Convalescing

Written to Chinatown by The Be Good Tanyas

Worth reading: Climate Change Deniers Without Borders

It has been a while since I last appeared in the blogosphere. Unfortunately my absence has had less to due with holiday downtime than the mother of all stomach bugs, one that has incapacitated Lone and me for the past week. Fortunately, we are on the mend, but according to Rosana, who was hit by the same bacteria/virus a couple of weeks before us, we can look forward to a very gradual recovery.

On a more positive note, Johannes arrived at Fazenda Alfheim on December 19th, his birthday, kindly agreeing to take a taxi from Aeroporto de Guarulhos to our dirt entrance road at km 66 on Rodovia Oswaldo Cruz in order to save his much-suffering parents a six-plus hour roundtrip. Johannes is in Brazil celebrating his first Christmas as a gainfully-employed Science teacher at New College Leicester. Needless to say, the rentz are thrilled to have him for a visit, if only a short one.

Prior to the onset of our personal plagues, Lone and I spent a day visiting Frigorífico Mantiqueira, a slaughterhouse in São Jose dos Campos. We were graciously hosted by Paulo Cesar, who spent two hours giving us a top-to-bottom tour of the facilities. All in all, very professionally run.

Other noteworthy events during my absence from the blogosphere:

• We enjoyed a visit from Katrine and Emil, the former the daughter of a friend of a dear friend of Lone.
  
• We planted our very own banana plantation containing almost 100 banana plants.
• We moved the hogs from Hogwood to Hog Hill. Interestingly, despite our initial, disastrous experience herding hogs, we have now discovered what appears to be a foolproof method. Seeing 2o-plus hogs moving in synch down a farm road en route to their new destination is indeed satisfying.
  

Finally, here at the dusk of 2009 it is worth remembering:

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
- Epicurus