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Quiet Neighborhood

It's a rainy Sunday morning, and we just finished listening to our church service from Sierra Vista. The little monkeys were jumping through the trees behind our house for a while, proving to be a bit of a distraction. Dustin left for camp today, along with five other guys from Shell. They'll be at the Youth World retreat center north of Quito for the rest of the week. Taylor will be at home, and he's staying busy playing with Luke. I can't believe they've been out of school for over a week already. The first couple days they both seemed bored, but I haven't heard that complaint from them lately.

I haven't felt like writing lately, and I think that's a sign that I'm shutting down here. I'm not thinking as much about what is going on here with MAF, and thinking more about the next six months of our future. Today I thought I'd post because I want to be able to look back on this in years to come. I struggle with this blog sometimes, trying to decide just what I should and shouldn't write, because it's public. Our first year here we didn't have access to the Internet in our home, just e-mail. So doing something like a web log which requires access to the World Wide Web wasn't a possibility. I did have a web site back in those days, but updating it required a trip over to the hangar, and I worked at the school all day. During that first year I kept a journal, and mailed that to my immediate family each week. It was a lot more personal than this current blog. I realized after a year that not everyone in my family (or Ellyn's) really cared to get that e-mail every week, so I decided to post to the web log, and those who wanted to could read along. Once in a while I go back and read parts of my journal from the first year, and I'm looking forward to having this web log as a record of our time in Ecuador.

Over the past week I've been able to make some good progress, both at work and at home. Rachel has been using the wireless network connection to do work from home, and I've gotten some feedback from her that it is working well. I'm thankful for that, because she is working with MAF book keeping and a financial application. We can't have her losing any information or work time if the wireless connection happens to drop at the wrong time. I also have been able to tweak some of the VPN (virtual private network, which provides a secure connection across the radio link and into our local area network) settings, and it is functioning without a couple of the initial hiccups that were annoyances, but not show-stoppers. I've completed the documentation, and am happy with where things are at right now. I have one more important task to complete in the next couple weeks, and that is to train Richard to run the server backups, and check on the workstations to make sure Windows and Norton Antivirus remain current with updates. Bruce, our avionics technician, has taken a renewed interest in the servers and local area network, spending some time with me getting back up to speed on things. It's not going to be in his job description to do IT work, be he is going to be a big help in that area anyway, I know.

At home I'm slowly packing, going through my things in the bodega and my closet. Of course, this is making Ellyn really excited, because she can't wait to be all done. I think with two weeks to go in Shell, I'm right on track. The last thing I need to do at this point, is go through the clothes in my closet to decide what I'll take and what I'll leave. I have a few shirts and slacks in there that are over five years old, and I think I'll be leaving them behind. At any rate, getting ready to go has definately been made easier by Ellyn, as she's good at getting organized and weeding out the un-important things.

Our little MAF base is getting quieter all the time, as a second family pulled out on Friday. Our turn is coming soon.