Sunday

I spent an idle weekend working up long neglected photos of our long ago New York City vacation. Some of this sedentary work can be viewed here, where I've finally documented that first of two lovely April days in the City. More photos coming soon. The real story of this weekend, however, is about Sunshine's book, a culmination of her Venezuelan beauty industry studies, centered around the Miss Venezuela organization's annual national pageant. She's been working on this book, at least in theory, since completing her Fulbright Scholarship in 2001. Her self-imposed deadline for completion is August fourth, her birthday, next Saturday. At the beginning of the weekend she still had an estimated ten pages to write before the book could be called done. She spent the whole day Saturday writing. For dinner break we went to a pan-Latino slash Caribbean place in Ballston where she was able to eat green and yellow plantains and spurious arepas, drink mojitos, and generally preserve some watered-down Venezuelan spirit before returning to her task. More of that grind, today, except she's finished. That's it. She's written the book. See the final stats in her own succinct post on the subject. This is a big deal--for her, surely--but for the family too. For years now, certainly the whole time we were in México, she labored daily on this book. One of the reasons our spare tire was so buried* during our long drive from Monterrey was because it was under all the necessary files and resources pursuing this project necessitated. Tonight we celebrated at the nearby Indian restaurant (the first place open as late as she finished). Tomorrow, Sunshine will be able to clean off her desk for the first time in years. By Tuesday, there will be free time. [Cavin]