Escorpions es horrible bando y mucho distresso pre-beddo visitante

After a few days of settling into life here in Cuernavaca, we've accomplished a few things worth noting:

1. We have a part-time nanny. Actually, two working in tandem, as we've found via a colleague of Sarah's living here. Even though they speak about as much English as I speak Spanish (translation: zilch), we communicate via the tabula rosa of Maya's mucho cute-o-ish-nesso. We're very psyched.
2. My grasp of the current Mexican political cycle (culminating in the national election on July 2nd) has become a bit more firm. Basically, the PAN (Vicente Fox's Party) has a center-right el Presidente candidate, Felipe Calderon, who's made astonishing gains on the center-left's candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Lopez Obrador was expected to win in a cakewalk, but has been "Swift Boated" into a deep dip in his support. I'm still a total neophyte when it comes to Mexico's current political debate. But the more I see of it, the more I think we're all more alike than we are different. Which ain't necessarily a good thing.
And most importantly - 3. We had a baptismal moment of insight into the biological realities of life here last night. The owner of our villa, Bob (or most would say, Roberto), repeatedly warned us that when the rains come, the insects try their darnedest to get indoors. Including (ahem!) the scorpions. We took it all in stride, especially since we'd seen not even a drop of rain since arriving. After watching a movie ("Match Point" - my rating, a semi-squishy C-plus given that Woody Allen did much better with his two primary conceits herein in both "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "Hannah and Her Sisters" - better than anything he's done in years, nonetheless), we retired to our bedroom. Sarah quickly noticed none other than a frickin' scorpion (!) on the wall. I offered a few flailing attempts, but eventually managed to dispatch the beast (all inch and a half of the frisky bugger). And we both then uneasily tried to go to sleep. To add cinematic heft to our distress, in no time a crackin' good thunderstorm began. With each clap of thunder we both convulsed uneasily with thoughts of the scorpion army surely marching upon our poorly defended rented fortress. Maya stirred a handful of times when the really serious lightning strikes hit. Yet she slipped back into blissful sleep almost as quickly as she stirred. Sarah and I, however, we not so easily swayed back into slumber. When we finally slunk out of bed this morning, unrested and unsettled, and began the sweep of our villa, we came up bupkis on the bugs. In short, all bark from this brand of beast. Hopefully, we'll be able to shake it off tonight and thereafter. Admittedly, I'd never seen a single scorpion prior to last night. Not even when the stinkified hit by the (German hard rockin') Scorpions, "Rock You Like a Hurricane", topped the charts in the late 80s. And if I never see one of either version of Escorpions again, it won't be a disappointment. But we'll keep you posted.

The one major English-language network we get on our extensive cable system here is BBC World. I used it last evening to watch Tony Blair and Dubya stink their way through their shared press conference. Dubya's shtick of trying to joke around with everyone is so painful. But Blair looked utterly horrible. When they both were asked about what "mistakes" they'd made, Dubya actually responded with an answer (translation: talking like a complete dumbass). On the other hand, Blair's response was so unintelligible to me that I thought he might be that lisping retard ordering food ahead of me at a local taco stand. Wait a moment - that's totally unfair to retards. Anyhoo, hope y'all didn't waste time trying to parse that idiocy. Roca sobre.