I have discovered that a blog is a pain in the ass. That is because you must continually update it, otherwise it is of no use!
So, the last time I updated the blog was late last year.
What's happened since then? We went home to Ireland for a month at Christmas, I went on missions to Ottawa, Washington, Bogota, Quito, Geneva, and tomorrow I'm off to New York for a week.
We're moving house at the end of this month, downsizing because of rental considerations!
The dry season came and went and now the rainy season is upon us! Heat and humidy!
Colette and kids are off to Ireland in July, for a month, I have to stay here and work.
Next stop Christmas 2009, and we have rented a house in Dunmore East for Christmas week, so that should be a blast.
Now that I've started updating the blog again I'll try and keep it up to date, with photos!
All for now....

I recently put up a video on Youtube of our travels to date..
Click on the link, then when the video appears, click "watch in high quality"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY3P03XjPys

Oh well, I suppose it was too good to last. I really thought we would get away without having a car accident. Thank God it wasn't serious and nobody was injured.

Last Saturday we drove 95kms on the Pan-American Highway to a beach, where we had a booking in a reasonably priced hotel for the night.

Just when we were nearly at our destination we had to turn left off the highway. In order to do this we were required to stop in the fast lane, with the indicator on, until the other carraigeway was clear.

We had barely stopped when we heard a screech of tires followed by a loud bang and we were pushed two metres forward.

Nobody was injured, Katie started crying because she thought she would not get to the beach.

The back of the car is quite badly damaged, whereas the SUV that hit us suffered damage only to the bullbar.

My lovely Lancer!

Time is flying by, we have been in the house for nearly a month, here's a pic taken from the front door and one of the lounge/dining area.






The house has six substantial airconditioning units, and lots of fans on the ceilings. We try and keep the aircon to a minimum.

I bought a table

So we got the keys of the house yesterday and are planning to move in today, because the studio gets a little smaller each day, and we are tired beating up the kids. Sean says it doesn't hurt any more.
One of the prerequisites to moving in was to buy a kitchen table and four chairs, so we would have at least one table and chairs moving in.
I bought a nice table and 4 chairs in the local mall for $250, which came in a large cardboard box full of pieces, rather like one of Sean's lego sets.
When the guy arrived with the cardboard box, the furniture manager arrived and they proceeded to open the box and check the contents. This proved to be a good idea because there was one chair leg missing. The guy disappeared and came back with a chair leg, cannibalised presumably from another cardboard box.
In the middle of this my cellphone rang and it was Joan in the Ottawa office; a user in Toronto was having problems with a Groupwise Remote installation, looks like the NTLDR in Windows XP got corrupted and the PC won't start.
Eventually the table and chairs were transported out to the carpark by a different guy with a trolley. The cardboard box would not fit in the back of the car. No way it was going to go in, so we opened the cardboard box and put all the pieces separately in the boot. Thankfully not too many people witnessed this pantomime.
I am back in my office this Friday afternoon and my car sits outside with the kitchen table and four chairs in the boot, awaiting construction later today.