So I guess I should start with an apology. I was slightly mistaken about when my next computer access would be. I had no internet access during my time in training. It was mostly spent in a small village where the only electricity was from personal generators. I of course did not have one. It wasn’t on the packing list from the peace corp so I didn’t bring one. After 9 weeks of language and technical training we were back in the capital for a few more training sessions, our swearing in as official volunteers and then shipped out to site. That week was a crazy whirlwind and I had so much trouble writing a blog entry. I didn’t know how to sum up those 10 weeks of training. How could I tell you about it all: the frustrations, the fun, and all the cross cultural mistakes I was making? It was all just too much too write. It was so daunting that I ended up writing nothing. I thought it would be alright that I wasn’t able to write as I thought that my site mates had said that internet was accessible at my site. It pretty much isn’t.

So now I have the same dilemma as last time I was in Kombo. I just finished my 3 month challenge. That’s what they call the first 3 months at site. (What do they call the rest of our time, the 21 month challenge?) They tell you to not leave site for 3 months and observe the village and get to know the people and language. So I have mostly done that, I only left site for 2 days to visit someone. So now I’m back and have 3 months to write about. I want to tell you about everything that I’ve been going through and know that I can’t write it all here. So I guess I’ll just write a little about my site and what I hope to do while I’m here.

My town is called Bwiam. You can find it on Google Earth. It is pretty large with about 10,000 people. There is a small hospital, elementary, Jr High, and Sr High schools as well as a few nursery schools. There are a number of small shops (batiks) where I can buy most things that I want and a small vegetable market were I can buy some fruits and veggies, what ever happens to be in season. There are no restaurants only a canteen at the hospital. That’s one thing I miss a lot from home. I miss being able to run out and get something to eat whenever I’m hungry. I have to plan ahead for that now. I am a Health and Community Development volunteer. I’ve been spending time at the hospital in the lab and also at child vaccination clinics. I spend a few days at the Family Planning Center, where I hope to get involved in education about HIV/AIDS other STDs and reproductive health. I am also going to be involved with the village chief and Village Development Committee. I want to help with getting clean water for the community and there were a few other smaller things they spoke to me about. It will take some time before it’s clear what I’ll be doing with them.

Over all I’m pretty happy with my site. My host family is good though there have been many frustrating nights of miscommunication. I am learning to like it here. Well that’s all I have for now. I am keeping an off-line blog. I guess the less technically savvy would call it journal. I hope that I’ll keep up with it and be able to publish it when I return to the US. For now though, I’ll make more effort to post when I make it back to civilization. At least you’ll all know I’m not dead yet.

As many of you may have guessed I’m in THE GAMBIA now. I have to be honest it was really anticlimactic. It was a really tearful good bye to all my friends at church, work and my family. So I get on the plane to DC and things went well there. We bonded well as a group. There are 21 of us that all came over together. So we get all our shots together, get to the airport, get on the plane and about 20million hours later we are in Africa. No trumpets, no dropping of confetti or letting loose 1000 doves. Just walk off the plane and get on the bus to the terminal. We were met at the airport by lots of Peace Corps people who helped with our bags and got us all loaded into the van and off to our training site. It’s at a catholic retreat center that’s on the edge of town. The beach is 20 min. walk away. Coke is plentiful, though not nearly as good as it was in India. It’s like I’m on vacation still. Except for the 3 hours of language class a day. Then the rest of the day is filled with discussions about how to treat and prevent diarrhea and malaria. And then at meals we talk about our mefloquine induced dreams. That’s right, as a US government employee I get to take the malaria drug that makes you go crazy. So it’s actually been a bit of a let down so far.

Tomorrow, though, should change all that. The reason that we have been getting pounded with language is that we go to our training villages tomorrow. (I think they all have little wheels on them.) We travel into the bush to start living with our host families. This is where we will learn our language. I’m learning Pular, spoken by the Fula people. There are 2 other trainees going to this village so there will be 4 people total that speak English in our village, us and our language trainer. I’m actually rather excited about that. The part I’m not so excited about is the pit latrine. I’m not sure I’m down with the whole no running water thing. I guess I should have thought about that before I signed up. I’m sure that I’ll have some great pit latrine stories for you all though. I guess I’ll start to come up when people search for S#@$ smearing on google too, Tiffany! How exciting!! Anyhow, it will be 2 weeks without internet/electricity. So I will miss you all for 2 weeks. But when I get back, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of things that are making me bitter that I can rant about.

This post will come in 2 parts. The first to my friends and family and the second to the idiots out there.

My dear friends and family, this will be my last post from the US, probably. I leave for DC tomorrow. I’ll be there for a few days and then off to my adventure in The Gambia Africa. It has been really tough to say good-bye to my friends this week. I cried a lot at church today as I said good-bye to my friends and my small group bible study. It was quite possibly good-bye forever to some of them. Many are in Grad. School or Med. school. They will finish before I get to return. They pain of saying good-bye to them was excruciating. But I’m really glad that I had the last 7 months to get to know them. I will miss you guys so much.

Tomorrow I say good-bye to my family and I know that won’t be too much easier. Thankfully my brother and sister-in-law came in from Ohio. It is so good to have them here to help me pack and get ready and then say good-bye. I will miss my family a lot as well.

Now for the Idiots out there. You see I was reading the volunteer handbook. They say in there that if I keep a website that I have to make it clear that my posts are my thoughts. Then don’t reflect the views held by the agency that I’m working for. So I don’t know if I’m going to spell out the complete name of the agency. So for now I’ll just have to call it the Ceace Porps. Thanks to all the idiots out there that would mistake my thoughts for someone elses.

My African Connection:

Bye girls, remember that I'm not that far from Kenshasa!

What a beautiful cake,

Baked and decorated by the beauty on the right.

I love you guys and will miss you SOOOO much!

I recently had the opportunity to go salsa dancing, twice. Of course, by recently I mean during the last 2 months. It reminds me of the last time I went swing dancing (read about it here on June 14th). That was one of my favorite posts.

The first time was with Renee from my bible study. There was a 1-hour lesson before the dance started. I got there about halfway through the lesson. So I missed how the basic step was supposed to go and also why the guy was counting 1-2-3-5-6-7. What about 4, if there’s a 4, where’s 8?!! I learned how a couple of turns go but without the basic step (or count) down, the turns made little sense. Renee is rather experienced, at salsa, so she was in the advanced group. After the lessons, she was able to teach me how the basic step goes and how the turns all work into it. Though, I never did ask about the counting. We were the only ones from bible study that were there so I only knew her. She was well known by a number of people there. So luckily she had other people to dance with. Lucky because she didn’t have to dance all night with me and also because it gets really boring when all you know how to do is the basic step and one turn. She tried to teach me other stuff, with mixed results.

The next time there were a few more of us in our group. Doug came. Doug’s your typical masters in engineering student. Not as geeky as your typical computer science nerd but not as cool as us bio-geeks. He hadn’t been salsa dancing before but had done some swing and other stuff during the summer. We were able to teach him a little. Chansonette was there too. She’s more free spirited in her dancing that Renee. She doesn’t take leading so well but she also doesn’t wait for you to lead and then say things like “why don’t you throw a girl a turn sometime?” She also didn’t yell at me to keep my hand in the shoulder plain. Probably the most interesting way to be told to get your hand off someone’s butt. Actually it’s the only way I’ve been told that. Too bad for me I guess. I bet Tiffany has lots of good stories about grabbing people’s butts. Our friend Dan was also there. He grew up in South America so he was somewhat better than Doug and I. The band was fun too. They played some Christmas music. It was fun to hear them sing about The Grinch to a salsa beat. I think we all had a good time. Doug and I did and the girls as least pretended that they did. So it was a successful night. I wonder how much I’ll get to practice while I’m in Africa. Maybe I’ll start a salsa club in The Gambia. I bet it would go over really well.

I told Dave I would drink a glass of eggnog for him. I had other glasses this year. This one was for Dave. Its not a “fun” glass though. Its just eggnog. You can tell its not a fun glass because I’m not smiling in the picture. I used all my brandy at my super cool friend Joy’s super fun Christmas party and sadly I have no rum either. (Too bad Tiffany isn’t around. Then it would be a fun glass!!) Anyway I used all of my brandy making mulled wine for Joy’s party. I made a whole crock-pot full of it. That’s from 2 bottles of wine, 2 cups of brandy, 2 cups of water plus sugar and mulling spices. Though the party was super fun they weren’t a drinking crowd. After the party was over, there was 1.5 wine bottles worth left. I left the half bottle for Joy. I hope she and Kristin enjoyed it. You can tell it was a super fun party because of the antlered creature featured here:

Of course, Kristin looked beautiful with the antlers on, not like me. Unfortunately nobody got a picture of her wearing the antlers. Why were there so many pictures of me with them on?

Anyhow. Cheers, Dave! It was a good glass of eggnog!

This is my dad at church on Christmas Eve. Thankfully he waited till after the service to put these on. Tiffany isn’t the only one that has weird family. Though I think she probably won with her parents running around the dinning room like horses.

Today at work; not so great. It started out pretty well. There wasn’t too much traffic on the way. I did get beeped at twice while waiting to get out of the Eckerd parking lot. Someone didn’t want me to wait for the pedestrian crossing in front of me. A little after I got to work Darrell got a call from Sarah that she is going to be at the bus stop at Ikea soon and she needs picked up. I think she missed her normal bus. It wasn’t clear when she would be there because she left a message. When he tried to call her back she wouldn’t answer. Of course everyone wanted to be the one to go get her. We should have taken a bigger group it would have been even more fun. It was Darrell and I that went to get her. We pulled up to her and she totally didn’t know it was us. She just kept standing there while Darrell was banging on the window. She got it after a few seconds and climbed in. So we went back to work. Darrell and Sarah make me laugh a lot at work; it was a fun car ride. That was the fun break of the day. When I got back a few of us went to give blood. That was the not fun break. No big deal till I was done and they let me up from the chair. I walked over to the cookie table and as I sat down I was feeling hotter and hotter and rather light headed. I said to Mary Anne that I wasn’t feeling well and put my head down on the table. The next thing I know I hear Kim, the head nurse, calling my name asking if I can hear her. I heard her call my name about 5 or 6 times before I could answer and even then it was really hard to open my eyes. It was a new experience for me; I’ve never passed out before. It would’ve been cool if it ended there but it was another hour before I left. I was back in the reclining chair for quite awhile. Every time they put my feet down I kept getting really hot, nauseous, and dizzy again. Finally, on the third time, I was well enough to go sit in a normal chair. I sat for a while at the cookie table drinking as much juice as I could. I felt well enough to go back down stairs after a few minuets. I went down and sat at my desk going through waves of cold and hot, dizzy and dizzier. After sitting there for about 40 minuets and everybody asking, a lot, if I’m okay I called home for my parents to come and get me. I could barely stay in the chair let alone get any work done. I’m feeling a little better now. I’m still a little dizzy but I was able to eat dinner and of course write all about my exciting day. I’m just sorry that I didn’t get the chance to say “goodbye” as I blacked out. My brother did that once and that made the nurses pretty upset. I told everybody that story before we went up. I was going to do it but I thought I was just going to vomit not loose consciousness. Too bad too, I don’t plan to get the chance to do it again.

I’ve had some interesting “Indian” experiences the last few weekends. It’s not as packed full of Indian fun like my friend Greg’s weeks are. He was just sent to India by his company. He wasn’t as excited about it as I would have been. He got really sick on the trip home from his last excursion to India. He ended up in the hospital for 3 days when he got back. He thought that would be a good enough excuse to not have to go back. But a few days after he got back from China the CEO of the company thanked him for being willing to go back to India, and so soon too. So, I’m sorry Greg that you missed our safer Indian experiences.

Two weekends ago I had my chance to experience Jaljeera. How exciting after the review it got from my friend Lori. I went to the apartment of a friend, Ratna. She is a co-worker of a friend of mine that likes to play Scrabble. She had a scrabble night and I was invited. My friend, jokingly, demanded that she make Jaljeera. Extra crispy at that! Of course she made it. It reminded me of a drink that I had tried in India. I was given a glass of sugar cane juice in a social situation that I couldn’t refuse it without really insulting the guy. The juice is squeezed from the sugar cane with an old, rusty, oily press with water that was clearly not going to get along well with the bacteria in my stomach. But it was too late to refuse so I just prayed that it wouldn’t kill me (this is a good example of learning to pray without ceasing). I know what those of you that have tried Jaljeera are thinking. A glass of seawater is almost as salty as Jaljeera, wouldn’t sugar cane be sweet? The sugar cane juice was sweet with pockets of extreme saltyness. The same flavor spice as in Jaljeera. I didn’t make it through the glass, of the Jaljeera or the Sugar Cane juice. Paul was able to drink his whole glass. Way to go on that Paul. After that I was so shaken that the best I could do in scrabble was to loose with less than 1/3 the amount of points as Paul whom also lost to Ratna. I did much better during the rounds of Uno. I should mention that the Chai, Gulab Jaman, and the other things that they served were really good and made me think fondly of India.

Then this past weekend I found out that the latest Aishwarya Rai movie Umrao Jaan was playing in a theater in Pittsburgh. Actually I found that out at Ratna’s apartment. So I asked my friend Chansonette if she wanted to go see it, knowing her love of Indian things. So we got a small group together to see it Saturday night. When I was a few blocks from her apartment I got a frantic call from her that she and her friend were looking online and the movie wasn’t showing. Crapski! When I got to her place it had been confirmed. So we rented another Ash movie from an Indian grocery store. On the way there her Indian friend found out about my time in India and asked if I learned Hindi. Then informed me after I started to speak in Hindi to her that she speaks Telagu. Which was just as well because the 2 sentences that I got out were about as much as I remember from 2 years ago. Anyway the movie was Mohabbatein. It was a lot of fun, had Big B, Ash and Arukh Khan. It was much better to watch at home (Jeanette’s home actually) because we talked and commented on and laughed all the way through the Love story. I can’t wait till we can do it again!

I know that you posted this a long time ago, Tiffany, but here are some of my answers. There were a lot of questions. So I decided to cut out some of them and do the more interesting ones.

FOUR JOBS YOU'VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE:

1. Lab Tech at Univ of Pittsburgh

2. Building Manager at my Church

3. EMT

4. Lab Consultant for a Hospital in India

FOUR JOBS YOU WISH YOU'D HAD:

1. CIA Field Agent

2. Green Beret/Navy SEAL

3. Doctor (surgeon)

4. CEO/President of a HUGE company. They don’t have to do any real work.

FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN:

1. The Long Kiss Goodnight

2. Matrix

3. Mystery Men

4. Bride and Prejudice

FOUR CITIES YOU'VE LIVED IN:

1. Delhi, India

2. Raxaul, India

3. Pittsburgh, PA

4. Washington, DC

FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH:

1. Studio 60

2. Heros

3. The Unit

4. My Name is Earl

FOUR PLACES YOU'VE BEEN ON VACATION/TRAVELED TO:

1. Disney World

2. London, BABY!!

3. Cancun, BABY!!

4. Maui, Hawaii

FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY:

1. BBC News

2. Tiffany’s blog

3. Dave’s blog

4. World of Warcraft.net

FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS:

1. Garbage Plate from Nick Tahoes

2. Permanti’s sandwhich

3. Skittles

4. Cookies

FOUR THINGS YOU WON'T EAT:

1. raw meat of any kind

2. Jaljeera

3. Coffee or anything coffee flavored

4. Goat brain. (One of the Docs in Inida wanted to make it for me. Lucky for me he never followed up on it. Though the word is that it’s really good.)

FOUR PEOPLE YOU’D REALLY LOVE TO HAVE DINNER WITH:

1. Kofi Annan

2. John Stewart

3. Aishwarya Rai

4. Tiffany, cause holy crap you’re funny!!

FOUR THINGS YOU ARE THINKING RIGHT NOW:

1. My throat hurts

2. What the heck will I do for the Peace Corp

3. What the heck is “bringing sexyback”

4. Why does the video I’m streaming keep freezing up!?!

My good friend Pam was married on 10/21/06; 10 days ago. It was a nice wedding I suppose. You shouldn’t take that as an insult in any way Pam. Though, since she never posts a comment, I have no idea if she ever really reads this. I think I just don’t get the ceremony. I’ve been in 3 weddings, best man at 2 (always the best man never the bestest man), and it’s mildly fun if you are standing up front. Plus as best man you hold the ring. But watching is not nearly as fun. Especially when your friend/date (were you my date?) who is in the wedding talks to you like you have any clue about what went on behind the scenes but really you’re totally lost on who/what the heck she is talking about. So anyway they said their “I do’s” and that was that. I did get to sit in the back of the sanctuary with a friend from college that I haven’t seen for a while with his new baby. So that was good.

The reception however was one of the best I’ve been to. This is largely because of the live band. The food was pretty good and the open bar was nice, though I only had wine with dinner because I was driving. The band was awesome! Instead of the normal DJ where you get tons of top 40 that nobody really likes, with a few slow songs thrown in for good measure, they had a live band. It was a lot of funk style music. They were really rockin’. I’m really not into dancing that much so I stayed off the floor for most of the first set. I was pretty much ready to leave when I got too close to the dance floor and was ordered by the bride to join in. I ALWAYS have fun with Pam so I went out on the floor. I stayed the rest of the night. It was so fun. We even dragged Lori out onto the floor. It was a fun night.

The band was Brass Taxi at www.brasstaxi.com. If you are having a wedding in the Rochester area you should totally get them. I don’t know how far they travel but if you are having a wedding anywhere they don’t go then that’s sad for you.

"How did it turn out?"

"Hello!! The two most beautiful women here!!"

A few days ago my friend Dave put a post on his website that I wanted to reply to. As I was writing my comment, I quickly realized that it was probably going to be longer than the original post. So rather than have a really long reply I thought I would just blog about it. His post with the comments is at: http://onegeek.net/blog/2006/10/25/abstinence-pledges-dangerous/#comments . Here is the post itself:

Just read an interesting news piece on abstinence sex education and pledges in the US. It noted that 88 percent of pledge takers had sex before marriage and that were less likely to seek STI testing and less likely to use contraception when they did have sex.

There is a saying that we geeks use: Correlation does NOT prove causation. I hate all statisticians and laugh at everyone that tries to use statistics in an argument.* Statistics can be a useful tool but much they aren’t the last word. Like a hammer is only useful for nails, a statistic has very limited scope and application. Though that limit is almost always ignored. Most would say that this statistic proves that Abstinence Only education is ridiculous and kids will just do it anyway. That’s not what it says. What does it tell us? This number speaks only to success of the program in its current state. This number is useful in evaluating the teaching of our children. What are the numbers of the “war on drugs”? Why haven’t we given up trying to stop teenage drug use? They keep using drugs, why not just assume they will do what they will do? What about teenage drinking? So what if they like to drink at parties? Why hasn’t anybody used the drug and alcohol abuse statistics to prove they should give up?

Because failure means you need to try something different, not give up! When “Just say no” wasn’t enough, they show commercials with a guy frying an egg. If that’s not enough show them Whitney Houston (if she isn’t a walking anti drug commercial, I don’t know what is!). So stop saying that failure is proof that it can’t work.

The Abstinence Only program needs to take some cues from the Drug and Alcohol people. Don’t just tell them “Don’t do it”. That doesn’t work for anything. They need to give the kids tools to keep them out of situations where the decision is already made for them. Help them make good choices about making out all night in a car, at a party (with drugs and alcohol), or in the hallway at school for 4.5 of the 5 mins they have between classes. They need to be taught how to have a healthy, nourishing, loving relationship. They need to be taught how to deal with the emotions and hormones raging in their bodies. The reason that they don’t use contraception or get STI testing is that they are ashamed of their actions. Don’t teach them they are failures for not keeping their promise; teach them the forgiveness of the Father when we fail.

WE are the failures when we don’t support our kids in their own decisions.

*I don’t really hate all statisticians. There’s one at my church that actually has a good sense of humor.

About a week ago my blog friend, Tiffany, tagged me. So here are my answers to the book-tag. I enjoyed doing this as well as reading her’s and Dave’s answers. I would like to hear from a bunch of people on this. But I really only read 3 other people’s blogs. I’m not popular like Dave and Tiffany. So I will Tag just 3 people:

1. Lori. Even though she told me not to. But since you have time while you’re home, you might as well.

2. James. If his reading is like his music taste, I’ll have a bunch more suggestions to read.

3. Heather. Because she is the only other person’s blog I read. Also I’m sure that she and Mike (her husband) will come up with some good answers.

Too bad my librarian friend Carrie doesn’t read this. If she does and wants to post her choices I will post them here. She will be my first guest blogger.

11 Books:

1. ONE BOOK THAT CHANGED YOUR LIFE?

Blood Brothers by Elias Chaccour. I read part before and part after I spent 5 weeks in Israel and Palestine. It’s the story of the Israeli occupation of Palestine in 1949 from the perspective of a 6-year-old boy and his life of living/dealing with it. Though it didn’t happen that summer, that book and trip put me on the track of relief/development work. It’s why I went to India, why I applied to the Peace Corp, and why someday I’ll do something to help people in poverty.

2. ONE BOOK YOU HAVE READ MORE THAN ONCE?

The only one is the Bible. I don’t re-read books. There are too many good ones out there to waste time reading stuff over and over. Though I watch movies multiple times and I bet books would be good the second time too. Plus I read so slowly that re-reading will take up so much time.

3. ONE BOOK YOU WOULD WANT ON A DESERT ISLAND?

I used to say War and Peace because it’s long. But that’s not really a good reason. As a “classic” I’m sure I would find it boring and would just end up imagining car chases and things blowing up. I think a better one would be a survival book about what berries to eat and what leaves you shouldn’t use to wipe your butt. Other wise a good Tom Clancy novel.

4. ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU LAUGH?

From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple. It’s about this guy’s journey through West Asia visiting ancient churches. The funny part is when he talks to the Greek Orthodox priests, they tell him that he’s going to hell because he’s catholic and that the Pope is the antichrist but welcome to the church. Then he visit’s a Catholic church and they talk about how the Orthodox will all burn in hell. I was laughing out loud on a 1.5 day train ride through India.

5. ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU CRY?

This is a bad question for me. Pretty much anything even slightly sappy makes me cry. It would probably be a shorter list of the books that didn’t make me cry. Some that made me cry for real and not just water my eyes: Too Small to Ignore by Wess Stratford, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (HE KILLED LENNY!!), Where the Red Fern Grows (which I read 2 years ago), Deliver Us From Evil by William Shawcross (about UN in the ‘90s).

6. ONE BOOK YOU WISH YOU HAD WRITTEN?

The End of Poverty by Jeffery Sachs, though I don’t really agree with everything that he said. The problem of poverty is bigger than economics but that’s as good a place to start as any other. I hope that if I have the chance I will write a book that will slap people in the face like that one does. It’s such a wake up call and I think that every world leader should have to join a book club and read it.

7. ONE BOOK YOU WISH HAD NEVER BEEN WRITTEN?

The Da Vinci Code. Though not for the reason you are thinking. It shattered the illusion for me. Before that book was so popular I thought that Americans, as a whole, weren’t stupid. Boy was I wrong. I mean do you really have no concept of the difference between fiction and real life? Not even good fiction, poorly written fiction and real life. Entertaining and all but we have to have better books than that, what will English teachers of the future, like Tiffany, torture our kids with?

8. ONE BOOK YOU ARE CURRENTLY READING?

I’m reading 2 books now.

One is J is for Judgement by Sue Grafton. This is a popcorn novel and I hope you don’t judge me too harshly for reading it. I just wanted something to read while I’m on my lunch break at work. I can read a few pages and not get lost if I don’t read it for a few days.

I’m really reading Too Small to Ignore: Why Children are the Next Big Thing by Wess Stratford. It’s about how children suffer even more than adults from poverty and usually get the short end of the stick when it comes to relief agencies. Awesome book and it may be changing my view on what I want to do with my life. Which is no good because if I don’t get moving then my life will be done before I figure out what to do with it.

9. ONE BOOK YOU HAVE BEEN MEANING TO READ?

One just isn’t enough. These aren’t in the order I plan to read them:

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafifi, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (though I’ve heard him speak and that almost changed my mind), The Curious Incident of the Dog at Midnight by Mark Haddon, The World Is Flat by Thomas L Friedman, and a ton of other Aid/Delivery books. Of course now that I’ve read Dave’s and Tiffany’s lists I have a ton more books that I have to read.

10. ONE BOOK YOU'RE GLAD YOU OWN?

The Bible, Too Small to Ignore, Blood Brothers, The End of Poverty. Pretty much all of the ones I own. We take owning and reading books too lightly. Though I’m not real proud that I own I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris. I didn’t enjoy it if that makes it any better. I was thinking of Tom Clancy the whole time…

11. ONE BOOK THAT MUST BE READ ALOUD?

Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi; a Funny Kids book.

And I won’t be stone dead in a moment either. No my injury from my bike ride wasn’t fatal. Though my new job may be. I do have a “new” job and it made August go so fast. I have been working for a scientific supply company. I have been going through the catalog regrouping and re-categorizing items so that they can be found more easily. Though this is not intellectually stimulating it isn’t too bad a job. I get to sit at a computer with an internet connection all day. My first computer couldn’t play You tube but I was able to get a different one; without tech support or anyone else knowing. (My most recent finds are Chad Vader and “Ask a Ninja”.) The people that I work with are pretty fun. There are about 20 people in the room with all the computers around the walls. We aren’t in cubicles so we get to talk and goof off a good amount. For the project that I’m on, we have no goals. As far as I can tell, I can do 20 lines in my excel file or 1000 lines in a day, without worrying about trouble with my boss. In fact after the first week it was 3 weeks before I saw my boss again. Also any changes that I make are just suggestions. At least 2 people will review them before any changes are made in the actual catalog. So it pretty much doesn’t matter what I put in, they will decide later if they like it or not. Over all I do like the job. We laugh a lot. Though there really aren’t any good stories to tell. That’s why I haven’t written for so long. It feels like so little happens from day to day. It’s hard to write about so little.

A few things have happened in the last month and a half. About 6 years ago 5 friends and I started a roller hockey team. The team has existed year round for nearly 6 years. I am the only founding member still playing. (Though clearly I had a few breaks for India and DC.) We were never a very good team. One could for the most part expect to win 1 maybe 2 games a season but we were having fun. This summer we won the Championship!! It was really very amazing and exciting. There is a girl at church that I like, though I’m fairly certain that she doesn’t like me. I have been medically cleared by the Peace Corp. I am fit to go off by myself to the middle of the wilderness and try to help people. I even freaked out about how I’ll be all alone in the middle of nowhere. Can I handle that?!? Well rest assured that after a short talk with Lori I’m pretty much back on track. Ready to go, if they call me. Also I have an interview tomorrow to work in a research lab. The description was for basic stuff. I pretty much expect to be offered the job. I will have to decide if I want to take the job or if I want to wait and see what the Peace Corp comes up with. I can tell the Peace Corp to put me on hold for a year if I want. I’m not sure yet what I’ll do. I guess I’ll wait till I get an offer to make the decision.

I think that’s about it for the month. I want to say something about another year passing since 9/11. I’m still saddened whenever I think about what happened; during that day and in the time since. I pray for the families of the victims of that day and of wars that have come since. I pray that one day, the world will learn not to hate so much.

The picture below is what happens when you do. I should warn that it’s not a nice thing that happens. View at your own risk. It’s not like my leg is falling off but there’s some blood.

I went mountain biking last Saturday with my friend Ben Cramer. I was told that people that go biking with him get hurt. But there was a 3rd person with us so I figured that he would get hurt instead of me. Though it was my first time and I was borrowing a bike, whereas he had his own mountain bike. So I should have known it would be me. It was really fun even though I was scared to go down most of the hills. It drizzled most of the morning keeping us pretty cool. Thank you, Mitch, for letting me borrow your bike. I hope I didn’t kill your breaks.

I’ve been playing soccer once a week for the last month. Most of the people I play with work at Univ. of Pitt. I knew some of them when I worked there a few years ago. Some of them work in labs and some of them are computer geeks. One of the guys is the fed ex deliveryman for our buildings. We have a large range of skill levels. We have a couple of people that are really good, like the fed ex guy. He played semi-pro in Scotland before he came to the US for School. But he has bad knees so he couldn’t keep playing at that level. We have a few of us that played in high school. I fall into that category. We are skilled and can make some plays and when we can’t we just push each other over. Then we have the people that basically never played before. When the ball comes near them, they pretty much kick it as hard as they can in what ever direction they are facing. Some of them tend to hurt everyone else. I’ve had a bruise on my knee all week because some girl kept kneeing me. I know it’s not cause she likes me because she was kneeing anybody that came near her when the ball was near by. I don’t remember how many goals had been scored when we finished but it was 3 crotches to 4 faces when we finally quit. As one of the crotches I can say with authority that we didn’t win.

I didn’t score any goals. Here’s why:

The girls club Frisbee team was stretching/practicing behind the goal I was shooting at. A little distracting to say the least.

Below are some more pictures from soccer. They are all from water break because I was too busy getting kneed and hit in other areas of the body during play to take pictures.

I do have to mention that I’m writing this while I’m at Pete’s Night of Crafty-ness. It’s the knitting ring that I started a few years back. I’ll write more about that later…

You have to read that like Fabio. I don't know if that came across well.

Well, I finally entered the 20th century. I bought a digital camera. I don’t want to say where I bought it because a certain friend of mine doesn’t like the company. But I can probably tell you because India is blocking blogspot for some ridiculous reason. It’s probably because of Dave’s blog. It has all his crazy talk about HIV and peace and c%$#%#ms. So, I can tell you that I bought the camera at Best Buy. She doesn’t like Best Buy because she tried to buy a camera there while signing up for a Credit Card with them. But the screwed it all up and I think it did something to her credit. I learned her lesson and skipped getting the credit card with them. It’s a Sony and it takes pictures and videos. I took some pictures around the house and they looked good. I haven’t done any videos yet. I’m going to take it to soccer tomorrow and take some pictures and maybe video and see how it comes out. With this camera I can take tons of pictures and show them to everyone, posting them on the internet for all to see. I just have to remember to bring it with me.

I’ve gotten my security deposit back, more or less in it’s entirety. My landlord kept $25 saying that he had to fix the dings I left in the walls. $25 isn’t that much so I just let it go but he’s so full of it. Lor, did we leave any dings in the wall? We were pretty careful. Anyway, now that I have it back I figured I’d compile a list of things that would defiantly piss Eric off if he knew about them; things that would probably have created more of a problem with the security deposit.

1. I used to take drinks and snacks to my room every night. He always said that he didn’t want us eating in our rooms. He was very protective of his house. He kicked one guy out because he was too messy. I never ate dinner in my room. However chips or ice cream and tea or hot chocolate or pop were regular visitors to my room.

2. I adjusted the temperature in the house. He told me once that I wasn’t to touch the thermostat. He liked to think of himself of as the house dictator but really he was the house dic… Anyway, cold days got more heat and hot days got more AC.

3. When the furnace was broken I used the oven to heat the kitchen. He would have spazzed out if he had known the gas wasted in the use of the oven as a space heater.

4. Along those lines, I had a space heater in my room. Even if I turned up the thermostat my room was still cold. So I just got a heater. Though with the heater I didn’t need to adjust the thermostat anymore. He would have liked that.

5. I did way more laundry than he thinks I did. I had to wash my work clothes in a few loads every week. He thought that washing clothes in the washing machine was bad for it. I wasn’t wasteful. I wasn’t just washing one sock at a time.

I think that’s it. Only 5. I thought there would be more. Well anyway, I’m happy not to live there anymore. I did like the other roommates there. I just couldn’t stand Eric.

Not as good a title as the real movie title. I wonder if the movie started out with a different title. I wonder if they would have made so many movies if they had used a different street name.

So I’ve been having some weird dreams lately. Like last night I dreamt that Lori had 10 new posts on her blog that I hadn’t read. That’s weird because that usually happens with Dave’s blog. Though Dave’s posts are usually short and cryptic. I’ve also recently had dreams about waiting tables. They tend to be ones where all of my tables fill up in the first 30 seconds of opening and the first table I go to can’t even order drinks. They take forever deciding and then try to order their food at the same time without having even looked at the menu. I remember Dr Turner talking about Nightmares about Organic. I never had dreams about Organic Chemistry but this must be what it’s like.

I’m starting to despair. I know it’s only been a week since I sent in the remainder of my medical packet to the Peace Corp. But I haven’t heard anything. June is approaching quickly. I’m worried that I won’t be assigned to this project. Not so much because I don’t like anything else that they have (I don’t really know that much about the project at hand), mostly I just don’t know what I’ll do between now and the next project’s leave date. I better not think too much about it. I’ll probably just get more nightmares.