Waiting for the Page to Open

Well, I am back in the land of dial-up internet. My dad - who is one of the more technologically savvy people I know, and who owns a 9-cartridge bad-ass color printer he uses for large-format digital photo printing - still, unfortunately, relies on the old dial-up modem to get online.

Although it would be fitting with his personality quirks to reject some seemingly fine amenity of the modern world based on some moral issue, this is not the reason for the internet deficiency in this home. The reason, I have come to find out, is that it is physically impossible to run cable to his house because his property is cris-crossed and surrounded on all sides by irrigation ditches.

Ah, the benefits of country living. No high-speed internet, no cable TV. He has sprung for "the dish", but has passed over the several-hundreds-of-dollars-a-month internet service from the same provider.

I have become so spoiled, once again, with high speed internet. I am remembering what it was like to be in Chimoio, where not only did we rely on dial-up, we had to share the line between 6 people, all hungry to communicate with the outside world. No wonder I was a nut-case back in that shared house...

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In other news, Ricardo and I ordered save-the-date cards for our wedding, which arrived here the other day. I had a look at the cards and they are very cool, but slightly different than the impression I'd gotten from the computer-generated proof. I suppose this is a good lesson for when we actually order our invitations - get a real, paper-printed proof before deciding on colors. I'm not disappointed - I mean, they are save-the-date cards after all, not some huge important detail in my life, but it's always surprising to see how my assumptions can be off.

We've had to postpone our wedding slightly. The new date is 05 July. It will still be in Rio, still in the Anglican Church, still with the reception in the Casa Rosa.

We decided to change the date because my cousin L. (one of only 3 cousins! I have a very small family) is set to graduate from high school the exact same day Rico and I had chosen for our ceremony. I really, really want my uncle and his family to be at our wedding, and certainly didn't want to force one of "those decisions" as to which event everyone would attend. So we pushed the date forward to the next available US federal holiday and are planning accordingly.

Now I have the small task of obtaining addresses, preparing envelopes, and mailing out save-the-date cards for the 125-or-so people that will be invited who live in places other than Rio de Janeiro.

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The banana project will be finished late tonight. My part of the project, that is. Rico still has to add in all the finalized financial information, but other than that, it's ready to go. I can't believe it.

Speaking of, I should get to work. I have a brand-new laptop I'm working on (I love it, it's another Toshiba), complete with Office 2007, and I'm taking a bit of a beating trying to find all the specific little tools I am accustomed to using in Word and Excel.

Have a great day , friends.