UPDATE - Lottery Winner's Wife Arrested

Last week I wrote about René Senna, the 54 year-old man who had won R$56 million reais in the Mega Sena lottery back in 2005. He was murdered while drinking a beer at a local bar in his city.

Yesterday his 29 year-old wife, Adriana Almeira was arrested for the crime. She is being held without bail. Evidence was also shown proving that she was cheating on her double-amputee husband.



If convicted, Almeira would probably get the maximum sentence of 20 years in jail and be out in eight years. I will update more as the story unfolds.

Don't Ask Me

We had been living in this house for a few weeks when we heard a dog howling. I looked out the window and saw this scene:

I had to do a double-take. Thankfully my camera was close by. Here's a closeup:

To this day, I can't figure out how the dog got up there unless some mean kid did it. There is no way he could climb up there. I looked out a few minutes later and it was gone. There were no splat marks near the house that I could see so someone must have helped him down.

I've felt like this poor guy a few times in my life. In a position where there is no way up and you're afraid to go down. I guess we all need help now and then.

A Rose By Any Other Name...

I thought I had gotten used to things having strange names in Brazil and seeing confusing product names. We once lived in a city that had a stationary store called "Sniff". I talked to the owner and asked him why he named it that. He said he liked the way the word sounded.

I thought I had seen it all until Saturday when we stopped into our local Angeloni grocery store to pick up a few items. While Marilze was shopping, I just started wandering around, as I usually do, trying to find some decent junk food. I was walking by the frozen foods when I looked up and saw this can:

Sucky brand orange juice. I just start cracking up in the store. Who was the marketing genius who came up with this name? Did no one do any product research? Are they thinking of exporting it to the US?

To be fair, the word for juice is suco (pronounced soo-coe) and this product would be pronounced sookie but man, what a bad choice for a name.

When we lived in Goias there was an offbrand of Koolaid there called "Suks". I wished I had one of the packets but I only tried it once and the only thing I can say about it is at least they were honest about their product when they named it.

Tchau Lissa!

Our niece, Lissa, is on her way home to São José do Rio Preto SP after spending almost a month with us. Marilze and I got up at 5am to take her to the bus station. Her bus was supposed to arrive at 6 am but it was almost an hour late. Actually, buses usually arrive on time so this was unexpected.

Lissa (pronounced like "Lisa" in English) is a really sweet young lady and she has been a real joy to have around the house. She has about a 13 hour bus ride ahead of her but it was a super nice bus. The seats reclined back like a Lazyboy. They handed out pillows and blankets, just like on an airplane and they even had an "in-flight" type magazine for the passengers. We miss her already and pray she has a safe trip home.

Saudade Lissa. Volte logo. (We miss you Lissa. Come back soon)

Thank you Treo

Last night Marilze asked me to go for a walk with her down by the beach. I grabbed my camera and cellphone and we headed out. We got there just as the sun was going down. I grabbed by Konica-Minolta DIMAGE Z5 and got ready to take some pictures.

Now this camera was trashed by a lot of reviewers when it first came out and I've had to send it back to the factory one because the auto-focus quit working. But other than that I have been more than pleased with it.

As I get ready to take my first shot, an alarm on my camera goes off. Then the screen shows that there is no memory card. I had been copying pictures from the SD card earlier and I forgot to put it back in the camera.

I was packing it up when I suddenly realized that I had my cellphone with me. My Treo 650 and it had a PNY 2 gig SD card sitting in it's memory slot.

I took the SD card out as quickly as possible, which was quite a job because of its second skin case.

Now usually this memory card is loaded with a movie or some TV shows that I watch when standing in line at the bank, post office, lottery house, any government office, etc. When I lived in Nashville I got upset if there were three or four people ahead of me. Now as soon as I see the line I have to determine if I will be there waiting enough time to watch an episode of Newhart or Stargate.

I had about 400 meg free on the card so I took about 140 pics. I have always loved my Treo but this just made me love it more. Here is an example of what I would have missed if not for my Treo. You can see more on my Flickr site.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/westnashvillegringo

A Little Sightseeing

Yesterday we took our niece Lissa on a little sightseeing trip around town. First we went to Morro de Careca (Bald Hill). It's a strange sensation when you get there. You feel like you are on top of the world and the view is breathtaking. Here is a photo I took of Balneário from the hill. You can see Praia dos Amores (Lover's Beach) in the foreground.

Here is a picture of Lissa and Anna that I took while on the hill.

From the other side of the hill you can get a great view of Praia Brava (Angry Beach)

We had a great time and I took about 250 pictures. The best ones are on my Flickr site.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/westnashvillegringo

My Ocean View

Moving to the south of Brazil was a real experience. After living almost 10 years in cattle country and having never lived anywhere near the beach, I was a little unsure of the move. Add to the fact that I get sunburned in the shade and you can understand my apprehension.

But one of the joys I have found of living on the coast is being able to see the ocean. Thankfully I have an ocean view from my office balcony. Let me share it with you. Here it is.

OK, I know it's kinda hard to see. And it's obstructed. Let me point it out to you.

Alright. It's more obstructed than a seat at Wrigley field but it is my view. It would be a lot better except for this main obstruction.

You can see from this zoomed in photo how this electrical pole blocks me from having a better view. It is aggravating but I have found a way around it. If I lean way over the edge, I get a view more like this:

To be honest, I only leaned over the railing to take this photo cause I'm not too keen on falling three stories.

I know it's not much of a view but I do enjoy looking at it from time to time during the day. Sure beats looking out your window and seeing Tidwell Tires.