On an A.D. dry streak...

Ok, so shoot me—I haven’t had my Arrested Development discs in my possession since December and hadn’t watched them for two months before that. So theres no clever quote, I’m sorry. Maybe I’ll just change the name of the blog.

Where were we? Last I wrote was towards the end of January and now we’re into March so I guess theres some updating to be done. First off, I have to say that last week my pup Tek nearly died but that now he is back to good health. It started on a Monday morning and the first two days of the week I was out in an aldea from early morning until late afternoon and so didn’t really appreciate what was happening as fast as I would normally have. He caught something, distemper maybe, perhaps a bacteria of some sort, and would not eat or drink anything for nearly three days straight. No food, no water, nothing, and as a result his pudgy little body wasted away slowly until he looked like a heap of fur and bones. His nose was white he was so dehydrated and because he only wanted to find the darkest corners of my backyard to lay in he was covered in dirt and spiderwebs—it was pathetic and looked like he was not going to make it. I had to feed him electrolyte rich serum through a syringe for three days and he wasn’t even keeping that down for about a day and a half; there was nothing but throwing up for awhile. Towards the end of the week he started to be able to keep the serum down and then it was water and after a couple of days he could drink some milk. He started throwing up for the first time on Monday morning and it was nearly an entire week after that moment before he ate his puppy chow again, but eventually he got back to normal. Now he is back to his old self, eating a ton and playing with his mom and its been a huge relief. One of his sisters caught the same thing and died during the week Tek was so sick—she was even bigger and chubbier than he. Fortunately it passed, though, so when Tek was doing his crazy, puppy shriek/bark last night at a toad that was in the patio, I couldn’t help but smile.

In other news there has been some work with studies and designs and water stuff but the story of the past few weeks has been what PC calls secondary projects. First off, Gen and I had a baseball tryout early in the month for our youth team because the regional tournament is Mar 8. We had been kind of half-assing practices and with each of us gone here and there for various errands and projects it just was not conducive to a consistent showing for or from the children. So I went to the schools and made announcements for the tryout in the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grade classes while Gen put up posters and did a schpeel on the local cable access channel. The “prueba” went well and we made a roster of 22 or so players and then have been practicing pretty consistently for the last few weeks. Yesterday we whittled that list down to the 15 allowed to travel to the tournament and this Saturday, Mar 8, we go to a nearby town and test our baseball mettle. Go Victoria!!

The other new thing in life here is that I am now teaching computers to the fifth and sixth graders. There isn’t some funny story associated with this storyline, at least not yet, and it just started this week. The water system work is plenty, to be sure, and if I didn’t do anything but aldea visits and topo studies and designs I’d be busy for the rest of my time here given this municipality’s water scene. That said, it is a nice change to actually be doing some consistent work in the town where I live, interacting with children and teachers and parents…a new chapter to life here in Victoria.

In water news I returned to that town where I finished the conduction line study at the end of January. This is the one where I encountered the tick problem that this time of year brings—oh, and on that note, I was wrong about ticks replacing the mosquitoes. I thought the dry season (dry and hot as a mofo!) would mean the end of the blood sucking bastards, but that’s not the case. The mosquitoes now are a new breed, the next generation of horrible flying insects—these guys are invisible, I swear, and I’ve been bitten three times before I even know there are any damn mosquitoes in the room! When I got here these guys were slow and dumb and as a result the walls of my living room are peppered with smashed mosquito carcasses. Nowadays they fly fast and low and don’t hug the walls…I swear I hardly ever even see them now, I just have the itchy bites to let me know theyre around.

Anyway, I went back to that town to finish the study of their distribution network this past week (when Tek was busy throwing up a lung). I had mentioned in the weeks previous to people how many garrapatas our group had encountered along the way in January when we were heading out there and the response I got was always something similar to this: “Oh, that town? Yea, you take one step off the road going out there and youre gonna get some garrapatas on you.” The day I finish the study of the distribution network I am walking back to Victoria and decide to stop and cool off for a bit. Its blazing hot, we’ve finished earlier than expected, and theres no reason for me to be killing myself with the pace I’ve set, I think to myself. Might as well step off the road in a nice shady spot, pick a smooth rock to sit on, and just relax and drink some water. So I do just that. The words of the people who have told me about “stepping one foot off the path” are lingering in my head and I smile because I know its hyperbole, even if just barely. I take two steps off to the roadside (the ground appears to be just dried leaves), sit on a smooth rock in the shade, and even decide to keep my backpack slung over one shoulder instead of plopping it on the ground, just in case. I uncap my water bottle, take a few swigs, and enjoy the cool air in the shade as a breeze rolls across me. Glancing at the ground around me, I think how theres little chance that anything is living anywhere near here…and then I look more closely at my jeans and see that my right leg is now covered in tiny garrapatas.