If we don't go to Rio

Rio comes to us. Well, kind of. My friends Paty and Paul from Rio are in the US and spent the weekend at home. It was a weekend of chatting, eating (a lot) and drinking. Great, but we need to ingest some fruits, vegetables and water to compensate. We also did some shopping and spent Sunday afternoon at the Disney, like four kids. I miss having friends around all the time.

This was a 1 pm breakfast, btw. My favorite kind.

Looks so good on paper

Lots of money
Little work
Cheap tequila
Long life to México!

For me it's more like lots of work, not all that much money and no tequila at all...
At least our office down there always has lots of diet coke in the refrigerator.

When in doubt, I get both

Having a hard time to decide between onion or tomato soup, I ordered both. How pathetic is it to have this kind of decision crisis when trying to order room service at the same hotel where I did it for at leats 40 times in the last six months?

Mexico City immigration line (line????), today, 7:30pm

I've been getting crazy lines everytime I have to work in México and I really don't get it. Today I spent almost two hours standing in line (well, that's not exactly a line, hah?)

And I do ger very annoyed, for more than one reason.

1. They usually have a lot of federal people in the area, but just about a third of them is working on the counters. The others stay at the far left chatting.

2. The lines are not labeled and there's no one around to tell people where to go, so you have no idea of which line is for locals and which one is for tourists (that's when there are lines - today was more of a crowd just pushing each other).

3. Sometimes they give you a hard time at the counter. It's funny, because, come on, with all the respect, who would want to immigrate ilegally to México?

4. They are very disorganized. I travel with a Brazilian passport and my greencard. After being in and out of the country 5 or 6 times with no problems, they once took me to the little room, made a tons of questions and demanded that next time I carry an Argentinean passport. So when I got back to LA I spent hours in the Argentinean consulate to get a passport and now I carry it every time - but guess what!!!! No one asked for it in México immigration, ever again. Even when I offer, they don't want to see it...

My mom and siblings tell me that I'm very short tempered and that's why I get mad at these things - they actually make fun of me when I lose it. I don't think I'm being unreasonable. Am I?

Gorgeous weekend

The photo - from my iphone - doesn't make justice. There was not a single cloud in the sky, all weekend long. And Ripley got to go for a swim :)

On another note, we are doing our taxes tonight - well, Scott is doing that while I blog and try to look supportive. He just asked me if we should choose to have three dollars given to presidential campaigns and this gets me so mad. It's not my money anymore (after it turned into tax money) but I would like it much more to be able to choose and give these three dollars to someone who needs them more than the presidential candidates. If they could get one dollar from each one of us, every month, and turn it into food, education and health care for the ones in need, it would make a big difference.

Maybe I'm just being crazy here... But a couple of weeks ago I got this letter on the mail asking for money for children's lip operation and I sent a check. Last week I decided I wouldn't donate to American Idol gives back (I figured enough people already do) but I ended up going online and sending some money. You know, 20 dollars here and 50 there might go unnoticed through our wallets, but could be a big difference for someone else.

It doesn't hurt me to do it - and I hope I can keep doing - but when I think of all the taxes we already pay... we shouldn't be having to do this on the side, should we?

Fresh roasted Kats

I like my job. Again, I mean, I'm back to liking ot. Who am I fooling? I love to work, always had and probably always will. Sometimes I hate it and I want to quit and live of selling sandwiches at the beach in a bikini, sarong and oversized sunglasses - but then I get all excited with my job again and suddenly I'm walking through the door with my Starbucks cup of coffee and feeling like I can do such big things... I'm feeling fresh and excited all over again - and, weirdly, worrying more about accomplishment and less about money.

Maybe I have some sort of bipolar disorder. Or maybe I'm just normal. Who knows?

New office

I bought these pencils just after accepting the offer for my current job, a year and a half ago. But, when I saw my office, I decided that they were too pretty for the environment and put them away in a box, at home. Yesterday I was "upgraded" to the second floor and, even though it's just a new office, it feels nice (no promotion or raise involved yet, but hah, one step at a time, right?)

So today is my pencils' first day at work :)

Last Saturday night

Now we do this kind of couples things - and we are the only ones who don't need a babysitter yet. Last Saturday was one of good food, excellent wine and outstanding company with Dani, Tom, Cris and Mark (Cris' husband, the handsome guy in the picture).