Yup, he’s still here. Vagabond dog is guarding the house. Obviously feeling better and well fed, he exercises his authority as guardian of our castle by challenging potential intruders and annoying anyone unfortunate enough to pass our house. For some reason, bicycle riders are his special targets. He’s big and scary and has a deep bark that commands attention. I kind of like that. Monica has dog food for him and the neighbors contribute table scraps. He’s looking good and feeling frisky.
The dog continues to follow us everywhere. I took a walk yesterday through Retiro. Tuesday is street market day, where vendors set up shop on a few side streets on the sidewalks and sell stuff. Produce, clothing, kitchen stuff, DVDs and CDs (do you thin they night be pirated?) – it’s fun to walk through and see all of the stuff. I had this big goofy dog with me every step of the way. At one point, I was asked if it was my dog. I explained that he lives in the street near my house and that he follows me whenever I leave. I actually had a few conversations in Portuguese – that’s so cool. Anyway, we walked for over an hour while Monica was making an awesome lunch – starring a beringela (eggplant) casserole that was so good that it’s gone already.
Monica is teaching school this morning, so I’m goofing off with Billy. 
Yesterday, we went to Monica’s sister’s house, where we had coffee and some conversation. It was raining hard in the afternoon (welcome to the tropics), so we sat at the table. I brought a camera for Monica and we were playing with it a little. I took a short video – it’s a little dark, but I was going to try to upload it as a test. I asked Monica what “filha da puta” means (of course I already knew).
. [googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4228471257629360409&hl=en]
Hey, I can do video now!! We took pictures at Cinesio’s but they did not turn out well. After doing some research, we found that the camera has something called “Q mode”. Once we set it there, the pictures came out perfect. I think “Q mode” stands for mode for people too lazy to learn all about shutter speeds and ISO/ASA settings. Anyway, I’m much happier with it. WordPress is only allowing me to upload pictures after about 15 tries each. I give up for now. I’ll try again later – there are a few more photos that I wanted to put here.
Hey, I got an e-mail from Kate (my unbelievably cool daughter who chases subs for Uncle Sam) yesterday, back from the South Pacific! She’s going to be in Delaware for her birthday – that’s so cool. I was thinking about her at the street market yesterday – wondering about which brilliantly-colored dress I could buy for her as a present. Fortunately, I learned long ago that I have no taste at all when it comes to that sort of thing, so I resisted getting her a really cool Brasilian sun dress. They don’t have much sun in Seattle, anyway…
We’ve got e-mails bouncing back and forth about our dive trip next week. I am really looking forward to that. Except for one very cold dive in Ilha Grande last year, I haven’t been diving since the last time with Mark and John. That’s going to be great.
Speaking of e-mails, I just received word that I’m upgraded to First Class on the Miami to Philadelphia leg of my trip home. Flying home is something that I generally do not look forward to, but the dive trip next week and the upgrade takes just a little of the sting out of the process.
I’ll try to edit this later and add photos if I can.
That’s all for now from Volta Redonda,
Greg
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