I am Pablo

We finally arrived in Mexico city. We took a cab to a friend’s workplace and she brought us to an incredible place for lunch! Mole Almendrado - delicious! Bar none the best mole I’ve had! Off to explore the city.

Our flight to Dallas was delayed so we missed our connection to Mexico. AA put us up in the Wyndham and gave us $10 each for dinner. Dennys was the only place open that would accept the voucher. Suffice it to say, not was I was hoping for tonight! Off to Mexico DF tomorrow morning.

Just a quick reminder to check your voter registration status before the October 7th voter registration deadline!!

Just do a quick Google search for your city and “voter registration”.

Here is a link to Chicago’s Election’s Webpage

No words needed!! GORGEOUS!
Oh… and GO CUBS!!

From Italian Style 2008

I’ve been back for a few weeks, but have been so busy that I just didn’t have time to get the pictures together! The YTC trip was fantastic - it was the largest group that we have gone with, and the kids were by far the most productive! Once again, the computers didn’t make it past the border before we arrived, but at least this year we were prepared. Its pretty sad that the Mexican government can’t get its act together to get the 100 computers that we donate through the border in time. Next year we are planning on sending the computers in April or May - hopefully by the time we get there in August the computers will have arrived!

One of the highlights of the trip was a meeting that David and I had with Governor Deras‘ wife Gabby (she is the head of DIF for the state of Durango, essentially their DCFS), the director of the Cobaed school system, the secretary of education and the superintendent of the school districts we visit. In this meeting we discussed the future of YTC - to see the excitement that they had for the work we do was just incredible! It gives me great hope for the future, and for possible funding for our programs!

I had also set up a wiki for the trip - so if you want to read what our kids or our staff wrote about - feel free to check it out!

Got back from Mexico at 5:50am on Sunday. Suffice it to say that Sunday wasn’t very productive - outside of finding an awesome new furniture warehouse! I’ll post pics of what we got once we get it all together! Lots of catching up with work and sleep this week… I’ve also acquired something to begin yet another project, (one that Fitz will have a keen interest in, I’m sure!) thanks Fas for the assist! After work we head out to Starved Rock state park for Dave’s bachelor party camping weekend extravaganza. Though apparently “we aren’t a bachelor party but a corporate event” - yea, like they won’t figure that out pretty quick! Should be a fantastic weekend! Though I imagine I’ll need another week to recover. I’m going to attempt to keep twitter updated, so keep an eye on that feed!

We are all gathered at the airport waiting to board the flight to Durango. Excitement is mixed with uneasiness as many of the kids have left the country before much less by airplane! I, as usual, am exhausted - but looking forward to see what this year brings us!

NPR’s Fresh Air is host to some of the best interviews I’ve heard! Katty actually called me to tell me about their interview with Rainn Wilson, otherwise known as Dwight from The Office - but I was too caught up in the season finale of Top Gear! I knew I could just go to the website and listen later on. Listen to both of these interviews - if you don’t laugh, I’ll give you your money back!

For your auditory pleasure:

NPR Interviews Rainn Wilson (click on listen now)

An oldie but incrediblie goodie:


NPR Interviews Sacha Baron Cohen aka Borat

Bonus! Found a Colbert interview:

NPR Interviews Stephen Colbert

…and a Jon Stewart interview:

NPR Interviews Jon Stewart

Don’t forget to subscribe to Fresh Air’s podcast!

TK gave me an ATC2K helmet cam for being his best man! I finally got it set up on the bike handlebars and went for a spin. This was the first test as I didn’t have a memory card in the camera. I’ve already recorded the entire trip back up north - just need some time to edit it! :)

Of course, it isn’t rockets blasting off or anything of the sort, but its a start! Expect more/better clips as I get acquainted with the device!

Flipping channels last night I ended up on Chicago Access Network Television (CANTV) channel 19. What caught my attention was the bowling scene from the Big Lebowski. It was pretty grainy and the cutting of the swear words was a bit… amateur. As I watching, it suddenly cut to some other movie. This continued for almost 30 minutes, and I couldn’t stop watching. It was a bizarre selection of movies, news bits, cartoons and TV shows. Some of them hilarious, many bizzare, and some outright spooky. At about the time they showed Angela Landsbury’s incredible scene in the Manchurian Candidate (a movie I have yet to see, but somehow recognized it immediately) I wondered about the legality of showing so many movie/tv/media clips. The juxtaposition of the Simpson’s Planet of the Apes musical bit with the actual movie was quite entertaining! Katty had no idea why I kept on watching it - but was just as fascinated as myself! Has anybody seen The Loved One?! (this was the scene we saw last night - gotta love google)

Shortly thereafter, color bars filled the screen and only the audio could be heard. This was just the icing on the cake! Was it a broadcast signal intrusion? I had first heard about this while talking to somebody about Max Headroom and finding out about an incident in 1987 on Chicago’s WGN and WTTW stations. The hijackers were never found - could this be a new incident?? I immediately checked CANTV’s Thursday listings to find out that Flabby Hoffman was scheduled to air. Googling got me to Flabby Hoffman’s home page

Flabby Hoffman uses his unique powers of hyper-sensitivity, super cognizance and fanatical devotion to an objective truth to help those in need of an empowering spiritual enema.

…not quite what I expected, but almost equally bizarre. The two don’t really match up. There was also a link to a local bar Uncommon Ground - where, apparently, Flabby Hoffman used to perform. This whole thing seemed so surreal to me. So, I just e-mailed CANTV to see what they have to say about the color bars last night. Most likely its all just a coincidence… but I had to ask!

I just noticed that Flabby has MP3s on his website! I’m afraid to listen!

(This got me thinking about Wesley Willis all over again)