Hello!
First, nope we don't have jobs yet. I have a possible job editing a book, but the gal only has 20 (yes, T W E N T Y) pages written and it seems more like a magazine than a book, but we'll see how it goes.
So, we've been volunteering with the animal rescue group. We have a new dog who was taken off the street on Saturday -- he's a skinny skinny skinny Husky mix who has the most amazing light blue eyes. We named him "Hoover" because of how he sucks up his food. But hey, if you've been living on the street and eating out of a trash can, having a bowl of actual FOOD set in front of you would be a treasure -- a treasure to be gobbled up before anyone else can get to it. There's also a scruffy little brown dog with 3 legs -- or as I like to say, 2 legs and a kickstand. His third leg was cut off by a machete. Yep, people here are downright CRUEL to the street dogs. He was rescued and a vet had to amputate his leg. But you'd never know he was missing a leg by the way that little dude runs. His name is Scrappy and he's GREAT with people and peaceful dogs, but he will NOT back down from a fight. Unfortunately, it seems as though Hoover would like to eat Scrappy -- and Scrappy would probably like to kick Hoover's skinny butt -- so we have to keep 'em separated.
The other day we were walking the dogs and I said to Joel, "If Chow-Chow happens to poo as we're walking, will you be a gentleman and pick it up?" Joel said YES and as if on cue... SHAZAM! Chow-Chow did just that (I think he was even smiling, perhaps laughing quietly under all that fur). I was thinking, "I am sooo glad I asked that question 20 seconds ago..." I think Joel regretted being so quick to agree.
So there's a free community gym here. It's a strange gym -- no treadmills, no stairmasters, no eliptical machines... Just rooms where (depending on the day) you can take boxing classes, karate, weightlifting, and yes, even CHESS. Joel has been doing the weights class. The chess classes are on Tuesday & Thursday. So last Tuesday, we walk into the chess room and there are 2 guys and 6 or 7 kids. They were going through BOOKS (chess has books?) and they were showing the kids chess strategies (chess has strategies?). My strategy when playing chess is this: Move my pieces. Steal the other guy's pieces. Eventually move my pieces around the other guy's king. Hopefully get checkmate before the other guy nails me. Ta-daaa! Sooo I tell one of the teachers that I'm just there to PLAY, I don't really want to learn about strategy, so is it possible to just play a game or two? And he says absolutely. And I, like a total chess snob, look around the room and see all these kids (the oldest was maybe 12) and say something to the effect of, "Well, I don't know... Would it really be fair for me to play someone who is just learning because I might beat them?" And the guy is like, oh don't worry, it's fine. So, I sit at a table and a little guy wearing a baseball cap sits across from me. We start playing and -- oh, did I mention these kids play RAPID-FIRE CHESS? -- this kid is moving his pieces like he's not even watching what I'm doing and holy cow this kid is GOOOOOD. He is rapidly, well, KILLING me. And he's doing it so nonchalantly, almost like he was bored. At one point he started absentmindedly humming what I call "The Death March of Chess." And whenever he put me in check (which was often) he didn't even say "check" (or maybe in Spanish it's "el check"???) because I was just supposed to realize I was in check. I'd try to make a move and he'd say, "No!" and point that I was in check. Needless to say, he beat me. BIG TIME. We played again. He beat me again. Then another little kid came over (maybe 9 years old) and in English told me, "This is going to be a piece of cake. I'll beat you in four moves." (Is it wrong of me to say I really wanted to kick him under the table???) And I was like, "Four moves, huh?" And he literally started COUNTING his moves. "One." "Two." "Three." And after the third move I must've thrown off his devious master plan by doing something that WASN'T in his strategy books because he stopped counting. (HA! Take THAT you snotty little butthead.) Little did he know that having NO strategy WAS my strategy! It took about 23 moves for him to beat me. I'm just happy I didn't lose as fast as he had thought. After having my butt handed to me so many times I decided to just watch for a while. I got to see "The Death March Hummer" play "Mr. Snottypants" and it was really interesting. Yes, this is ME saying that watching a chess game against two little kids kept my attention. It was over in less than 5 minutes. (I told you, these kids play RAPID-FIRE chess.) My head was spinning. I was rooting for "The Hummer" but "Snottypants" won. So Snottypants turns to me and says, "Would you like to watch another game?" and alI could think was, "If it keeps me from having to play one of you, then YES, I would love to watch another game." And this time The Hummer won. YEAH! I nearly cheered out loud when he captured Snottypants' queen.
I don't know if I can ever go back to the chess class. Those kids were so... MEAN. Why did they have to be so MEAN? My ego was kicked to the curb, set on fire, then run over by a chicken bus. Maybe I should get a strategy book...? No no nooo... I mustn't give in to the Dark Side.
Holy crap -- THIS is a caterpillar!
Tonight I witnessed something very funny. Ok, let me backtrack a bit. There's a really cool place here called The Sunshine Grill. Do not let the name fool you. There is nothing sunshiney about it. The Brady Bunch would not come here to sing. There are no floral arrangements on the tables. They don't greet you with a hug as you walk in the door. It's a grungy little pub with graffiti all over the walls and strings of random Christmas lights behind the bar. My kinda place! The owner is a husky Guatemalan guy named Edgar who is married to a woman from Cuba. Well, we discovered they have PIZZA. And it's SO GOOD. And tonight we discovered they have KARAOKE. Ooooh that was really BAD. But soooo funny. So the super funny thing was that this large lesbian lady got up to sing "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion. If it doesn't ring a bell, it's the theme song from the movie "TITANIC." I can't stand Celine Dion. Really. I think one of her friends dared her to do it because she didn't know the words. But to help her along, the rest of us sang/howled/bellowed/wailed with her. And then... one of the young guys who was there heavily hitting on the girl sitting next to him, played a song by a man that Joel referred to as "the grandfather of mariachi music." The music video showed a handsome older gentleman wearing tight little mariachi pants and The World's Biggest Sombrero. He was singing a painful song about the misery of loving a woman who did not love him back. EVERYONE was singing along to this song. Oh the pain! Oh the misery! Oooh the heartache! Being the lone gringa I did not want to be left out of the fun (or the misery of unrequited love), so I do what I always do when I don't know the words to a song but want to LOOK like I'm singing along -- I mouthed the word "watermelon watermelon watermelon" over and over and swayed to the music. Ok, so by then I had had 3 mojitos and was really feeling the love. (And the pain.) Aaayyy-yiii-yiiiiii!
Well that's it for now. Thanks for staying awake during this very long email. I have a lot of words in my head and sometimes they all want to come out AT ONCE.
Stay thirsty my friends!
-Jenniferrrrrrrrrrwatermelonwatermelonwatermelon
So hi there boys and girls... I've got a mixed bag of stuff to share this week. Most of it is good-good-good, but the bad news is bad-bad-baaad (to me, at least).
Sookie, on the other hand, is extremely shy. I have no idea what mix of breeds she is. She's grey with pointy ears, beady brown eyes, a big body on skinny little legs. Sort of like a bug-eyed tank on stilts. She was traumatized when brought in as a rescue animal. She'd been cut several times with a machete and attacked by dogs and quite possibly hit by a chicken bus. Poor Sookie! So she has a reason to be afraid of people. I am damn determined to get her to like me. It's a miracle when she sniffs my hand -- and last week she let me pet her (once) then she scampered away to hide under a desk. It was a tiny victory for me. 
