First Snow!

Its snowing out! Well so much for finish painting the oustside of the house. The month of Ocotber has been one rain storm after another. And it is finishing with a bang. This is perhaps one of the earliest Snow storms of the season. The trees got their show cut short. They didn't even get a chance to show all their colors. I took some pictures check them out.

Cool Music

Since it is a really slow family news period, I figured I would share some cool music that I have been listening to lately. What maybe cool for the oldest cousin in the family maybe "old school" for everyone else. Some people who know me very well would describe my musical taste as alternative autistic. Some of the bands and songs I have listed below here could be characterized that way others I would say is more mello. The Sneaker Pimps song is best listened to with headphones. Also the free songs on the web aren't a true representation of the bands. Check out the songs below before you formulate an opinion.

Band	Song
K.T. Tunstall	Other Side of the World
northern diving co	Beautiful
northern diving co	Shiver
northern diving co	Bethel
Franz Ferdinand	Dark of the Matinee
Franz Ferdinand	Take Me Out
Franz Ferdinand	The fallen
The Cardigans	Erase Rewind
The Cardigans	Live and Learn
The Cardigans	Communication
Sneaker Pimps	Loretta Young Skills
Sneaker Pimps	6 Underground
The Roots	Seed 2.0
The Roots	Thought at Work
The Fugees	Ooh La La

Music is a core value of my family but I'll save the story for some other time. It's late! Curious to hear what other folks are listening to now.

Hurricane Wilma Hits Boston Area!

Well more like what is left of the hurricane hit New England today. Really it was more like a Noreaster.. I just wanted to get your attention. The reason it is news worthy and worth posting about is that a 20" dia 40 ft tall Maple tree is leaning about 30 degrees towards our house. The roots of the tree have come up and another tree is preventing it from falling on our house. When I got home from work I noticed the tree that normally leaned into the woods was leaning towards our house. I called several tree services to see if I could get some emergency service to cut down the tree before the wind would blew it on to the house. All them were busy except one who said they could come by tomorrow morning at the earliest. Hopefully it won't fall. If it does it will end up falling on our newly replaced roof, gutters and paint job. I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow to show folks.

Avo's House For Dinner

We went to visit Avo and Avo and have dinner today. As usual the kids complained about having to sit in the car for the one hour and 15 minute trip. Once they get to Avo's house, they were happy I made them go. Tony, Maria, Megan, Catarina, Amos, Deborah and Carolina also came to dinner. My mother as you all know is a very good cook. Even my dad is pretty good. What a spread she had today. Like most portuguese meals she had several different dishes. Each one tasting delicious. Avo's meals often include fresh vegetables from their huge vegetable garden in their back yard. Today's meal included egg and flour battered string beans from the garden. The last batch of grean beans frmo this year's harvest, my mom told us. These green beans are the kid's and Susan's favoriate, really I think they are everyone's favoriate. We picked up Apples and an apple pie from Phantom's Farms. The Apples are in season now. The pie was still hot from the oven when we bought it. The desert, as american as Apple Pie, finished off a truely Portuguese American meal.

Sharing family dinners is one of my family values. They allow me to spend some time with my family, eat some great food and re-energize my body and soul.

Just to make sure I keep you guys coming back to my blog, I picked up some really nice old pictures of the family. I certainly know that my writing alone won't be enough. My hope is that we actually get some sort of dialog going on. If not it is ok. As long as you do check in occassionally to see how everyone is doing. I scanned the photos in when we got home tonight. One of them included a black and white photo of me in portugal, that I am now using for my profile photo. I was about 3 years old when it was taken. I hope you like the pictures. Let me know what you think of them.

The Cousins Circa 1980


Tio Agusto's House - Circa 1980


Avo Quim - Circa 1970


What may have been my passport picture to come to the US - 1969


The back of my picture sent to my dad when he was in Africa
You can see the date on the picture.

Pictures from Suzy's Wedding

Hello All, Here are some pictures from Suzy's Wedding this past summer. Enjoy!

Another Birthday

We celebrated one of the kid's birthday today. We held it at the local gymnasium where one of the kid's is taking gymnastics lessons. It was a crazy time. There were 15 boys and girls literally bouncing off the walls. All of his classmates came and he received a lot of presents.


We thought we were going to make it without any injuries. However at the very end a boy and girl banged their heads against each other. The poor little boy ended up with a shiner (Black and Blue swollen eye).

Cheap Entertainment Anyone?

Tonight at dinner, Susan shared the news about how the City of Taunton has not lifted the state of emergency. Many of the rivers in New England have swollen upto the tops of their river bank because of all the rain that has fallen in the past couple of weeks. The Mill River Dam in Taunton is on the verge collapsing and flooding the entire city. As a precaution the city has been evacuated. The city officials are preventing people from entering the town.

River watching was something we use to do as kids growing up. After several really large storms would hit, we would go check out the Blackstone river. One of the better spots to watch the river was the border between Central Falls and Cumberland. The Broad Street Blackstone river bridge. During really large storm events you would often find many cars parked along Broad Street by the bridge. We would stand on the sidewalks and bend over the waist high granite block rails. The water level would barely clear the bottom of the old granite arched bridge during large storms. A wall of water about 10 feet above normal water levels would roar under the bridge and over the dam that was 30 yards down stream of the bridge. After flowing over the dam, the water would explode into white water rapids. It felt like being on a carnival ride standing on the bridge looking into the raging river. I would always end up having nightmares of falling into the river and getting swept over the dam. In the dream, I would always struggle to see if I could swim to the side of the river banks before the river swept me over the dam.

Growing up as kids we often had inexpensive ways to entertain ourselves. Kids are very ingenious at discovering ways to have fun even especially those that aren't spoiled with alot of materialistic things. I would say cheap entertainment is a core family value. I have many other examples of inexpensive fun things we would do as kids that I could share with you but I would rather hear some example from you! By the way, it looks like you can now take boat rides from the Broad St Bridge.

You Know You're Portuguese When...

I found this email from Fatima M. Lou's wife who are my URI friends. I though all of the family would get a laugh out of it.

You Know You're Portuguese When...

-Your mother or grandmother has Maria in her name. Your father or
grandfather is called Manuel, Jose, Antonio, or Joao.

-You have crocheted doilies on your kitchen counters, dining
room,living-room, bedroom--on all your tables.

-Your house is a mini church with just as may statues of saints and Jesus as
your church itself.

-You warn other drivers of police on the highway by flashing your lights.

-You baptize your child and send him to catechism even though you might
never go to church except for weddings and funerals.

-You think all university graduates should be called "Doutor" (doctor) and
like to be called so if you are one of the chosen few who have managed to
finish college.

-You have a mother or grandmother who wears black. If you are a woman,you
have been to see a "curandeiro" (healer) or have had your fortune told.

-You think that you can catch a cold with a draft or by sitting in the
spring sun. Cold drinks are also thought to bring on the dreadful "gripe".

-You think twice about going to the dentist.

-You get a letter from your doctor saying you can't work because of an
"unspecified, ongoing medical condition" and then go on a two-week vacation.

-Your parents own like 9 houses in Portugal but complain about the lack of
money here. Going to Portugal involves buying gifts for all 500 members of
your family.

-You go crazy for the World Cup. You refer to Portugal as "O Continent".

-You've walked in "as paradas"(parades) longer than you can remember.

-You have grape vines in your backyard.

-You earned over $5,000 for your first communion.

-To hell with the Turkey and Roast Beef. X-mas dinner is bacalhau au
braz(Cod fish), baby! A barbecue does not consist of burgers on the
grill...Hello! Can you say sardinhas (sardines)?

-You've had your license for a month, but your $20,000 car has been "locked
up" for a year.

-A wooden spoon equals discipline, or if you ever had to duck so you
wouldn't get hit with flying shoes.

-Your parents anticipate that you'll marry your first long-term
boyfriend/girlfriend.

-Your 15 year old brother is allowed to have two girls sleep over, but your
19 year old sister can't go out past 7pm.

-Your grandmother tells you look sick because you are too thin.

-Nothing beats a buttered "papo-seco"(Portguese roll).

-Your parents make you eat 3 servings of dinner at each sitting otherwise
they think you don't like the cooking.

-You're proud to be Portuguese - and you pass these jokes on to all your
Portuguese friends!

If you want to know if you are a Portuguese American RI'er check out this other post You know you are a Rhode Islander when..

You know you are a Rhode Islander if...

Since many of us second generation'ers are in or grew up in Rhode Island I figured many of you would get a laugh from this posting my URI friend Hank sent me today. My favorite is the car journey one.

>YOU MAY BE A RHODE ISLANDER IF:
>
>You re-use the Newport Creamery Gallon container to freeze your meatballs and gravy...
>
>You have a $200 car with a $2000 sound system...
>
>You have an ashtray made from a quahog shell...
>
>Your three best friends are all named Tony...
>
>You can't take a bath because there's a saint inside your tub...
>
>You refer to your ex-husband (or boyfriend, as the case may be) as "my baby's father"...
>
>You've used an inside-out tire as a planter...
>
>Your friends throw you a going away party because you're moving from Pawtucket to Woonsocket...
>
>The girl you ended up marrying lived no more than six blocks from where you lived as a kid...
>
>You have more hair on your back than on your head...
>
>You pronounce it "Wark" instead of Warwick...
>
>You spot Roanne from Off-Track-Bedding at a restaurant, and you ask her for an autograph...
>
>You call spaghetti sauce "gravy"...
>
>You've thrown at least one yard sale this month...
>
>You tell friends that something is "on special," instead of "on sale"...
>
>The meal at every wedding you've ever attended was chicken, shells, and French fries...
>
>You put celery salt on your hot dogs...
>
>You know that people are never from Providence or East Providence, but rather from the East Side, Rumford, or Riverside...
>
>You don't eat dinner; you have "suppa"...
>
>If five flakes of snow fall at 9:00 AM, you leave work at 10:00 AM...
>
>You read the wedding announcements in the Sunday Providence Journal and recognize at least three couples...
>
>Your favorite adjective is "wicket"...
>
>The seltzer guy delivers bottles to your home on a weekly basis...
>
>People at work wish you a Happy St.Joseph's Day!
>
>A car journey longer than one hour is a day trip...
>
>You can curse in Italian...
>
>You know the basic rules of Duck Pin Bowling...
>
>You own garden tools purchased from Job Lot...
>
>You know what the expression "side by each" means...
>
>You've discussed graphic surgery at the dinner table...
>
>You've used the expression "not fa nuthin" in conversation...
>
>You serve bread with every meal...
>
>Your holiday season isn't complete without a trip to LaSallette Shrine...
>
>There's a bottle of coffee syrup in your fridge right now...
>
>You've gotten sick from eating too many clam cakes...
>
>You own at least one coffee table book with a picture of a light house on the cover...
>
>You've boasted about the money you've saved at The Christmas Tree Shop...
>
>You own a hat with a red "P" on it...
>
>You still refer to The Rhode Island Mall as The Midland Mall...
>
>You secretly watch the television show "Providence" even though if asked, you deny it...
>
>You've slammed on your brakes to discourage a tailgater...
>
>You've dated a girl named Brenda or a guy named Vinnie (or both, but no one knows THAT)...
>
>You've used the breakdown lane on 95 to pass another car...
>
>Your idea of a dream house is a raised ranch...
>
>You've driven more than five miles just so you could save $2...
>
>You can still remember the words to the old Rocky Point theme song...
>
>You know what a "Governor-preferred" plate is...
>
>You can always find someone to pass your car when it fails inspection...
>
>You have a college degree from U.R.I., R.I.C. or C.C.R.I. ...
>
>You know how to pronounce Pawtucket, Cowesett, Usqepaug, and Narragansett.
>
>You've never been to Block Island...
>
>You've taken a ride on the Bay Queen...
>
>You refer to the movies as "the show "...
>
>You go to "the package store", not "the liquor store"...
>
>You've never wondered why there's no "West Providence" but only a "West End"...
>
>You think banana, vanilla, and idea all end in the letter "r"...
>
>You give directions on the order of "Make a left where Alembics used to be."
>
>You know who Raymond Patriarca,Jr. is and maybe even went to Nathan Bishop Junior High School with him ...

I hope to post another "You know are" that describes being a portuguese american. I think Tina or Maria had it. If you do post it as a comment to this post or send me an email.

Home Repair!

As you can see by the pictures from my previous post on Our New Place. We have been pretty much working quite a bit on our new house. Home repair is one of rewarding parts of home ownership. You have a sense of accomplishment when you finish a project. However when the number of home improvement projects exceeds the amount of time and money you have, home ownership becomes exhausting. We have made some pretty good progress over this past summer and fall. Our projects so far have included cutting down 3-25 year old trees. One of the trees almost fell on the house, as my neighbor was watching from his yard. He was likely laughing as Susan and I were trying to guide the tree down with some rope. The tree fell onto the bunny hutch. We cleared out about a 1/4 acre of brush from the yard. Susan ripped out all the bushes in the front of the house. We rented a dumpster and demolished the first floor bathroom. Just picture Susan and me rolling a 300 lb cast iron tub on one of the kid's skateboard through our house and tossing it out the front door onto our lawn. We finally did get the tub in the dumpster. I also ripped all the gutters off the house because they were leaking and looked awful. While up on the latter taking down the gutters I saw that our roof over the main part of the house also needed to be replaced. We threw out an old washer and heating expansion tank from the basement. We filled the 15 yard dumpster. The roofers just finished replacing the entire roof about 2 weeks ago. Just in time for the 14 plus inches of rain that has fallen non-stop over the past two weeks. We are now waiting for the gutter contractor to put up the gutters.

The most time consuming project that I wouldn't recommend you do as a home owner is paint the exterior of your home. Susan and I thought since we live in a Cape Cod style house we should be able to paint it our selves. We previously lived in a Colonial. I figured yeah, after 1 week of vacation painting with Susan and me we will have the first coat of paint on. Well at the end of that week we had barely finished doing the work preparing the house to be painted. We are now about half way done. The garage, back and side of the house are done. My father and mother came up to help us paint. My father is a painting machine! Once we finish painting I will post some new photos. So does anyone have any 300 lb home improvement stories? If so please share by pushing the "comment" link of this post. HINT... is anyone out there?

Don't waste!

After finishing dinner tonight Susan started putting away the dishes. She teased me saying she was going to pour out what was left of her beer down the drain. She did this because she knew wasting left over food or drinks would completely drive me insane. Growing up we always finished all of the food on our plate and our drinks. We never threw out food. Leftovers would become the meal for the next day. This attitude continues to be part of who I am and how I behave. Conservation and reuse was a core value of our family growing up.

I remember several times as a child were the behavior of others simply didn't compute when it came to waste. Growing up it was an extraordinary treat for me and my brother to go to McDonald's on a Friday night with the Family after my mother finished Grocery shopping. I remember one time when a mother was eating her dinner at the table next to ours in McDonald's. They finished eating and were in the process of gathering their paper waste to thow out. I remember being in shock when the mother let her kids not finish all their fries and hamburger. I stared at her as they got up from their table and threw out all their leftovers in to the garbage. I asked myself who would pay good money for McDonald's and then simply throw it out. Even as I got older I can't remember a time in my life where there was left overs from McDonald's and somebody in the family wouldn't have finished them up.

On another occasion I remember stopping by my friends house after they had finished dinner. They were in the process of cleaning up from dinner. I watched as they threw out large quantities of pork chops that were left over from dinner. Again I could not comprehend how this was done without even giving it a thought and was done by the mother.

Conservation and Reuse is a core value of my family. It still remains part of my behavior. Perhaps not to the extreme it was growing up but still an important way of how I operate on a daily basis. Susan sometimes gets embarrassed by it but I don't think it is a value to be embarrassed about. The people who should be embarrassed are the ones who waste so much when there are so many people in the world that don't have any. Can you recall examples of conservation and reuse growing up? I would love to hear them. Please post them to the comments of this post.

Looking for a Christmas Present for me?

Most of you know that I work in the technology business. Many of my friends also work in the technology business too. Many of us share the same passion for new cool products. I decided to add some Web links to some new products & web sites that I either recently became interested in or was turned on to and thought were cool. I have a friend Marc, who I have known since college. He could have started up his own successfull marketing research firm, because of his ability to discover the coolest toys before anyone else did. He usually had them 2 years earlier than everybody else. I told him thinking back I could have probably made some money off of his purchasing habbits had I had money to invest back then.

I actually pulled off a Marc purchase 2 years ago. I purchased my first Apple Ipod. At the time I kicked around buying their stock but I didn't. What a mistake that was. The stock has since doubled and split. I'll save my investment advice for another post.

Anyways the links I added to the blog, have some of the things I think are pretty interesting and I think are on the verge of gaining more widespread adoption. The first one is Digital SLRs. Remember the Canon A1 and AE-1. Well they now have digital versions of these cameras. The image resolution has now gotten to the point where it is just as good as film based cameras for typical users like you and I. Pictures from these cameras can now be enlarged to 10"X12" without any degradation in quality. Very few people ever really blow up pictures bigger than that. Once prices come down a little more, I think you will start to see alot of folks buying these cameras. The one I have been keeping my eye on is the Canon Rebel XT 8 megapixels. It provides the ability to interchange zoom lenses. The first link is to an awesome site that provides camera reviews and photo samples. So if you are looking to get me a gift for christmas any Canon camera on this site will do :-)

The next site is a new technology I think you will be seing in more and more web sites. The link is to a news web site which isn't uncommon. What is uncommon is how they present the news. This web site uses image map technology to figure out which news is being most commonly reported and it graphically sizes the display to reflect the magnitude of the story. This quickly allows you to see how news organizations bias news reporting. It also lets you see what is creating a buzz by industry and country. I expect that many other web sites and applications will start to license and use this technology. Another web site that also uses this technology is SmartMoney.com

The last cool product that you'll likely hear about next year is from Apple. They are working on making their Mac OS run on Intel Machines. This is very very cool. Mac has a beautiful graphical user interface. Having the ability to run either a Mac OS X or Windows XP OS on the same box I think will bring even more people to move over to the Mac. The only thing is that it still requires you to buy Macintosh hardware. If only they just made it work on any Intel Based machine... but I guess the Mac experience isn't just the UI it is the whole package.. literally even the package their products ship in is very cool.

Hope you like the Cool Technology links and if you know of any other cool technology, products or sites pass them along to me. Post them on the comments to this post and I will add them to the links!!!

Our New Place

Susan and I this past summer finally were able to achieve a goal that we had been persuing for the last five years. We finally found a house in the Boston area. The town is an extremely difficult to buy in because houses rarely come on the market and when they do there is often a competive bidding session involved. Fortunately for us we had an excellent Real Estate agent who literally knew exactly what we wanted and only showed us those types of properties. In the past five years she showed us perhaps five properties. We learned that selling and buying a house is much more complicated then buying or constructing your first house. We moved back in May of this year. For approximately two weeks we owned two house and three mortgages. It was a very fun time :-) I am being sarcastic here. It was perhaps the most anxious few months we have had in our lives as a family. The bottom line is we were able to make the move happen successfully. I have included some pictures here of the house.










After seeing the pictures of the new house, you are probably asking yourselves why in the world would anyone move out of a new house in to an older, more expensive house that needed fixing up? The main drivers behind the move were our kids education. The educational system in the town is excellent. We are also in a really nice location in town. We are in downtown within walking distance of the train and the local stores and restaurants. But we still have our privacy because we are on an acre of land. The town has a town pool, community center, recreational center, library and park system. We feel very fortunate to have been able to find and get this place. We are thankful.

We moved back in April of this year my mom, dad, Tony, Susan's sister Kristen and her husband Dan all helped us move. It was a two weekend moving event, a 1 month packing event and the unpacking event is still ongoing. Everyone worked their butt off that weekend my parents and family reminded me of how hard they are willing to work to help others in the family. It reminded me of when were growing up and everybody in the family had a job to do and everyone did it. There was no complaining, we just got it done with the overall purpose of making the family successfull. This is definitely one of the values I think all of us have in common. Work together to make our family successfull.

So I am not the only one with a new place! Tina and Suzy also have new places I would love to hear about them! So please share on the responses to this post... otherwise I feel like nobody is even reading this thing.

In future postings I hope to share more of our values and examples of them. I personally find that reminding myself of them keeps me stronger and focused. I hope it does the same for you. Also give me some feedback on the postings and I will write more about what people like and less of what people don't like.

Lets stay connected as a family

Hello all, Most of my family knows how important my family is. It seems life gets busier and busier as I get older. I am sure you, like myself, feel that you have less time to stay in touch, especially as our family as grows. I started thinking about how far some of you are but how close all of you are in my heart. I am reminded of the past family experiences, culture and values we share each time I visit with a family member. These visits personally keep me strong. The challenge has been making these visits more frequent. Even in cases where we live a short driving distance away it has been a challenge to keep up with everyone's life beyond the traditional holiday's. I decided to do something about it. I want to stay connected with my family. My entire family! So this blog is to share with you what is happening with our family. This means all of you get to share what is happening in your lives too.

I hope this blog and web site is easy enough for all of you to use. Given how spread out we are I was hoping each of you could respond to this initial posting describing where you are and what your email address is and how you are connected to the family so that others in the family can stay in touch and we can see how truely globally distributed we are.

I hope to update the blog on a frequent basis. If we get the whole family particepating I most certainly will update it more often. To provide you incentives to stay connected I will include some photo treats. Also you never know how broadly our family connections will grow by more members coming to post to the site and share how they are. In the end I am hoping the visits to the blog will make you stronger too.


To get things started I have included an photo from a recent family gathering Marco and Lisa's Wedding. Take Care!