I am looking forward to Curtis’ 512 words. If he sucks and doesn’t do it often enough, I’ll do them myself here on this site and embarrass him. How’s that for a helpful, encouraging friend? :) Curtis’ adventure to take the time to be a professional writer is really inspiring, and it is part of what brought me back to my blogging. I am also considering to do some recreational fiction writing. Perhaps 512 of Curtis’ words will inspire me even more. ...
After an extended downtime due to lack of give-a-shit on my part, my blog is back, and I am back to blogging. Expect something here daily, which is my goal. Lots and lots of news… where to start? I suppose at the last post. Since then, Marina and I were evacuated from Chad due to fighting in the town where our project was located. We then found a nice little meningitis emergency in DR Congo. When we came home we had a little vacation, then I went to the USA to see family after close to a year away. We found separate postings with MSF for the summer, which was hard but worthwhile. Marina worked in Myanmar doing mobile clinics from boats, and I went to Oromyia, Ethiopia to participate in an nutritional emergency intervention. ...
This came from a heretical Lutheran friend of mine: Vatican airline takes to the skies I love the Ryanair quote: “Ryanair already performs miracles that even the Pope’s boss can’t rival, by delivering pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela for the heavenly price of 10 euros,” Ryanair said in a statement. So many questions: Will the Swiss Guard perform TSA or Air Marshal duties? Will they get to carry their halberds? ...
Some serious wandering on Google Video lead me, by way of the brilliant Bravia commercials, to this fun remix for what seems like a nice product line. And that in turn lead me to Bev Lee Harling’s music, which is another pleasurable discovery. And I realize that somehow I am 2 years late, but I just discovered One Ring Zero, and I am also in love with them as of right this minute. So there. ...
Today in addition to getting her shots, Kat got microchipped. I’m a little jealous; I figured my criminally invasive government or one of my evil employers would have chipped me before a pet I owned got it done. Anyway, in case you care (or happen to be searching the Internet for Kat’s number because you’ve found her), Kat’s number is 467B7B4F03.
Last night I made a video out of the random video clips I’d gathered with my and other people’s digital cameras. Instead of emailing the 45 megabyte movie to y’all (Bad Idea), I put the video on Google Video (Good Idea). The other nice thing is that instead of being in the stupid Windows-only movie format that Windows Movie Maker gave me (Bad Idea), Google translates it into a format that virtually any web browser can use (Good Idea). ...
I just arrived in Roseburg for a few days with family. We just drove down from Seattle, where the whole family was present for the first day of my newphew’s life on earth. Pretty neat seeing a baby less than one day old. Here I am being cute with him. His name is Keiden William Bagley. He was 20 inches long and weighed 7 pounds 3 ounces. It was fun watching all the adults turn in blubbering idiots while holding Keiden. I was, of course, not immune to his effects. ...
Here’s a couple pictures of Kat, the dog I brought home from Mobile, AL. Her full name is Katrina, but she goes by Kat. She’s perhaps 10 weeks old now, meaning that she was born about the time of Hurricane Katrina. She was abandoned in a hotel room in Mobile. I encountered her while taking a rather random walk in Mobile with Angela. I decided she’d be good company on the drive to Oregon. (She = the dog, but as it turns out, Angela made good company too!) In Oregon, I expected to find her a home by writing an article for the hometown paper. On the drive across, I fell in love with Kat, so she’s found a home a little closer to home than I expected. ...
I wrote a couple paragraphs as a homework assignment, and I thought it would be fun to post them here, to look back on when I am more fully literate. I have applied all the corrections my teacher made to the essay here. They were mostly small changes, but at least one sentence needed to have it grammar all sorted out by her! Mi padre en San Andrés y mi abuelo tienen elgo en común. Ambos hombres trabajaron como operator de sierra en una fábrica de madera. En inglés, le llamamos “a sawer”. ¿Le llamamos en español un serrador? ...
Austin Powers is on TV. I totally forgot about the hilarious monolouge by Dr. Evil about his family background: Dr. Evil: The details of my life are quite inconsequential. Therapist (Carrie Fisher): Oh no, please, please, let’s hear about your childhood. Dr Evil: Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we’d make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian woman named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it’s breathtaking, I suggest you try it. ...