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So far I and my mother have been traveling for 4 days in Ecuador, not counting the day we both arrived. To be truthful, I´m not sure Quito would make my ¨favorites¨ list of cities that I´ve visited. Let me emphasize that the quiteños themselves are lovely. Almost invariably, they´ve been friendly and helpful, and as a bonus their Spanish is very easy to understand. The Museo del Banco Central has a thorough and amazingly well organized exhibit of archeological artifacts, including a large section of artifacts made from gold and other precious metals, plus the modern art section is pretty cool too. The area where we´re staying – La Mariscal, a.k.a. New Town or “Gringolandia” – feels quite safe, and we´ve not had to deal with as much heckling as I´ve gotten in other Latin American countries. Our hotel, La Casa Sol, is very attractive and conveniently located and the staff are fabulous. Since the economy is ¨dollarized¨, there´s none of the stress of trying to make instant currency conversions in one´s head. Internet cafés are available everywhere, and there´s a couple of pollution-free trolley-bus lines. ...

Christian and I went to the movies last night – more for him to get out of the apartment than for anything else – and saw Breakfast on Pluto. It’s directed by Neil Jordan (“The Crying Game”) and stars Cillian Murphy. The film’s central character is Patrick “Kitten” Braden, a gay cross-dresser: his abandonment as a baby, his childhood and adolescence in the 70s in a small Irish town near Northern Ireland, and his coming of age in London. ...

Yup, that’s us, and that’s what we did on Monday night. We finally used one of our wedding gifts, a gift certificate to The Chopping Block, a high-end cookware-and-cooking-classes shop not far from where we live. (The staff very kindly allowed us to use the certificate, even tho’ it had expired in September – shame on us!) We signed up for an evening class called “Knife Skills”, which one of Christian’s coworkers had taken and raved about. We figured that learning to use knives more effectively would help us with our weekly battle to use all of the vegetables from the Angelic Organics boxes. I also was looking forward to learning more about choosing knives – and how to give myself fewer cuts. ...

…is something we need during the summer and fall months. For the past few years, we have bought a “share” from Angelic Organics, an organic/biodynamic CSA farm in northern Illinois. A “share”, in CSA terms, is part of the farm’s produce. Hence, every week from late June through early December, we swing by the Uptown drop-off site to pick up a box of vegetables that the farm has produced. We also get a box of organic fruit every other week. That’s not produced at the farm – where in Illinois can you grow pomegranates? – but rather they work with a supplier who sources the fruit from organic growers on the west coast and, occasionally, Mexico. ...

A few weekends ago, Christian suggested that we make barm brack, since Halloween was coming soon. “Huh? Barn Black?” I replied. “What’s that? And what does it have to do with Halloween?” (I should note that as a multi-cultural couple, we have this type of conversation every few months. They’re occasionally bewildering and/or frustrating, but mostly they’re part of what we enjoy about each other.) So we Googled it, and predictably found loads of frequently repeated information on the bread’s origin as well as recipes. Briefly, barm brack is a sort of fruit bread made in Ireland, and seems to be associated most strongly with Samhain (Halloween). I think it’s akin to plum pudding, insofar as they both have symbolic coins and whatnot baked in them. ...

For most of the weekend I was out in the suburbs at the Great Lakes Software Symposium. I was spending the nights in a cheap motel the other side of the highway. On Saturday, I drove back into the city, we had dinner at home and we both drove out to spend our anniversary night at the motel. Sunday felt more like the anniversary day. I got out early, at 5:15pm: woohoo! By six we were biking the trail in one of our old haunts, Busse Woods Forest Preserve, near I-290 and Higgins. Afterwards, we had dinner at Gaylords, also a place that brought back memories. ...

Got a nice first anniversary present on Saturday: a small card from USCIS that says I’m a legal permanent resident. Time from initial application to getting the card: about eight months. Mind you it’s still not a process to be undertaken lightly, but I didn’t experience any of the horror stories that I have heard and read about. Even so, the authorities here probably know more about me than any other government, including my own. Oh, well. ...

My first day was essentially all taken up with new employee orientation. The employer is part of a travel and real estate conglomerate; much of the orientation was taken up with explanations of the various branches of the business. There was a fair amount of material on ethics and the company’s code of conduct. I didn’t notice anything unusual in that, but the instructors were semi-apologetic. Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley were given as reasons. ...

I had never wanted to darken the doors again of the Chicago office of then-Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), now-US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) after a traumatic experience I had with the INS in the 90s. NEVER. But faced with the reality of being married once again to a non-US citizen, it was clear to me that I didn’t have much choice in the matter if we were going to stay here rather than go back to his side of the pond. ...

The high temperature in Chicago reached 104°F (40°C) yesterday afternoon. In our living room, which is on west side of our top-floor apartment, it got up to 98°F (37°C). The rest of the apartment was a balmy 93°F (34°C). Even the wooden floors were hot, leading us to believe that our neighbor downstairs isn’t faring any better. We had air conditioners running in both bedrooms, and a friend who doesn’t have a/c came over to cool off. Exiting from the artificially cooled air into the convection oven that was the rest our apartment felt like a physical blow. ...