Jon, Fashion Icon

My brother-in-law Jon has a sweet boat and a great attitude. He also has some pretty sweet sunglasses. I don't think he owns these, however. He was just borrowing them from a friend.

The New Dresser

Here is a picture of my husband Tom embracing our new dresser. He sure likes it. He might like it a little too much. Every time he walks by it he touches the wood and says something about what a great piece of furniture it is. He says that he is looking forward to having a long relationship with this dresser.

"I think I might love our new dresser. It is really a quality piece of furniture. I'm happy, but I am also a little scared. Because when you love something you become terrified that you might lose it."

He made me take a picture of him hugging the dresser. And then he posed the dog in front of it and took a picture of that. Is this a common problem? Does it get worse with age?

Tom, Last Friday

Tom accidently eats cow stomach.

We were trapped in Chicago. We had six hours to kill after checking our bags and we decided to return to the city for a little Polish sight seeing. Chicago is a great city for Polish-Americans. We took the train to the Polish Museum of America. There was a very friendly man working there and it had a nice little gift shop. We got a cute new Christmas ornament!


After that we went to an adorable little Polish restaurant in the neighborhood. We walked in and everyone was speaking Polish. They had Polish newspapers on the counter. It was really neat. The menu was even in Polish. I had Pierogis, a traditional Slavic dumpling dish. Tom ordered something called flaczki. We ate our meal while we listened to the locals converse in Polish. After we paid the bill the waitress informed us that flaczki is a Polish delicacy: cow stomach soup. Yummy!

Premium Roast....more like Premium GROSS-st

Just in case you were wondering, "Hmmm... I wonder if those are any good?"

Monday, June 23

Tom wanted me to put up a post to let everyone know that it's his 30th birthday tomorrow. He's registered at Bed, Bath and Beyond, Borsheims, and Macy's.


Also celebrating a birthday tomorrow is Karen Roesner (Tom's sister)!


Rumor also has it that Graham "The Dog" Notch will another year older too. I'm not sure if either of them are registered anywhere.

I'll probably post something tomorrow about the actual birthday, but this is an invitation to comment some well wishes for the birthday mornings.

Oops! We went to a wrestling match.

Tom loves reggae music, sometimes maybe a little too much. Nonetheless, I am taking him to see Israel Vibration for his birthday on Monday night. We went to First Avenue in downtown Minneapolis last night to buy tickets. The guy who sold us the tickets was nice enough to let us slip into last night's entertainment free of charge. We found ourselves with accidental front row seats to an amateur wrestling match. We got scared and left soon after this video was taken:

The Israel Vibration concert on Monday should look more like this:

Sign Language Clarification

While scuba diving, it is important not to confuse the shark signal with this signal.


This is the internationally recognized symbol shows that you're not going to be the one to "eat it". If you don't know what "it" is, just ask anyone under the age of 14.

Mother's Day Out-takes

We had a lot of fun putting our Mother's Day tribute together. Probably too much fun. We got caught up in the spirit of the holiday. Mother's Day is a BIG DAY here in Honduras. We've got a lot of blogging to do this week. Watch out for posts about vegetable drinks and super awesome Honduran hot sauce.

Bert and Ernie

Finally, intelligent political commentary.

Honduran Roadshow Volume #1: Tom's Knick-knacks

We brought an extraordinary amount of strange crap to Honduras. Due to my urishiol-induced, heat-aggravated cashew rash (see post) we spent most of last weekend indoors. How bored were we? We were so bored we decided to take pictures of some knick-knacks sitting on a bookcase. Karine interviewed me about these strange objects and this blog is the result. Next week I will be interviewing Karine about our kitchen appliances.

KL: What’s up with all these knick-knacks?
TL: I don't know. I guess they’re just the things you kind of hang on to. Wherever you move, there they are.

KL: What age did your obsession with knick-knacks begin?
I was very young. I suppose it started with stuffed animals. I had Rambo Teddy Bear -- a stuffed bear and Toby Steeringwheel -- a stuffed rabbit. Before that I had binky -- a binky.

KL: Which are your favorites?
TL: The cast iron train and my little tiny train (The Lionelville Express)

KL: Do you know where they came from?

TL: Yeah, I know where all my knick-knacks come from. The Lionelville Express was a gift from my best friend and my girlfriend. They ordered it off of tv. It was attached to a giant alarm clock and [the train] actually went around. The alarm clock is long gone. But I've hung on to the little train.

KL: Why trains?
TL: I’ve always liked trains. Um… trains are great. I don’t know if there’s a real short answer to my train obsession. Omaha, the U.S.A., my family, the Great Plains, taking pictures of trains. They’re cool machines.

KL: Is it important to you that you are the first owner of your knick-knacks?
TL: I’m only the first owner of one of my knick-knacks. My Lionelville Express train.

KL: Let’s talk about some of your other knick-knacks. What are these? (Reaching to touch a piece of paper sticking out of a Alice in Wonderland toothpick holder.)

TL: Don’t touch that! It’s my certificate of authenticity! It goes with Alice. And Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

KL: What are they?
TL: Tweedledee and Tweedledum and Alice. They belonged to my grandmother. She had a lot of knick-knacks. I’ve had these since college but never really looked at them until now. They're kind of scary. I don’t think I want them anymore.


KL: Tell me about the big wooden bird.
TL: It’s really ugly and it was also my grandmother’s.

KL: How about the leprechaun bobblehead?
TL: I got it from a party hosted by Casey Piersma.

KL: How do you feel about other bobbleheads?

TL: I hate all of them.

KL: Any other thoughts about your collections?
TL: I’m not planning on doing any more collecting. I never really meant to have this collection. Some things you just don’t get rid of.

Interview by Karine Lewandowski

Photography by Tom Lewandowski

Moment of Zen

KARINE INVITED TO DINE WITH HONDURAN PRESIDENT MEL ZALAYA

We are happy to announce that Karine has been invited to share a meal with Honduran President Mel Zelaya at the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa. We never suspected that she would receive such an honor. Karine recently wrote short letter entitled, “Why President Zelaya’s Mustache is the most Important and Powerful in Central America” ("Porque el bigote del Presidente Zelaya es el mas importante y con mas portencia en Central America"). She submitted the letter to our national newspaper, La Prensa, in response to recent criticisms of Mr. Zalaya's mustache. Karine has always been a fierce defender of mustaches in general and President Zelaya's mustache in particular. Aids to the president related Karine's vigorous defense of the presidential mustache to the president himself this morning. We couldn't possibly be more excited!

Mencken on politics, Me with some birds

Observing the Democratic Primary from abroad has been an eye-opening experience. I came across the following H.L. Mencken quote a couple of weeks ago and thought about posting it, but changed my mind. Now that the Democratic Primary has gotten NASTY I thought it might be helpful to remind ourselves that this isn't anything new to American politics. In fact, if you look at it from the right perspective, its one of the most entertaining spectacles the world has ever known.

Mencken wrote this in 1922:

Consider, for example, the current campaign for the Presidency. Would it be possible to imagine anything more stupendously grotesque? I defy anyone to match it elsewhere on earth. In other lands, at worst, there are at least issues, ideas, personalities. Somebody says something intelligible, and somebody replies. But here, having perfected democracy, we lift the whole combat to a gaudy symbolism, to a disembodied transcendentalism, to metaphysics, that sweet nirvana. Here [politics] is purged of all menace, all sinister quality, all genuine significance – and stuffed with such gorgeous humors, such extravagant imbecilities, such uproarious farce that one comes to the end of it with one’s midriff in tatters.




But I am pretty sure that no one reads this blog for insightful politically commentary (is that an oxymoron?), so here is a picture of me with some birds on my shoulders.

Stuff We Like: Ze Frank

We can say without hesitation that The Show with Ze Frank is the funniest and smartest thing that we have ever seen on the internet. His last new episode was published March 17, 2007. We haven't seen anything remotely like it since. The Show was hilarious interactive new media explosion -- difficult to describe but easy to love.

For example: He invited his viewers to dress up their vacuum cleaners in wacky outfits and posted the results on the show's website. Dressing vacuuming cleaners in wacky outfits? -- that's not cool. Oh, wait. No, its awesome. Check out the complete archive of wacky vacuum cleaner outfits here.

If you have three minutes to kill, treat yourself to one of his best episodes, located right here. If you have more time on your hands watch them all. You can start right here.

The Girl Who Spelled...

When I was in 3rd grade, one of my favorite public-library movie rentals was The Girl Who Spelled Freedom. This made-for-TV movie (based on a true story!) was about a Cambodian girl who came to live with an American family and ended up winning the big spelling bee championship. Thus, my infatuation with spelling bees began.

This week, I was asked to be a caller at the National Spelling Bee (for all bilingual schools) here in La Ceiba. They wanted a native English speaker to pronounce the words for the students. By luck of the draw, I was assigned to 4th grade.

Yesterday morning, I showed up at the National Spelling Bee and was greeted by a giant tissue-paper bee (Think pencil eraser with a small square of tissue paper, dip in glue and stick to paper). This bee was at least 20 feet tall... They go all out here!

So my story of the day... After calling about 200 words for my 17 4th grade finalists, I pull the next word. Here is a script of how it went down...
Karine: Your word is "flicker"
Child: flicker? Can I have it in a sentence?
Karine: Flicker- I watched the candle flicker in the darkness. Flicker
Child: Can I have another sentence?"
Karine: The lights will flicker as the electricity goes out. Flicker.
Child: Can I have a definition?
Karine: Flicker- to burn unsteadily, shine with wavering light . Flicker.
Child: (Sigh) Flicker. F-U-C-K-E-R. Flicker.
Karine: I'm sorry, that is incorrect.

I had to work pretty hard not to giggle. I held it together. The final word that determined the champion was "vague" ("Vague v-e-g Vague.")

The Real Story

We'd like to thank the nine brave souls who entered our Thanksgiving Mystery Picture contest. The entries demonstrated some great detective work and several of you were very close to the real story. The real story is this.

Karine is very good about reminding me to do things that I am supposed to do. I am getting better at actually following her advice, but there is still room for improvement.

The first picture is a picture of our electricity meter without the actual meter part. That part was removed by the electric company when they shut our power off for not paying the bill. Karine had been suggesting that we contact the power company to see why we had been enjoying electricity for two and a half months without receiving a bill. I naively assumed that we wouldn't have to pay the bill until we received it.

The second picture is a picture of how we celebrated not having any power. It was actually pretty fun. The power was restored the following day. Now we know that sometimes you need to pay your bills before your receive them.

This is a picture of how I felt when I realized that the power company cut our power and stole our meter.

AND THE WINNER IS.....

The Sims Family! -- fortunately for us they are already in Honduras, so they are not eligible for the grand prize, phew! Way to go Sims Family!!

Joey Van Phillips will receive a frozen turkey as a cancellation prize.

Mystery Photo Contest!!!

We invite all our readers to post stories which might explain the photos below. The contestant whose fiction is closest to the real story wins two round-trip tickets to La Ceiba, Honduras. The two photos are directly related. They depict actual events which occurred on Wednesday, November 14th.

ELIGIBLE ENTRIES MUST BE SUBMITTED BY MIDNIGHT, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24th. WINNER ANNOUNCED SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26th.

The runner up will receive a frozen turkey.

Hurricane Update

Not too scary so far. A lot of rain and a little wind. We went to the La Quinta Real Hotel to find the CNN correspondent we saw on TV. We couldn't find him, so we decided to do our own broadcast.