Backyard Chickens People who live in Washington, D.C. have this annoying habit of thinking that anything outside of Washington, D.C. is “the country”—as if civilization stops at the diamond-shaped border. We live about 30 minutes outside of Washington, but are routinely told that it’s hard to make it to our events, because they are “so far away” and that we live in the “boonies!” Read more
Attack of the Killer Slugs The town we live in here in Virginia is a planned community, and there are many wooded areas interspersed throughout the community. These wooded areas are great during the summer, when one can take advantage of the many shaded walkways and bike paths to get outdoors while not being scorched. Read more
Scheduling a Birthday Party On Saturday, we celebrated our daughter Valentina’s first birthday. We live in a townhouse, so it can be hard to have a lot of people at one time, but I got excited and invited 70 people anyway. I did the invitation on Facebook only and a week and a half before the event, so by Friday night, only 12 people had replied that they were coming. Read more
Why “Salvadoran Gringo” and Not “Latin” or “Hispanic?” I came up with the title “Salvadoran Gringo” on a whim, after mulling over the options for several days. As usually happens, I get excited about something, share it with a bunch of people for their feedback, get negative feedback, and then ignore what everyone else said and do what I wanted anyway 😛 Well, that is only partially true; I do consider others’ input carefully. Read more