random musings

1.  We had a great vacation in Hawaii and Los Angeles.  I've just downloaded photos and will update you soon on that trip.

2.  We got an email yesterday from Sallie Mae that said "congratulations, your student loans are paid in full."  You may be wondering what student loans Sallie Mae was talking about since neither of us has been in school for many, many moons.  Well, that was Jimmy's very expensive two years at Georgetown getting a Master's degree.  Which he graduated with in 1997.  Yes, we were on the minimum payment plan so it took a long time.

3.  We've spent the last two Saturdays going on hikes.  Last Saturday was to Chingaza National Park, and yesterday was ultimately to Parque Ecologico Matarredondo (stops along that way at a lookout point over the city and at the Virgin Guadalupe statue that looks over the city) .  We can't believe we've missed visiting these places for the last 2.5 years, but now that we know they exist, we plan to make hay while the sun shines until we leave in July and visit as many other cool spots as possible.

Chingaza was beautiful and very cold.  It's called a "paramo", which I think in Spanish translates to "like Scotland".  I've never been to Scotland but I think this is how Scotland must look.  Some photos:

I spy with my very own eye a little white-tailed deer.  Can you see him (or her?)

One of the 23 deer that Mac counted on the trip.

Parque Ecologico Matarredondo, although considered a paramo so there are many of the same types of vegetation as Chingaza, was much warmer than Chingaza.  We did a short hike there before heading to lunch in the nearby town of Choachi.

the inside of the old chapel at the Virgin of Guadelupe statue

the Virgin herself

the awful Saturday smog of Bogota that the poor Virgin must look at 

Mac on the trail at Matarredonda

our lunch spot - we are all eating from a big basket of grilled pork and beef, potatoes and yucca

the restaurant

our pork and beef were grilled in that big fireplace.  I wonder what their restaurant rating would be in the US?

a little landslide repair work

one of the many great views on our ride back to Bogota

4.  Our beloved Ruth's son is a computer expert.  And her son's girlfriend is a manicurist, who can also do facials, waxing, massages, etc.  So in typical Southern style, where you can get your taxes done in the same place as your small engine repairs, on Friday afternoon they both came over.  While I was getting a mani/pedi, my computer was getting some love.  For at least two years, my laptop has had no sound.  That means we couldn't watch dvds or youtube videos or listen to the sound on e-cards, etc.  And then sometime ago, even though I really keep no files of any size on the laptop because everything is backed up on external hard drives, all of a sudden my hard drive was full.  The computer worked so slowly that I never wanted to even turn it on.  So the computer whiz came in and within 5 minutes, said I had a worm that had just eaten its way through my hard drive.  When I asked how that could be since I pay for a perfectly good anti-virus program, he said that typically anti-virus programs update every week to cover all the viruses and worms that came out that week, but new viruses and worms are created every day so in the interim, my computer was infected.  So he cleared the decks on the hard drive and we started over from scratch.  It's like I have a new computer now.  It's fast AND as an unexpected bonus, the sound now works.  Apparently the worm liked the audio and ate that too!  Oh, and he fixed my overheating problem (where the laptop would overheat and just die, usually when you were in the middle of doing something very important).  He ran out and got me a laptop cooling pad that works like a charm.  Note to self:  at the next hint of a computer problem, call this guy instead of suffering silently.  The cost of all this computer work (including the cooling pad)?  about $50.

Happy Sunday!