Of course what makes this interesting is the little orange sign by it informing you that it is a manhole. It even has an arrow to point you to the right direction in case the distance of 1 foot was too far to make the mental connection.

Actually, as you run farther down the road you begin to understand the sign, but this was the first one I had seen labled like this. As you get farther along the manholes move away from the road, but the little orange signs are there on the road in an easy to spot location so that you can know where the manholes are. Some of them are quite hard to see. With the bright orange sign workers are able to easily know where to begin looking for the manholes.

Funny at first glance.

• 2 pounds sliced yellow summer squash
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup milk
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 8 ounces cheddar cheese, grated
• seasoned salt and pepper, to taste
• buttered bread crumbs

Combine squash, onion and salt in a large saucepan; cover with water and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. Drain; mash well. Add milk, eggs, melted butter, flour and cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste. Bake in a buttered 1 1/2 quart casserole dish for about 30 minutes at 350 deg F. Top with crumbs and bake for about 10 more minutes. Serves 4.

He was snapping some great pictures of a girl in a tortilla factory. I jumped in front of the camera and got shot too.

If you are looking for someone to follow on flickr, Mike tends to have great shots in his photostream.

We arrived at the park Saturday morning shortly after it opened at 10:00, but since we did not have a printed copy of the online promotion, we either had to find an Internet shop to print the coupon or pay an extra $30 for the family to enter the park. The promotion we saw online did not say we needed a coupon and therefore we thought it was just a standing promotion. I spent almost an hour running up and down the streets near the theme park looking for an Internet cafe to be able to print the coupon. Since I went through all the work, I printed a couple of extra ones and handed them out to others in line.

The theme park itself is pretty small and it is geared towards young children as you would expect. We were a little disappointed that every time we saw one of the Sesame Street characters walking around they were walking with a handler who was trying to rush them off to a show or something. The characters never had time to stop for a photo. It was not until after we were leaving the park that we saw a few characters who had time for a photo shoot. Then our kids were not interested in getting a picture with them. Our daughter was scared by the larger than life version of the Muppets and our son is too old to be interested in a photo with them. I felt a little awkward getting my picture taken with them by myself, but at least we have a photo to show the kids later.

There were only a couple of rides that were of real interest to us as older people, but our daughter was thrilled with just about all of them. One of the neat things that they have done is make the rides accessible to all ages. We were able to ride the majority of them with our daughter. We did not have to stick her on a ride by herself with the exception of a couple.

The water park section of Plaza Sesamo was great for all ages. We spent the majority of our 7 hours in the park playing in the water. They did a great job in building play areas for small children as well as having a good amount of thrilling water slides. Though we are in the middle of the summer, it did not seem that the crowd was as large as they could handle. Some of the areas were packed, but many of the lines were very short. Much shorter than they were prepared to handle.

Our one major disappointment with the park centered around the difficulty of finding information on the website. It would have been nice to know that I needed to print out the online coupon to get the good price which would have saved an hour walking the streets looking for an Internet cafe. We also specifically looked on the site for the clothing requirements in the water park but did not find them at the time. Unlike the general public, we prefer not to run around mostly nude. We always wear a shirt and shorts at the beach to protect our white little bodies from the sun as well as maintain a bit of modesty. My wife and daughter were not allowed in the water with a shirt on. My son and I ditched our shirts at the bottom of the stairs and slipped them on after each ride. We ended up having to buy a suit for our daughter and I gave my lycra shirt to my wife. The lycra is permissible, but not cotton. Every time she wanted to get in the water she had to prove to the life guard that the shirt was not cotton. All of that could have been avoided if they would put their clothing requirements on the website in an easy to read manner. The requirements are there, but they list the rules for each attraction separately instead of just giving a general set of rules. By the time you read through several pages of rules for a bunch of rides and you finally get to the water park rules, your eyes glaze over and it is easy to miss. But there is no mention in the rules that lycra is a permittible form of clothing.

All in all it was a very fun day. We have not been able to see as much of Monterrey as I had hoped, but we certainly feel like we have had a great vacation. Even though we are here for a reason, it has been nice to be here a couple of days early to relax and enjoy a few days as a family.

After I got my bike back from the bike shop, I got a flat within a week. I pulled the tube to repair it and found that there was a pretty good size cut in the tire. The bike shop did not replace the rim tape when they put the new rims on. The old rim tape was stiff and carried a lot of rust from the old rims.

The purpose of rim tape is to keep the lugs that hold the spokes onto the rims from poking into the tube. Good rim tape will protect the tube well. Good rims won’t be caked with rust. Old rusty-crusty rim tape on brand new aluminum rims somewhat defeat the purpose for having new rims installed.

I patched the hole. I was not able to get to the bike shop to buy rim tape. Then a few days later I patched the hole again. The patch did not hold, so I placed another patch on the tire the next day. No good. Today I removed both old patches and put on another patch. After getting the tire blown up and almost on the bike…PSSSssssttt! New patch removed and number 5 installed. This one seems to be holding for the moment.

Much of this was my fault as I was not patient with putting the patches on. The glue was not dry enough when I slapped the patches in place. After a bit of googling I learned how to do it right.

New tube = $1.20

5 patches = $0.60

I guess I can put about 5 more on before springing for that new tube. And, when I do make it back to the bike shop, I will be picking up a couple rolls of rim tape.

By the way, the bike shop I am going to now is not the same one that held my bike hostage for several days.

It is a bit difficult to get into the spirit of the 4th of July when you are living in a foreign country. We do have a party that the consulate is putting on tomorrow, but we don’t feel comfortable with all the drinking that is planned.

We have not found any fireworks yet, but we may be able to make that part of our day as well.

The fun thing is to just be together as a family knowing we are from the greatest nation in the world. While we won’t be celebrating with all the hoopla people back home will be, we will still have our own fun.

Here’s to wishing everyone a happy 4th of July.

To start off, let me list some of the basic ones that everyone should know.

• CTRL + C = copy
• CTRL + V = paste
• CTRL + X = cut
• CTRL + P = print
• CTRL + S = save

Here are three very useful ones he pointed out that I did not know.

• CTRL + ALT + Up/Down Arrow = moves the current paragraph above or below the previous or next paragraph.
• CTRL + Left/Right Arrow = moves the cursor to the next word either left or right.
• SHIFT + Up/Down/Left/Right Arrow = selects the text appropriately. Just try it and you will understand how to use it.

Jump on over to the original article to see the many others he showed. Not all of them will be useful for everyone, but using keyboard shortcuts really are a better way to work once you learn them. Until you learn them and put them into practice it is hard to see their value.

Normally we only get rain in the afternoon between 3:00 and 6:00. But with this strange storm we had come through, it broke loose at 2:00 in the morning. That meant that in our sleep deprived stupor, we were running around trying to get things shut down and unplugged.

Since there is only one outlet in my office, it is pretty easy to unplug the 16 items plugged into the 4 daisy chained power strips. Fortunately we never lost power in all of this. Quite surprising too since the lightning bolt that woke us up felt like it was right out our window. We bounced out of the hammocks and clung to the ceiling before the light and noise left the room. Then we bumped into each other trying to figure out what needed to be unplugged.

When it was all over we laid back down and I thought about needing to unplug one more item–the telephone line to the DSL modem. I did not do it though. The lightning was essentially gone by then. I don’t know if that was the culprit, but the next day our modem would connect to the Internet just fine, but would not connect to the internal network. My computer’s network card is dead as well as my PCI bus.

Our son’s computer is just flaky. In Windows no USB device will work, and the only PCI device that works is the video card. Also the keyboard is dead. In Linux the keyboard works, but PCI devices (except the video card) are all dead along with the USB devices.

We were without an Internet connection most of yesterday. I was finally able to get a new modem at the ISP’s office in the late afternoon. They replaced the modem with no charge. That was a surprise to me since I don’t have a contract with them and I bought my modem outright instead of renting from them monthly.

Still trying to figure out what to do with these two crippled machines. One is my main box, but I am able to work with my notebook on the Internet and transfer files through a USB flash drive from the big box.

This means my website updates that I was hoping to finish on Thursday have been seriously delayed. Maybe by Saturday night I will have them up and running.

Though this was just standing in the corner of the store, our daughter was fascinated by it. The puppet was wearing the traditional orange Little Caesar’s toga.

Our daughter’s first words when she saw it was, “Daddy, he’s wearing a sack!”

A couple of days ago our son was cleaning out the toys that were sunken to the bottom of the pool. He was using the skimmer to fish them out. Our daughter laid down at the edge of the pool and leaned over looking into the water. She cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled to the toys, “Don’t Worry! We will save you!”

A couple of days before that we were in the pool with her in her floaty. I dove under the water and swam away from her. She said to my wife, “Look at that daddy. He thinks he is a whale.” When I swam back towards her she said, “Now he thinks he is a shark.”

We were out of town when they ripened; or as ripe as bananas get on the plant. They don’t actually ripen until you cut them off. We are not sure when they became mature since we left town for almost 4 weeks. But they were getting close when we left, and were overcooked by the time we got home.

I cut them off on a Sunday morning and started dividing them up to go to friends that day and the next. We hung about 30 up in our kitchen to ripen and then bagged up the rest. We had close to 170 that were usable. Some had burst on the plant from getting too mature.

One family that we had bagged bananas for did not want them, that gave us another 25 or so to eat on our own. We left them in their bag hung on a door. A couple of days later we found that the ones in the bag were ripening faster than those that were hanging. We had read you were supposed to put a bag around the bunch to ripen them, but I thought that was just to keep the bugs out. Turns out, that is part of the ripening process.

Good thing we had visitors. That week we ate all but 3 of the bananas that we kept. They never really turned completely yellow. I think they were just over mature to look quite right.

I told one of our friend’s daughters that the bananas would not turn yellow and that they should start eating them soon. She could not convince her dad that they were supposedly ready. He did not let them eat them for a few more days (in banana terms, that is an eternity). By the time they tried them they were already pretty mushy. They froze them for future use.

One of the popular names that got thrown out was Almond. The name fits because of the color of the bunny, but it just did not sound right as a name.

From there we degraded to Almond Joy. Then after he gets “fixed” we could call him Mounds.

We have settled on the name Peanut. My wife says the next pet we need to get is a duck. Then we would have Peanut Bunny and Quackers.

Click on the photos below for a larger picture.

As soon as we returned from our big road trip people started arriving at our house for a week long conference. During the week we were able to accomplish most of what we came together to do. We also spent time at the beach, shopping, Chichén Itzá, Dzibilchaltún (two Mayan ruins), museum and general site seeing around town. This was a group of pastors and missionaries who work with the Deaf here in Mexico. We were doing a planning meeting for camp this summer.

My wife went out of town with two other ladies who were here for our meeting. They all went to Cancun and Cozumel and left me here with the kids for a couple of days.

Today the kids and I went to the park and zoo. The zoo was closed, but we were able to ride the train that takes you through the main attractions of the zoo. We also went and picked up mail that has been collecting dust in the post office for almost 2 months. The highlight of the day…the immigration office. Ok, so maybe that was not the most exciting thing we did.

I am putting the final touches on a new Missionary Talks interview that may be up later tonight or tomorrow.

It looks like things are going to be getting back to normal pretty soon. Finally.