My parents’ visit to Saba was quite lovely, though I’m sure they found it rather boring. I guess I’ve gotten used to the Caribbean lifestyle a little more than I thought I did. I’m pretty sure we showed them most everything that’s of any interest on Saba and we still managed to do it in under three days, with time to twiddle one’s thumbs at the end.

St. Maarten was a lot more exciting and full of things to see and do, but I’m surprised to say that it made me long for our little island. Between the plentiful restaurants, undersea boat ride, dinner cruise, and the butterfly farm, we were certainly not bored for a single minute of our stay there. I can’t wait to return to some of those places in August, but I’ll be very glad to know it’s only a vacation and that I have the peace and quiet of Saba to return to.

In the meantime, our lives here on Saba are rather boring. Everyone seems to be off the island, which makes things extra quiet. Andrew has been “gardening” if you can call it that and he’s even managed to mulch part of our yard. My projects include trying not to kill a couple of herbs we just planted from seed in a small indoor planter and attempting to workout on a somewhat regular basis. We’ll see how that works out.

Not to ignore Andrew’s class, you show those shelf exams who’s boss!

Here are a couple of things that bothered me, though. The first one is that H & R Block’s so called free e-file is not exactly free. Nope. If you used them in the past, they will ever so helpfully offer to import last’s year’s information for you. That’s great, no? Sure, it’s just not so great when they charge you $14.95 for the convenience. I was too tired and in no mood to go through the entire process again, but it’s a good lesson to remember for next year. Keep a copy of your tax returns handy and don’t pay this ridiculous fee.

The other thing that was a bit shocking was the amount of medical expenses we’ve had this past year. I know how much we pay in health insurance premium but it’s still hard to look at the grand total for the year. I know that the point of insurance is to be here in case of some sort of catastrophe and we’re lucky we haven’t needed to use it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

That is all. Go finish YOUR taxes.

Here are a few more photos which were taken with the kit lens. I’d be happy with this lens alone, at least for now, but I’m going to try my hardest to master the 50mm prime lens. It’s not easy but I like a challenge once in a while.

This is it for today. Changing poopy diapers and crib sheets has gotten to me.

In any case, here are some neat websites I found while surfing around yesterday:

Food Photography Tips - I’ll be sure to use those once I finally get the camera.

Advertising vs. Reality - I don’t know about you, but at least half of those products look really appetizing to me, especially the Maggi, Kinder, and Milka products.

Above and Beyond: You Love Netflix… - One of the many reasons for which I love and miss Netflix. That’s one thing that goes on my list of things I’m looking forward to once we return to the US.

I was going to write yesterday to complain about how my car died, but I held off on announcing that to the world. My car’s now running again and all it needed was to have its battery recharged. That was the last thing I needed to do yesterday, you now with the house upside down and two day’s worth of dishes piling up in the sink, but we had no choice. We got in the car and went for a 30 minute drive around the island. In the end it wasn’t bad at all because we got out of our routine and the ride reminded me of the fact that Saba is a really beautiful island when I take the time to look around. I sometimes forget that.

For those of you searching the web for “Saba Island roads”, they’re tiny and forever winding. I think the top speed here is 30 miles per hour, though I’ve heard of people who have managed to go well above that speed on the few stretches of road that are relatively straight. I wouldn’t recommend it for many reasons. First of all, there have been a few people who crashed off the side of the island and you don’t want that to happen to you, do you? Secondly, if you do get into a crash and you need serious medical care, you’ll need to be flown off the island in a helicopter that comes from several islands away. From what I hear, the helicopter also has to make a stop to refuel. Lastly, no matter how good of a driver you think you are, there are others on this road who aren’t that great and you have to watch out for them too. The fact that the accident wasn’t your fault won’t be of much consolation to you if your car makes it off the edge of the cliff. Don’t do it.

So in conclusion… Happy Easter!

So here’s a list of updates, in relative chronological order:

• We went home to Ecuador and the USA this past winter.
• We got a new wireless router so our internet connection doesn’t drop every 15 minutes anymore. It was a breeze to install and I don’t care what the reviews say.
• We got Leopard. Pretty.
• Andrew has started his third semester, which is probably the least enjoyable of all five.
• I’m babysitting for one of his former classmates.
• I scratched the hell out of my car. She’s been so good to me and I feel like a complete idiot.
• I ordered a Nikon D40 and a used Nikon 50mm f/1.8 AI-s Series E lens.
• I’ve been growing increasingly impatient while waiting for things to get from Miami to Saba.
• This is in no small part due to the complete nightmare that it was to replace Andrew’s broken Apple Macbook Pro power adapter last month. Stupid Apple and their ridiculous policies when it comes to true international support.
• We’re anxiously waiting for April 17th to roll around because that signals the end of fourth semesters and my parents’ visit to Saba. Finally.
• We’re fresh out of Prison Break episodes to watch. I blame it on the writers’ strike.
• I’m working on our taxes and it’s making me feel like we still belong to the civilized world. The strange things that Saba will do to you. *shakes head*

I guess that’s about it for now.

P.S.: I think I know why I never write. It’s because every time I log on to this site (all three times a year), I end up having to update Wordpress and it’s such a drag on our pathetic 256k connection.

Try to imagine my panic during the few minutes when I envisioned those darned disks sitting on my desk at home. Then imagine my panic when the disk utility reported that it could not repair the file structure. It said something about an invalid sibling link but I was in no mood to read about what that meant. All I could see was myself sitting at home on a dinky little island with nothing to do but flip through the 15 or so decent TV channels we get. The horror! My files, my emails, my photos, my music, my ebooks, my recipes. All gone. I foolishly had not been backing up as frequently as I should have.

At the time it seemed like a good idea to spend the money on Disk Warrior to get it to simply restore the hard drive to its original state. Anything to not have to go through the agony of reinstalling the OS and possibly losing all my files. Silly me. Disk Warrior reported that the damage was too severe for a simple restore, so I had to go about it the hard way. Archive and install did not work and my only viable option was to erase and install.

Fast forward twelve hours, few of which were spent snoozing, and I’m back up and running. The catch is that I have to install a massive system update, which is taking eons to download on our blazing fast connection. The moral of the story: backup, backup, backup!