Goodbye to Larry

Well, the good news is that I was being an idiot before with my TV and I hadn't changed the setting from antenna to cable. Once I did that, I not only discovered that I had 80 channels, but that I don't really have CNN from the States anymore. We get CNN, the British version, as well as CNN the Spanish version. It's been really great, we even have a bunch of channels like Cinemax, FX, Fox, etc. to waste my time watching. We also have ESPN, but it's in Spanish, so it's all soccer, all the time. They did however broadcast the Steelers game the other night, much to the delight of my roommate Tara from Pennsylvania. It was dubbed over in Spanish and pretty entertaining to hear them mispronounce the players' names. Still no internet connection, which is very frustrating when you were planning on using that as a means to communicate with everyone you know. Perhaps by Christmas we'll have that set up. At least I have those 80 channels and my DVD/karaoke machine to keep me busy. In fact, I looked around yesterday for karaoke CDs and I came across mostly salsa and merengue ones, until finally I found a real gem entitled, Rock en Ingles. It has a song by Cinderella on it as well as "Send Me An Angel" from the 80s. I believe my roommates and I are hosting a party for Halloween, so we may just have to break that one out for everyone's listening pleasure.

Other than that, I feel like I've just been working a lot. My days here are kind of longer than I'm used to. Part of the problem is that for some reason my internal alarm clock keeps going off at 4:30 a.m. and I don't have to get up until 5:30 a.m. So, by the time I get home around 4ish, I'm fighting those afternoon naps like you wouldn't believe. So far, I'm winning.

Speaking of 4:30 a.m., I woke up last Saturday morning at that exact time and then was cursing my body, as usual, when all of a sudden I realized that my bed was shaking. It took me a minuted to realize that I had woken up in the midst of an earthquake. Not having experienced the earthquake that supposedly happened in Chicago a few months ago, I had no reference to what one would feel like, other than just reading about them. It only lasted about a minute, then all was calm again. I did confirm the next day with my colleagues (yes, I had to work on Saturday again) that it was in fact an earthquake. I guess I'll need to read up on what to do when there is one, because I'll be honest, my first thought was that it was just a little one and I was hoping it wouldn't last long since I needed my precious sleep. I guess I wasn't thinking very clearly. Good thing it really was only a little one. I guess they're not all that uncommon here.