV is: NO RABBIT EARS!

Emily spent a week on-call recently, which meant she didn't get out much, which meant another rompecabezas (jigsaw puzzle). Here's the latest (the third since we arrived):


And, from a week or so ago, here's a random sunset. The mountains you see are ones we rarely do; it's generally cloudy/hazy in that direction.


All for now - back to the oh so scintillating textbooks!