FYI

I would like to make an announcement and let you know that moths are now #2 on my list of Hated Creatures that Infest Brazilian Homes. (Second to lizards, of course.) The recent climate change (or so I'm told, I have sensed no change in climate whatsoever the last 4 months) has apparently brought the moth migration to the 8th floor of Residencia Saint Paul. Usually they stay outside, stuck to the wall of my hallway only to die during the night and blow under my door so that I have a colony of dead moths to sweep up in the morning, but recently they've been coming on in before their already-short-but-not-short-enough lifespan comes to an end. Ok, no problem. I can handle that. They typically stay in my living room anyway, and so at bedtime I just shut my door and wait for them to die.

Well, just now, as I was looking at pictures of my friend Lauren's one-week-old baby girl online (congratulations!), I saw that one of these pesky little brats had found his way into my bedroom. "Stay calm, Cris," I literally said out loud. "He really won't bother you. As soon as you turn off the light he'll fly out. Just ignore him." "Okay," I responded, and proceeded to lay back, relax, and continue with my bedtime internet surfing ritual, trying to ignore his nasty brown body fluttering about. Just then, as I began my third time through her album (her baby is seriously cute,) the moth FLEW INTO AND PERCHED INSIDE MY ARMPIT. In one fell swoop, I screamed, jumped out of my bed, and grabbed my flip flop, prepared for battle. He must have realized I wasn't kidding around, and he's nowhere near cute enough for me to give him a name and post pictures of him on my blog like I did with Chatinho the lizard. I stood at the foot of my bed, flip flop in the air, beckoning him to come out of hiding (under the bed I believe, no longer my armpit,) with a few choice words. (PG words, don't worry, Mom.)

The coward never showed. I pray that maybe the landing in my armpit that elicited my battle cry did enough to cause premature death. There's one body I'll gladly sweep up in the morning...

*****Change of Subject******

I just thought you might like to know that tomorrow I will be meeting up with my childhood neighbors from when my family lived in Brasilia. A few houses down from ours lived a family with 4 teenagers when Kelly and I were little. We idolized them, and they used us to get good grades in English. Some of my fondest and most vivid memories from my life in Brasilia include Tatiana, Cintia, and Kamelzinho. Through Orkut, a popular Brazilian networking site, I was able to contact them after losing contact like 15 years ago. I found out, by pure coincidence, that they already had a vacation to Natal planned for March. Here we are in Natal in March, and tomorrow we have plans to hang out. What a small world, made only smaller by the wonders of the internet. Hooray!