Hope and Change

Today was Raquel's first time voting, ever. When she left Brazil she was too young, and she didn't become a US citizen until this year, so this election was her first US election where she wasn't a spectator.

Raquel was appalled by the number of choices she had to make. I told her that she didn't have to vote for the local dog catcher if she didn't want to, but she felt like she needed to make a conscious decision and she spent a good bit of time with the voter's guide put out by the League of Women Voters. Boy did I have to hear about how terrible it was when I got back from school last night.

We went together this morning before work. They didn't have the "I Voted" stickers so we kept our access code printouts.

Do we look hopeful?

My Little Whirlwind...

My little whirlwind is at it again. She just returned from a second trip to Kuwait. As usual she had a lot of fun and got to meet some neat people. Grandma this one is for you: Raquel found a way to do her crochet in the airplane - she used the small blade from the dental floss box to cut the yarn (can anybody stop her?).

She even had an opportunity to speak of the Love of God through Jesus to a male muslin co-worker. God's love is just incredible .... Raquel came back saying "how much love is this that God will bring someone from Brazil via Houston to go to Kuwait to tell one person about his love!"

Chevron sent her to Kuwait to help the local business unit start a new business process.

Here is an evening shot of her hotel in the background.
They are actually at a restaurant having dinner.

Wonderful hospitality

And even an adventure. She was driving around looking for this place for over 1 hour. She found it but it turned out not to be what she thought it would be (it was not a cultural center).

Chevron's Trip to Brazil

Back before the hurricane, Raquel got to take a trip home thanks to Chevron (first time that's worked out). She went to Sao Paulo (down south) to complete a risk assessment and got to spend 3 days with her family (up in the northeast) thanks in part to a national holiday and our wonderful fridays off.

Here's some pics of the weekend with the family. Brother Eduardo and Sister-in-law Naira
Sister Renata and Brother-in-law Valberth
Job well done!
Second weekend with Uncle Daniel and Aunt Cinda. Great time and wonderful shoe shopping!
Here's a work pic - celebration after a hard and long week of risk assessment! I am seated next to the blurry waiter.

The Log

Last weekend we started another project. With all of the timber lying around we couldn't resist the opportunity presented to use the available logs to make something cool, so we picked up a 5 foot long and 3 foot across section of an old oak (I think its an oak) that was blown down during Ike. It was lying on the side of the street in front of the neighborhood elementary school.

How did we do do it you ask? Well, let's just say that even though we thought we could use the truck, there was absolutely no machine power involved, all muscle power. We simply went over to Father Jose's house for migrant labor and hired a few helping hands, and rolled this puppy about 6 blocks down the middle of the street, including up and over a railroad grade and into the garage. You can imagine the looks we got as we were cruising down the street pushing this baby by hand. When we finish a few other projects around here, hopefully we can turn it into a table base for the back of the house.

Bathroom Update

We're finally making more progress on the bathroom, so we thought we should share a few pics of how that is going. We've got most of the walls and floors prepared for the final covering (except in the shower area). This meant a lot of joint compound and sanding, as well as a bunch of hardibacker for the floor and some walls.

Here's a shot of the wall that we'll cover with slate, next to to the tub.

Here's the stairs with almost all of their hardibacker on.The last two weekends we've spent time cutting the slate from 12 x 12 down to about 2 x 12 to put it on the wall. Its a long process when there's 30 some boxes of slate. Here's some shots of some of the slate drying on the driveway and then stored in the garage.

Friday this week the plumbers came back and fixed the shower pan. Now we just have to hope that we pass the city inspection on tuesday. If so, then we'll be able to start putting the wall back together in the shower (cool!)

More Oral Surgery

Raquel had her second oral surgery of the year on Friday to put in the post for her implant. She's pretty wiped out from that and from hurting her back the week after the hurricane. Despite her hesitation she allowed me to publish a few shots.

Here she is right after the surgery in the recovery room. (Cute huh?) Even though I was talking with her when I took this picture, she doesn't remember me taking it at all.

Here she is on Sunday morning. Still pretty swollen on that side, and very painful. She is grateful for not feeling any pain on the day of the surgery, but now even with the medication it is starting to hurt. She says she is looking like "Fofao" - a Brazilian children's character from her childhood.

Here are a couple of shots of Fofao for comparison.

FEMA POD

Raquel got to take the week off after the storm, but Neil's agency went right back to work. Since all of the facilities were out of power or unusable we were asked to work at FEMA POD (Point of Distribution) sites. FEMA trucks in a bunch of food, water and ice to a regional distribution point, then the city and county governments are in charge of setting up local distribution points and handing out the stuff to the population. When we showed up to volunteer that day, we had county building permit employees, TSA screeners from Chicago, and eventually Customs and Border Enforcement agents helping out. These are few shots of Neil and his staff helping out. They're in the cool red shirts. (These pictures were taken by one of Neil's co-workers).

Here we are unloading the trucks to get ready for the people to come through.

This site was set up in the parking lot a large church. Once we unloaded and got set up, cars flowed into the parking lot and around the church building to where we were. They flowed right through and we tossed stuff into the trunk or through the windows. Neil was traffic control dude at the front of the line, trying to keep the cars flowing in so we could keep the line moving (it stretched at least 2 miles after we got started).

Notice the cops in the background. I'm not sure what they were there to do (show the uniform I guess) because all they did was sit around on that car like it was a doughnut shop.

Overall it was a good day. This was the Monday site, it was well organized and efficient and people moved through pretty well. The 2nd day wasn't so great. The trucks didn't get there until 1PM, and there were a lot of people walking through, which meant that some of them stood in line from before 6AM until 1PM in the warm Houston sun waiting. After two days of this, our administration building got power back and we moved in there to start trying to get back to our regular jobs. Raquel was lucky, in that she got to stay at home the whole week.

By Monday the 22nd, both of us were back at work in our regular buildings. Raquel had to be careful though, there is still glass all over the streets and sidewalks downtown, and they've erected the scaffolding type covers over the walkways around her building to protect people from glass that may still fall from the buildings.