The Irony, La Ironia

My wife and I are aware that we live in the Rio Grande Valley where being bilingual is commonplace. For this reason, we have decided to expose our kids to both English and Spanish. We teach them Spanish when they are babies and then let them pick up English as they get older. This worked well with our daughter, Tien. However, with the boy, it's more difficult because we all speak English, primarily. He only spoke a few words to grandma and grandpa in Spanish. What is ironic is that now that he is here in Head Start in Rice Lake, WI, he is learning to speak Spanish. It's backwards. He has no need for Spanish here in an all English area and he's speaking it. Back home, we could barely get him to try.

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Cleaning Mold and Mildew From Your Window Air Conditioner

I don't think cleaning mold and mildew from your window air conditioner is a problem specific to the Rio Grande Valley. After all, there are plenty of other places with high temperatures and high humidity. However, given that there are so many of us who rely on window units to cool our homes, allow me to share some experience in cleaning these things out. Why I'm Cleaning My Own A/C Obviously, our window units grew some black stuff on the blower and its enclosure. This generated allergies in my little one, who is sensitive to such things. Not having my own laboratory, I couldn't tell you if it is mold or mildew. It matters not. What I've Tried Other than replacing the window unit every couple months, I've tried washing the unit with Clorox products. I figure bleach kills everything; but, I guess it doesn't. We still had to use cotton swabs to wipe and scrub surfaces on the blower and enclosure, which is almost impossible on some models. You can't d...

Fall 2024 in the RGV

It's that time of year again when Winter Texans start to make their way south from the northern states. I have already had phone calls with a Winter Texan client who is getting ready to come down. I think it is fascinating that we can make friends from people who are visiting only seasonally. Looking at the blog stats, I seem to get a peak in traffic every year. So I suppose it must be partly due to many of our friends coming back from up north. Image generated by Gemini 1.5 Pro AI Speaking of seasons, we still have a couple of months to go before the end of hurricane season for 2024. We have been fortunate this year, compared to other parts of the USA. Although, south Texas could use the rain. This time of year makes me happy as we finally have nights that are below 78F like we had all summer. This week we have had mornings in the 60s. While we still have hot days in the 90s, we at least get some respite in the evenings, leading to cool mornings. Returning to RG...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

There's this letter to the editor in today's Monitor. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR : LETTERS TO THE EDITOR February 09,2006 The Monitor Salinas is a worthy candidate for judge To the editor: I read with great curiosity a letter by Roxanne Sanchez of Mission on Feb. 5, which indicated she has some questions for Hidalgo County Judge candidate J.D. Salinas. J.D. knows all members of the community are hard-working. But how many of us could afford to give $5,000, $10,000 or even $30,000 in one payment to a political candidate? I don’t think many of us could. It is only the wealthy who have given contributions to the current county judge. J.D. has put a lot of his won money into his campaign. That money is listed as a loan on the campaign finance report because that’s what is required by law. J.D. is a lot like you and me, he works hard for his money and he won’t take a campaign donation unless he’s putting some money in himself. The simple fact that J.D. has money to lend to his campaign i...

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