One of my favorite photos of all time taken in 2005 at Chapleco Ski Center located in northern Patagonia in Argentina. You think Owen needs a haircut? Neglect of my children manifests itself in long stretches of time between haircuts. You know its bad when a boy is asking, begging for a haircut, or even worst when teachers suggest it in a written note...
While it may be a ski vacation for the family, the next ten days for me will be full of dressing children, finding missing essentials pieces of equipment and outer clothing, picking up and dropping of kids at various classes and watching them swim in a stinky indoor pool. The highlights for me will be freezing my ass off on a longer than should be ski lift ride sneaking in a few pages of a book.
We have had a spectacular winter. Hardly a gray day in the bunch and maybe 1 or 2 days of rain in the last six weeks. Its made our very quiet winter break more bearable with sunny afternoons that have been perfect for walks, bike rides, various ball activities or trampoline marathons. But that all changed last night at 8:00 when it started to rain, and it hasn’t stopped. We have had thunderstorms and borderline hail. The streets are flooded and the natives restless. We have 2 rules during break, no kids media between 10am-8pm and you must be dressed before lunch is served. Well I don’t have the fortitude to enforce the law today. Its such a crappy, gray day that after I took these pictures of the kids getting soaked, I relented and they are now spaced out watching episodes of Get Smart probably for the next several hours. After posting this I am going to get into bed with some tea and read my book until I fall asleep.
What is better than playing in the rain? Playing in the rain in your pajamas at 1:30 in the afternoon!
Never turning down an opportunity to accessorize, Georgie sports the practical and fashionable unicorn umbrella
One of the great things about the internets is that you can avoid human contact when it comes to doing mundane things like buying plane tickets. Its just so much easier to be able to look at your own computer screen and see all the flight options, prices, and seats than having someone have to communicate all this information via a bad phone connection. When I do have to call client service people, I am not looking for a fight, because generally I find these people are trying to be helpful,but often it is less satisfying than an electronic commerce experience.
The other day I was attempting to buy plane tickets on Lan Airlines. Lan is a Chilean airlines that we use when we can because they are much more reliable when it comes to scheduled departures than a local airlines that will remain nameless. In the past, in fact less than a month ago, we were able to buy tickets for a domestic flight on the local Lan Argentine website. Made reservations as Arggie residents, purchased with a US credit card, checked in online, no problems.
Before I even made this new reservation, I was already aggravated by the process I had been through to get our accommodations for this trip, which is another long story of stupid customer service. So needless to say, I was looking forward to smooth transaction online.
It wasn’t meant to be. I had successfully made the reservation, imputing six peoples worth of names, frequent flyer numbers, DNI numbers, birth dates and any and all personal data that could be asked for. When I tried to pay for the tickets, the screen went blank except for the words”<< payment error>>”. I was stricken in horror as to how was I going to be able to go back to the page that had the passenger information intact…I saw my only option was the back key on the browser and not surprisingly I ended up at the “welcome” page. So stupid me goes through the whole ten minute procedure again, only to get the <<payment error>> message again. I have to call. First I called the Argentine Lan.com sales office, and they told me if I am using a US credit card then Iwould have to use the US site. (which must be a new procedure, but they lead me to believe its always been this way and I am just a moron.) So I called the US Lan.com and they told me that if we are Argentine residents we have to book our tickets on the Argentine website. So since I have only US credit cards I was told I needed to change my reservation using US Passport numbers. I said, OK lets do that then. I was then told because I called Lan.com and not regular Lan sales, I will need to call another number he cant possibly forward me to. So I hang up and start over with a surly person who at one point when I was struggling to find one of the kids passport numbers amongst 12 passports (we each must carry two because our visa for Argentina is in an expired one) and 6 DNI books, said “maybe you can call back when you are ready…”. And I should have called back because it got uglier from there. I think bullet points would tell the rest of the story much better.
After lots of chastising of my apparent lack of clarity in communicating names and number we finally get to the paying part, yeah!!
First he asked me if my card is a debit or credit card and I said both, because it is. He said that’s impossible and asked me what it says on the card and I said both, he said impossible and I asked him to please try to process it with this card.
Then he asked what is the bank name on the card and I said [bank name here] and he said its not on his list. I reassured him it is a legitimate financial institution and could he please try to process it with this card.
He told me it is my responsibility to be able to tell him the name of the bank that issued my credit card…
I told him ” I have been messing (or similar word, not sure) around with this reservation for six hours and I would very much like to buy these tickets, now.”
He said “that if you are going to continue to talk to me using profanities, I will hang up on you” I respond, bewildered, “what profanity did I use that has offended you,” because I honestly did’nt know (and still don’t), I am pretty sure I didn’t use a really nasty curse word…
He said “YOU know what you said!” and I reply laughingly because it has now gotten so silly stupid, “I really don’t, please tell me..”
He said, “you are trying to trick me into saying the profanity and get me into trouble!”
In the meantime there were hungry children moving in on me and a quick conclusion to this was becoming a necessity for everyone.
“May I speak to someone else, please.”
“You can call back”
So now I am really pissed, “What is your name?”
“I gave you my name at the beginning of the call”
“Can I have it again”
“No”
Totally and utterly defeated, “I am going to give you another credit card its and its from Chase bank”
His response “JPMorganChase?”
Several minutes later I have purchased my tickets. He asked me “Is there anything else I can do for you Mrs. O’Connell?”
I think it would have been wise to say no, but I couldn’t help myself ” Was the word I used that you didn’t like screwing or fucking or mes…”
These guys really are a endless well of hilarity. Got to love em. I am streaming the hearings. There is nothing to in BA since everyone is staying at home except for important stuff like shopping for food and apparently for me, getting your hair colored.
I find the hearings fascinating. The rules of order make it seem almost campy plus there is so much bullshit and double talk it is really great theater. I am sick I know but I must admit when I was 11 years old, I watched the Watergate Hearings on TV. It was the Spring/Summer 1973 and we had just moved from San Francisco to suburban Cleveland (it wasn’t that bad, really). I spent quite a few days during the summer of 1973 watching some of the 319 hours of television that made up those hearings. I remember that the three main networks (NBC, ABC and CBS) took turns broadcasting the hearings every three days. That way they didn’t interrupt the soap opera schedule too much. If you missed it during the day you could watch it on PBS at night which I did sometimes with my mom and dad. (Loser)
What I didn’t remember, until I read this, was that exactly a year passed between the time those hearings ended in August 1973 and when Nixon resigned in August 1974, just as the Senate was set to impeach him. I don’t remember many details. I was aware that John Mitchell, the Attorney General, had a nutty wife. Nixon’s secretary had some technical issues with tape recordings. There was a articulate and passionate priest/congressman that my dad really liked. Senator Sam Ervin had a great voice. And when John Dean testified everyone watched. I probably saw that twice.
My name is Callum O’Connell. I make stop-motion animations with Legos. I made my first one when I was in 4th Grade with my friend Sherlock. We made it about a dancing Bionicle but it was only like 5 seconds. My second one was with my friend Marco and it was about Star Wars. I actually made 2 with him. My 4th was with my dad that was around 1 minute and was about a guy who wants to find the holy pizza. Then all the ones after that are on my you tube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/callvim
I went to my friend’s house and stayed for a sleepover. His name is Francisco and he loves Legos. So when I went to his house I made a animation with him that took like 3 hours to make and its around 3 minutes. It is probably my best one and has a sequel. I hope you enjoy it and please visit my youtube.com channel. Or tell your kids if Lego videos are not your thing.
Today I am soliciting feedback on a photo. This is another Linky thingy where an amateur photographer can get feedback on photos from those who know what the hell they are doing, unlike me.
Since we are in vacation shut down mode here in Argentina, I have been playing around with GM’s Cannon Rebel EOS Xti and editing with PSE7. So below find the original photo that I would love feed back on. Unfortunately, I wasn’t tracking my settings but I did not use a flash. Light source was a reading lamp.
Then I cropped and sharpened it within a inch of its life. I screwed around with the various levels, specifically skin tone, but couldn’t seem to do better than Smart Fix which is what you see below. I think its a little cold but I like that you get the purple from the sheets. I was hoping to soften the white light coming from the lamp and give texture to the bed. Any ideas?
Yesterday I had my biggest day ever as far as hits go. And it was not the McLinky thing. That thing had over a thousand entries that made it too big to display all the websites. That was pretty much a bust. No what made it a big day at Political Exile was a surge in people googling “what does Michael Jackson look like dead”. When you Google that, I appear on the first page at the bottom with my blog entry “it looks like Michael Jackson is dead” which I wrote in real time when the news was trying to figure out what was going on at the hospital a week ago last.
It begs to ask, why yesterday, did people start to wonder “what does Michael Jackson looks like dead”? Even more curiously, what did they expect to find? Photos from the coroner? Photos from the hospital staff from their cell phones? And even stranger is why do they want to see him dead? Just plain weird.
If I was clever I would have photoshopped some heads on, but I am not.
Its winter holidays right now. With the kids going to an international school we have 6 weeks in June/July and 6 weeks Christmas until the beginning of the February. Most schools in Argentina have 2-3 weeks off and start the second half of the school year the beginning of August. Well this has been a kind of funky holiday for us.
Generally we have traveled during this holiday, sometimes north of the equator, sometimes here in Latin America. This year, because the oldest was going to be going to camp in the northern hemisphere for 2 1/2 weeks smack in the middle of the break, we decided to stay here and ski. There has been one problem with that plan, there is no snow. At least not in Argentina. There are some great places to ski in Argentina, Las Lenas and Cerro Cathedral are probably the best. The one problem is that they have little to no altitude, so it better be cold. In past years we have been to Bariloche twice to ski at Cerro Cathedral and have been rained out both times. So we are now looking at going to Chile to ski where there does appear to be snow. That will happen at the end of the month.
Normally this would be a great time to take the kids to the zoo, museums, the movies, shopping etc..normally kids in local schools would still be in session for at least another two weeks. But not this year. The gripe porcina (swine flu) has hit hard, or at least the government would like us to believe that. To show how responsive they are being, they close everything down. The kids are all out of school, basically until further notice. In the last week they have closed cinemas, my gym, concerts and sports events. And as of tomorrow (which is Argentina’s Independence Day, 9 de Julio) there is now a long weekend, including Friday which is a “feriado sanitario” (or health holiday) in which everyone has been encouraged to stay home, away from large crowds, with the hope to stall out the virus. It makes things very quiet around here. I never left the house today. The kids went for a walk with Corina to buy medialunas (sweet croissants) for tomorrow. Its OK for a few days..but even I, who can always be entertained by a book, could see how this will get old quickly. When GM gets back from the States we will for sure go somewhere. This would make him nuts. Either to the more immediate campo or to Junin.
Until then, more Camp Mommy. There has been a lot of Pictionary the last few days and we started a Puppy/Kitten 500 piece jigsaw. We got all the edge pieces isolated and the corner pieces identified. Then Ana, in her quest to clean every surface of humanity, stuck the puzzle back in the box. Well there is tomorrow, and the day after that, and the next day….
I am participating in a McLinky Thingy, curious how it affects traffic but more importantly, its a fun way of throwing darts around the world and making contact, in this case with moms.
Here is a current photo of all the kids.
While it might not look like much, it is a photo of all the kids, they are all looking at the camera, and and for the most part they are smiling. (Georgie doesn’t smile, she smirks) It may not rival past Christmas photos, but I wouldn’t say it wasn’t an effort. We are at the point now where the kids, especially Hank(13) and Cal(11) need to be bribed with chocolate (in this case hot chocolate) to be cooperative in front of the camera for what turns out to be less than 5 minutes out of their busy day. And long gone are the days of coordinating outfits from Bonpoint. No more velvet knickers for Hank, I am fairly sure those are the clothes he wore to bed the night before. Callum is in his underwear and t-shirt, Owen, the only sane one, is in his school uniform and Georgie, who has a wardrobe full of beautiful pajamas from Baby Cottons and Petit Bateaux is wearing a Sponge Bob T-shirt of her brother’s. At least she wears it with confidence.
Click here to enter your link in the blog hop and view the entire list of entered links…
We had a kind of sad little 4th of July. GM and Henry left for their respective destinations in the Northern Hemisphere last night so its me and three kids for the next few weeks. The plan had been to go to the center to a Fourth of July party that the Argentine-American Cultural Institute does every year. We have never been, we usually aren’t here for winter, but we thought we would check it out. While it was not promising fireworks, it was advertising American food, music and games for the kids. Well, it was canceled. Because of the swine flu. Yes, the swine flu is hitting pretty hard right now. It is flu season here and there are 15 million people living in this metropolitan sprawl called Buenos Aires. So there have been about 2400 reported cases in the country and about 50 deaths.
Enter the Kirchner government, who only last Sunday choked big time in their congressional elections. They were not gracious losers. But never to turn down an opportunity to look good, the government has roared into action on the swine flu. Feeding into an already amplified latin paranoia about health related issues and germs (per my latina friend), the government has order pretty much everything and anything shut down, closed, keep out. That means school (which only has a 2 week winter break) has been closed down 3 weeks early, most cultural/civic events (like the big 4th of July in town), and some musical concerts have been postponed until further notice. There is discussion about non essential businesses closing for several weeks. I heard my gym might be closed next week and the hairdresser was closed for the weekend. So there is a bit of panic going on. Since the weather has been BEAUTIFUL here and the Kirchners finally got theirs, I guess there needs to be something to talk and worry about. God bless the swine flu. And God bless America.
The kids wanted barbecue ribs but I wasn’t able to find any pork ribs so I had to modify the meal (which is the challenge of cooking here, a key ingredient will be in the market one day, not the next) and instead we had pork chops, applesauce, macaroni and cheese and a green salad with tomatoes. Kind of American. For dessert, we made these yummy red velvet cup cakes with cream cheese icing. They might not look like Martha but they tasted like Martha.
There are news cycles when stories just telescope on each other and things get weirder and wilder. The last few weeks have been like that, so action packed with political revolutions, coups, a slew of celebrity deaths including one super icon and another, regular icon, and then for dessert you get an extremely large serving of inept republicans bordering on bizarro world. Its enough to make your head spin and while exciting, as a voracious news consumer, its exhausting, and I am watching/listening to a Yankees baseball game almost everyday too! Not to mention, as well, several meals a day for the childrens.
So I was looking forward to the weekend when not only is there generally less content but its the weekend for God’s sake and a long weekend in the States. Since I am living in Argentina, and the one Fourth of July celebration that was happening in BA was canceled because of the swine flu (another post), I don’t have picnic and parades to keeping me off the internets… Sarah Palin resigned!
What is it about Sarah Palin people see her as a viable political leader? I just don’t get it. When she opens her mouth its beauty pageant Q&A..no substance AT ALL…. I see her personal story compelling and soap opera like at times so I get the media’s interest in her, but how does that translate to a politician with policy credentials. I think our society is getting dangerously close to equating a telephotogenic person with a buzz, as a leader. OK, sounds a bit like Obama. But please, he has cred, street and policy. He did not need to be jacked up by some Eliza Doolittle operation to make him substantial. I think that’s what we are looking at here. I think Bill Kristol needed a job and now he has one as Henry Higgins. This would all be so delicious if it wasn’t so frickin scary.
Paul Begala, me hearts him, wrote a piece that nails it. I love reading him because he witty without being satire. This is a solid opinion editorial that understands the historical and political context of what he writes. Excellent and Funny.
Here is a thoughtful and measured piece by a student on the ground in Tehran, while clearly depressed about the lull in participation by the masses, clearly this isnt over.
Bob Herbert wrote this interesting op-ed about how Michael Jackson’s weird reality is analogous to our culture’s inability deal with society’s real problems head on.
And finally, the Yankee’s play of the week, chosen, by Owen, the O’Connell Family’s MLB expert and archivist of all obscure baseball stats.
I am feeling a lot less in exile these days. But my blog is still a mess of political and personal thoughts along with experiences of living in Argentina. While I can't promise, I will try to balance talk about my kids with something more universally relevant. And sorry if salty talk is offensive but I was a derivatives trader in another life and it cant be helped.
One of the great things about the internets is that you can avoid human contact when it comes to doing mundane things like buying plane tickets. Its just so much easier to be able to look at your own computer screen and see all the flight options, prices, and seats than having someone have to communicate all this information via a bad phone connection. When I do have to call client service people, I am not looking for a fight, because generally I find these people are trying to be helpful,but often it is less satisfying than an electronic commerce experience.
My name is Callum O’Connell. I make stop-motion animations with Legos. I made my first one when I was in 4th Grade with my friend Sherlock. We made it about a dancing Bionicle but it was only like 5 seconds. My second one was with my friend Marco and it was about Star Wars. I actually made 2 with him. My 4th was with my dad that was around 1 minute and was about a guy who wants to find the holy pizza. Then all the ones after that are on my you tube channel: 
While it might not look like much, it is a photo of all the kids, they are all looking at the camera, and and for the most part they are smiling. (Georgie doesn’t smile, she smirks) It may not rival past Christmas photos, but I wouldn’t say it wasn’t an effort. We are at the point now where the kids, especially Hank(13) and Cal(11) need to be bribed with chocolate (in this case hot chocolate) to be cooperative in front of the camera for what turns out to be less than 5 minutes out of their busy day. And long gone are the days of coordinating outfits from
