August

We have continued our exercise routine every weekday morning and now I do not feel any stiffness like the first week. As a matter of fact, some parts of the aerobics routine I skip out on and go run steps in an effort to get my legs ready for hiking in the mountains. The parts of the aerobics that I miss don't seem to be getting my heart going fast enough to do any good, so I don't feel like I am missing out on anything. Some days we go on walks. We gather outside and walk around town, thru town, or even go to the beach and walk in the sand. The most recent special activitywe had was doing allof the above at someones house who had a swimming pool. Everyone brought food and we had a fine party. Now we are going to start having Salsa lessons. That should be interesting; I know how to do the basic steps as taught back in Illinois, but they seem to have their own way of doing it down here. Plus the language barrier - I won't know what the instructor is saying.

As of August 16, Freyda and I are certified PuertoRican Artisans. We made a trip to San Juan to Fomento, the organization in charge of Puerto Rican cultural arts and presented our required number of carvings in varioous stages of completion and from the looks of the ratings on the forms showing acceptable on all counts, I expect to receive a card in the mail in a few weeks to make it official. I have completed a few more carvings that you can view: another set of Three Kings along with a Puerto Rican flag, a set of penguin three kings, and a study of a human hand so that I am able to make suitable hands on figures in the future.

It is the need of certain photos for the certification process that leeds me to the next narrative about 2 x 2 photos:

In Puerto Rico there seems to be an identity crisis within its population. Practically everything that you do in which you apply for something there seems to be a need for a 2 x 2 identity photo. Not just one, but two photos. It is quite a business down here selling those things. Next to the motor vehicle registration and licensing building there are many little booths set up that can deliver up a set of 2 x 2 photos for those who do not want to leave the premises if they were unfortunate enough to have forgotten to bring a set, Not to mention booths set up where you can get your medical evaluation as well - but that is another story.

Apply for a passport - need two 2 x 2 photos. Apply for a license of practically any kind - need two 2 x 2 photos. It doesn't seem to matter that the card you receive back does not show your photo in some cases. They just need it. For what, no one knows. Most of those photos will run anywhere from a set for $3.95 up to maybe $7-$8 in most places.

Since we are in need of having these photos, and I happen to have a background in digital photo manipulation I came up with a plan to save money. I decided that places like Walgreens and Walmart have self service digital photo machines where a customer can get 4 x 6 prints for about 29¢ or perhaps less if you go hog wild and order about twenty-five or more prints. I did not need that many prints and figured I could afford sixty cents for two copies of a photo that I defined as a print from a digital camera. A print from a digital camera is a print from a digital camera in my book, and it does not matter what the subject matter is. With that in mind, I took a couple of photos of myself and Freyda transferred them to my computer and cropped each one to a suitable 2 x 2 image. Then I copied the images and pasted them in such a way as to end up with six photos on an image that measured 4 x 6 exactly. One digital print coming up! It just happens to have six 2 x 2 images within the frame rather than a picture of Johnny jumping into the swimming pool, or Sarah with baby food drooling down her face. Do you see where I am going with this?

I loaded the image onto my USB Jumpdrive and headed to Walgreens one day since Freyda had the urge to purchase a bunch of erasers at 19¢ for a pack of two during the back to school sale. Since I had never bought digital prints before, I had to go screen by screen to get to the point where you select what type of media your images are on. For some reason the USB drive on both of the machines they had was not working (welcome to Puerto Rico). I inquired about what to do and was told that the floppy drive did not work either. The CD-ROM drive did function I was told. So my first try at getting a photo was unsuccessful. I would have to make a trip to the library to make a CD since my drive would not burn a CD.

A couple of days later, since I was in the vicinity, I had made a copy of the file on a floppy and made a trip to Walmart to give it a go there. Apparently there was something wrong with the file since the machine would load half of the file but not the whole file. They were not set up with USB drives so I could not get the files onto the machine that way either. I had not been to the library so I did not have a copy on CD yet. I asked for help and a nice young lady tried to get the file to work, but could not. She asked how many prints I needed and I said two. I think she thought she would be nice and use my Jumpdrive on the main computer to get the image and then print it on the regular photo processor. Since I had many other things and images on the Jumpdrive, she had to have me assist her in selecting the correct file. On the computer screen she could see that the file had six mug shots on it as I said "that is the one". She sent the file out to be printed, returned the jumpdrive, and told me it would be about one half hour. Digital prints at the one-hour service they offered were about twenty some cents for a 4 x 6. I though OK, everything is going great, I will be back in half an hour.

Upon returning I watched as she placed the envelope onto the desk and the first thing I asked was "is that the price? $7.95? Why is it that much? I am not going to pay that much." I left them on the desk and walked away. Apparently they had rung them up as ID photos (which is what they were), but they were just digital prints to me. I could have put anything on the image and it would have been printed with the same process, the same paper, but only charged 29¢! They did not even have to take my picture like they would normally. I was about to leave the store when I decided to talk to the manager. We got the guy and went back to the photo desk. I could tell the young lady was upset and I told the manager I did not want to get her into trouble, and explained how I thought I should only have to pay for regular digital prints and that is what I would have paid had the self service machine worked properly. He agreed with everything that I was saying, but still did not let me have them for the lower price. He told me it had something to do with the way the girl had rung it up. She rang it up as an ID photo only because she had looked at it, even though they did not have to take my picture! So I told him I did not want them and walked off. Off to the library I went.

Now back at Walgreens with a freshly burned CD in hand, I waited to use the machine there. Only one of the two was working today (welcome to Puerto Rico) and a lady was ordering fifty some prints, doing cropping, etc. Just as I began placing my order on the machine I asked the lady in charge if the prints that come from this machine are only 29¢ and she said yes. So after a wait of about fifteen minutes I had watched as at least a half dozen others picked up prints, or had them started, that involved the production of 2 x 2 photos. They got charged $3.95 or whatever it was per set. I walked out with a total bill of 62¢ for six sets of 2 x 2 prints and the satisfaction of knowing that I did nothing illegal or immoral - I just knew how to manipulate photos to my advantage.

Here are some recent photos of me: 1, 2, 3. It's a mixture between John Lennon and Bob Marley. Oh, what one can do on a computer these days!

I have noticed something interesting over the last few months. It seems as though there is something going on at the automobile licence plate manufacturing facility. I have noticed that many of the plates seem to come in a combination that might be taken in a negative way. The first three letters spell out a certain something, maybe not exactly, but phonetically near a certain something. The strange thing is that there seems to be a disproportionate number of these plates around. There are many varieties including FUC, FWK, FOC, FUK, FAK ETC. It's like the song in West Side Story - "and the population always growing". It's true! It seems like at least half of the young women/girls that one meets along the sidewalk are pregnant! It reminds me of a song, a rap song, that I heard back in 1990 when I was down here for the first time which the main message was "everyone is doing it - you just can't stop it." Another one of the following lyrics was: "That AIDs thing just aint working" I found that last lyric to be particularly intriguing and memorable. I hate rap music, but would like to hear that song again for kicks.

I was trememdously disappointed with the meteor shower this August 12th. the moon was just right and there were stars in the sky, but I saw very few meteors, and those that I did were only little ones and not spectacular at all.

Isaac, my carving mentor has been working on a new sculpture of a virgen and child but is not done yet. Here is where it stands right now. I ordered his business cards and have begun his website at www.IsaacLaboy.com but there is not much there yet.

Aug 28

Freyda and I are grandparents again.One of our hens has hatched three chicks today and seferal other hens should have chicks soon. Don't know what we are going to do with all those chickens.

I thought I would show the progress of the Virgen that Isaac has been carving. It is now finished. We have a great group of carvers and I look foreward to our carving "jam" session every saturday. This past saturday one of the group brought in some lasagna and other things and we had quite a feast. Several of the group started new projects that were quite ambitiuous this past week and all of them came to me for some reason to have me draw the starting figure on the block of wood. I drew a St. Micheal slaying the devil, a Jesus as a child walking in the clouds, and a few weeks ago I drew a virgen of Guadalupe for one of the young female carvers. I started a new project as well. I started carving a horse so that I could make a set of three kings on horseback which is the tradition here in Puerto rico. Very few people carve camels here. I have done more work thatn the photo shows, but have stopped that project so i can concentrate on the San francisco de Asis that is a competition piece for Aguada Bellas Arte Centro. This is the start, but I will show it later as it progresses.

We just found out that our first carving instructor, Ruben, has won a scholarship for a year at a very prestigious art school in Madrid, Spain. He will be leaving in a few weeks. I hope that the website that I built for him helped him get the scholarship. Soon, when he becomes famous, we will be able to say that we studied under him. Perhaps we will get some more advanced lessons.