Suburbia, West African Style

Look Who The Cat Dragged In!

2007-07-06T07:26:00.000-04:00

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.

Africa Ill!!

2007-02-08T17:30:00.000-05:00

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.

Ceace Porps.

2007-01-29T00:07:00.001-05:00

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.

2007-01-29T00:03:00.000-05:00

The muscle of the party:
Good-bye, Jean-something

2007-01-28T23:58:00.000-05:00

My African Connection:

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

Happy Next Two Birthdays to Me!

2007-01-28T23:49:00.000-05:00

What a beautiful cake,

Baked and decorated by the beauty on the right.

I love you guys and will miss you SOOOO much!

All That and A Bag of Tortilla Chips

2007-01-17T20:09:00.000-05:00

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.

NOG!!!

2007-01-05T20:49:00.000-05:00

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!

Anybody Got a Light?

2006-12-27T12:08:00.000-05:00

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.

Why It Gotta Be A BLACK-Out!?!

2006-11-29T19:57:00.000-05:00

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.

Indian Fall

2006-11-20T20:27:00.000-05:00

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!

AWW TAGIT!!

2006-11-12T19:36:00.000-05:00

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 Friend's Best Wedding

2006-10-31T19:44:00.000-05:00

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.

2006-10-31T19:41:00.000-05:00

"How did it turn out?"

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

Pledge THIS!!

2006-10-28T20:17:00.000-04:00

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.

11 Books

2006-10-18T12:18:00.001-04:00

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.

I'm Not Dead Yet!!

2006-09-11T23:59:00.000-04:00

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.

Don’t Take your Feet Off The Pedals.

2006-07-30T21:14:00.000-04:00

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.

What’s The Score Now?!

2006-07-25T23:30:00.000-04:00

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…

What Up Chris!!

2006-07-25T23:19:00.000-04:00

2006-07-25T23:16:00.000-04:00

2006-07-25T23:12:00.000-04:00

Don’t Hate Me Cause My Pictures Are Beautiful

2006-07-19T23:54:00.000-04:00

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.

That'll Piss You Off

2006-06-14T22:56:00.000-04:00

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.

Nightmare on Romine Ave.

2006-05-13T13:50:00.000-04:00

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.

"Yes it was all very exciting. Tomorrow we'll go to the zoo."

2006-05-02T14:21:00.000-04:00

Well, Lori is back in India now. Actually I just assume that she made it. I haven’t heard from her. Her flight was on Saturday. I miss her already. I’m bored now; I don’t have anybody to do anything with me. Last week was so nice and busy. We went to the zoo last Tuesday. I hadn’t been for well over 10 years. It was much smaller than I remember. We also didn’t bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches like my family did in the old days. But it was fun none the less. We saw these really cool sea dragons. They were pretty funky. The brown bear was playing in the pool but most of the rest of the animals were sleeping. The petting zoo was a little disappointing. We got to pet a deer but the kangaroos all huddled in a corner and could only be reached from outside their fenced in area. We skipped the goat and sheep pen. The weather was turning bad at that point. The rain did hold off till we were on the way out.

We also went shopping for wedding dresses. Our friend is getting married in October and both of us are hoping to make it back to the country for it. Lori is going to be one of the bride’s maids. So she was trying on a dress. I was just along for “the fun”. The woman at the shop wasn’t very nice or helpful. She couldn’t be bothered to tell Lori about how long it would take to do alterations on the dress. She couldn’t even tell her what size she should get. I’ve walked into Kaufmann’s and had the guy know what size pants I would take. Seems to me this woman should have had some insite or thoughts about weather she should go to the next size or not. We were looking spending a couple hundred dollars for the dress and alterations. One would expect to have some help from the staff. The dress and colors have now been chosen. I’m sure the decision was made largely due to my input on color schemes and dress designs. The rest of the afternoon we went to various shops getting things that Lori wanted to take to India.

But now she’s gone and I’m bored and lonely. I’ll probably have to get a job while I wait to hear from the peace corp. Last week I did what should have been the last medical test for my incompetent Doctor, whom I will never go to again. Of course I’ll probably have to call them everyday for the rest of the week to make sure that they mail in the forms; using the pre-address, postage paid envelope. Also the Dentist took the last X-rays last week. So now I just have to wait and see if I got it all done in time to go in June. Though for me to be able to go I have to find my passport. I’m not sure where it is since the move. That has me a little worried, as it will expire before I’m supposed to return. I want to renew it before I leave. Plus not finding it will only make it more difficult to get a visa for whatever country I end up going to.

Elephants

2006-05-02T14:12:00.000-04:00

Where'd he go!?!

2006-05-02T14:02:00.000-04:00

mmm, Loriiiii

2006-05-02T13:56:00.000-04:00

The deer liked lori's hand. She must have smelled like hamburger from lunch.

Sea Dragons

2006-05-02T13:43:00.000-04:00

These were pretty cool. I'm disappointed with the picture quality though.

What do you say to a Giraffe?

2006-05-02T13:38:00.000-04:00

The Cheeta, or Lepord, or...

2006-05-02T13:28:00.000-04:00

People would walk up to pens and name the wrong animal. I wasn't sure if I should correct them in front of their own children.

Nobody Asked Me!!

2006-04-27T11:37:00.000-04:00

I just want to take a second to tell you all that Cingular sucks. They have been doing this ad campaign where they claim that they have the least dropped calls. They definitely didn’t ask me about dropped calls. I don’t think I’ve had a phone conversation in the last month that went more than a minute where I didn’t lose all signal and then drop a call. I’m not even talking about when I’m in the basement or driving through mountains. I mean when I’m sitting on the front steps of my house and I have 3 bars and then the next minute I have no signal. I’m also a little bitter about the whole “more bars in more places” thing. That’s not really happening either. Verizon should defiantly call me. I’d be happy to do an advertisement for them about how bad Cingular is. Of course, we wouldn’t be able to plan it out because my phone would drop the call before we got anywhere with the concept.

Moving Ill!!

2006-04-26T21:05:00.000-04:00

I’m now back in Pittsburgh. I moved on Saturday. The move went about as close to plan as one could expect (“I love it when a plan comes together”). We left only 1.5 hours later than I wanted to. We were actually done packing the truck by, 10 like I had wanted, but then it took time to get everything cleaned up and the last few things into the car. All cleaned up and $100 of gas later ($75 for the U-haul and $25 for my car) we were on the road. The drive up was pretty un-eventful. We arrived in Pittsburgh at a good time. The rain didn’t catch up to us before we got everything unloaded. It did start to rain in DC just as we were getting the last boxes in the truck but really only Mark got wet. I had plenty of great help. Thank you to Mark, Lori, Doug, Ryan, Jen (J-Diddy) and my parents for helping in DC. Thanks to Lori, Mark, Melissa, Dave, Jenn (J Lo), Mom and Dad for help in Pittsburgh.

The night before the move was great. My parents and Lori arrived during the after noon. I showed them around the house that I lived in for the last year. Then we went to get the Uhaul truck and then met Jen, my twin sister-in-law, for dinner. We went to an Afghan Kabob place. The food there is really good. It’s in Springfield, VA. You should go if you are in the area. Then Lori and I went back to my place to meet up with a friend of ours from college and his brother. We sent them to the liquor store while we stopped at the grocery store for juice to mix with the alcohol they bought. We were up till about 130 playing cards and catching up with which of our friends are getting married and who doesn’t like whom. We laughed a lot. I was a great night; it reminded me of our late night card sessions from college, except for the drinking.

Mark was in usual form having plenty of quotes to make us laugh. The best I added to my quote board to the right.

DONE!!

2006-04-19T12:39:00.000-04:00

I no longer work at the Fish Market! I’m very excited and happy. Sunday was my last day. It was a glorious day. The sun was shining, the birds singing and I had a song in my heart (I think it was See My Vest from Simpsons). We had few customers. I thought it would be a late start since everybody was a church. But I thought that after the terrible chore of church for the second time in a year (Christmas) that it would get busy. But, thankfully, it never did. It was hard to say goodbye to many of the people. It was a good ending though.

Dinner with the Thai people is tonight. It was just Janna at first. But now it’s going to be a few others too. I’m looking forward to it.

In Peace Corp news: things are pretty frustrating. I needed dental x-rays but they made me gag every time they put it in my mouth. So my dentist wrote very clearly that it was not possible. They sent back my dental packet saying that they need the x-rays that my dentist said couldn’t be done. Plus my doctor in Pittsburgh seems incapable of even simple tasks like faxing requests for medical records. I have had to call them so many times to find out if they got the information or not. They never did any follow up with the VA to see why they didn’t get the information they requested. Today I’m going to the VA to get a few more lab tests done. This time I’m going to see if I can have the results sent directly to me so that I can just take them right to the doctor myself. This doctor is really pissing me off. I just want to go and take my Peace Corp forms back from them and get someone else to take care of it all. Well I better stop now or else I’ll just get angry again at the ineptitude of my doctor.

Wireless-less

2006-04-12T22:53:00.000-04:00

I’m at Panera Bread where they have free internet access. Exept for today when it’s not working. I just called the help desk and she said yes, we are aware that it’s down and I can’t say when it will be fixed. How annoying is that?!? I may have to go to another store or (shutter) the library(where I’m pretty sure they have wireless). So hopefully it won’t take too long to post this. If all else fails I’ll do it when I get home.

Not too much has happened in the last week. Pretty much everybody at work knows that I’m leaving on Sunday. It’s hard to explain to some of them what I’m doing/where I’m going. Especially since I don’t know. But I just tell them vague things and that seems to do. They keep asking me if I like Asian girls and if that’s why I’m going. Well, I do like Asian girls but that’s not really why I’m going. Though, I usually just say yes, that’s why I’m going. These last few days at work have been pretty bad. We are really busy now because the weather here is nice now. When the weather is nice our sections get bigger because we have extra tables outside but no extra people to help out. So it’s been kind of crazy because I haven’t gotten a good rhythm down for handling all the tables. Plus yesterday I worked with a bartender lazier than I am and a server that’s not much better. Usually I can get some help from the other servers if I need but not so much from these two. One of my first tables got me all screwed up because he ordered the wrong thing and then complained when I told him that I would make the change and it would take just a few minuets to fix it (who do they think I am, Bullwinkle?!? Hey Rocky, watch me pull a crab cake out of my hat!). But in the time that took I had 2 other tables come in and then I just kept getting behind and couldn’t catch up. I was pretty unhappy the rest of the day. Today was better. I was training a new guy today. I like doing that. It’s fun and if the person is good then they do like half the work for you. It was easier to keep up with everything today. 3 more days of working at the Fish Market. That’s a good feeling.

Next week one of the other servers is taking me out for lunch or dinner at a Thai place. She is Thai: well half Thai, her mom is American. I’m really looking forward to it, except for one thing. I want to get her a gift but I don’t know what to get her. I should point out that she is married. So this isn’t a romantic encounter kind of thing. I wouldn’t say that we are really close but I do have a fondness for her and I will miss her. So I have to think of a good gift before Wednesday. I’m taking suggestions, if anybody has some. Something that will remind her of me. Maybe I’ll just go to the mall tomorrow and see if I can find something I like for her. That’s usually how I shop for people, I just walk around the mall and see if I can get inspired. That’s not always an easy process as Dave and Lori and attest to from Hawaii and Dili Haat. But usually I’m pretty happy with what I come up with. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

FREEZE (SUCKER!)

2006-04-05T21:17:00.000-04:00

As I stated in my last posting I went to Pittsburgh last week. It was an AWESOME week. If for no other reason, I wasn’t waiting tables at the Fish Market. There were, however, many other reasons it was great. But I’ll stick with the restaurant reason for the minuet. This break came at a particularly good time. I was yet again at the point where I hated everybody that came into the restaurant. Pretty much for no reason other than they came into the restaurant. My one friend laughs at this saying that they come to give me money. My answer to that is, No they don’t. They come in to try to get free food and leave crappy tips. I can’t believe how many people come in and want to just try a few shrimps or scallops. Do I look like I own the place? Do you think there is a big tub of shrimps in the back where I can just take a hand full and give them to you and nobody will notice? I should take a moment to point out that not all customers are idiots. But apparently, there’s a high correlation with my tables. One of the other servers noticed that I don’t have much patients for people. So it was good that I got a break.

There are other better reasons that this weekend was so good. The main one being that I got to see my friend Lori 3 days in a row. I spent most of Thursday with her at her parent’s house. We mostly sat around and talked about life and her reasons for staying in India for another year. The chief reason seems to be simply that she’s not ready to come back yet. I’m happy for her that she can stay. She had trouble working out her work situation but it seems like she was able to get everything all set up. I’m also glad that she’s staying because the Peace Corp might station somewhere near her. How fun would that be for vacation?!? I can pick Dave up on the way to visit Lori. Or we can just meet in like Thailand or Greece if Pam will come. Friday we went to Phipps Conservatory (Professor Plum did it), and the Carnegie Museum. Neither of us had been since school field trips. Then we went for some irreverent fun at the Church Brew Works. It’s a restaurant that was built in an old church. They brew their own beer. They say they do it there but I don’t believe it. There isn’t room there for the output they would need. The beer was good, no matter where they brew it. Then on Saturday we went to see Ice Age 2: The Melt Down. It was funny and not too crowded with mall rats. Then we went to Houlihan’s and tried some special beer they had. Not that great: don’t remember the name of it though. But the conversation was good.

I was also pretty successful with the doctor and the dentist. I wasn’t able to get the x-rays that I needed at the dentist. He didn’t have the panoramic machine and the other ones kept making me gag. I gag really easily. So I have to see if I can get one done here in DC without it costing too much. I’m also waiting to get my lab results from the VA sent to my doctor. I think I might have to go down and just get them and fax them myself. I have tomorrow off so that might be how I fill my day tomorrow.

I also got to see my parents and some other friends in Pittsburgh. It was my parent’s anniversary. My dad got my mom a Mylar balloon that when you hit it sings, “Still the one” (we’re still having fun, and you’re still the one). Very cute and totally a gift that my dad would get.

So that was my week. Lori told me that I should blog about my trip to the VA hospital. So I might have to see if I can do that.

Another Month

2006-03-30T00:05:00.000-05:00

Wow! It’s been a month since I last posted. That’s weird because a lot of things have happened over the last month. I had my interview for the Peace Corp. It went really well and they are ready to send me away for 2 years. It looks like I’ll be posted to Central Asia, Something-stan, as Dave and I have come to call it. I’ll know more when I’m medically cleared. The basic description I was given of the project was educating health care workers about AIDS safety. If I can get all the medical stuff done then I would go on this project as soon as June. If not then I might not go till November. I really don’t want to wait that long. So I’m in Pittsburgh right now trying to get it all done. I tried to do it in DC but when I went to the VA the PA I saw just gave me attitude. She was all upset about me not having a folder with my complete medical history. Next time I fill out a questionnaire on my health I’m just clicking all the no boxes. They don’t need to know about my knee surgery, do they? So I came up to Pittsburgh for 5 days. I saw the family doctor that I saw in high school and college. I haven’t been there since ’99. She didn’t seem happy about that but I’ve only been to the doctor once since then and I didn’t go there because I didn’t have insurance at the time. She was also upset that I had so many forms to fill out. She didn’t think there would be so many. This is a government program, what did she expect? Tomorrow I’m going to see the Dentist. He is a guy from my church here in Pittsburgh. I called to make an appointment and left a message on the office voice-mail because I kept calling and they didn’t answer. So the dentist called my parents and said that they didn’t have an opening but would work through lunch for me. I wonder if I can have pizza delivered to the office as a thank you. They shouldn’t be too upset with me; until they find out that I haven’t been to see a dentist in probably 3 years. But I’ll try to say that with pizza in my mouth and maybe they won’t hear me that well.

So after I make the dentist upset, I’ll get to the third and biggest reason I came to Pittsburgh, my friend Lori. She’s back for a little vacation, from India. She just finished her first year in India and is going back for another. It was pretty clear from phone conversations and her blog that she was coming back for good and then all the sudden she announces that she’s staying back for another year. So I’m interested to hear the story. I’m going to have dinner with her tomorrow. I’ll get the truth serum ready so I can find out all about the husband that she has found (see my blog description).

The other thing that has happened is that Dave is back in India. That’s good for 2 reasons. Now when I’m in Something-stan in a few months I’ll be able to visit Dave and Lori for a vacation. Also I can call India pretty cheaply. So during my time left in the US I can call him and annoy him for much less money.

I can’t wait to not have to work at The Fish Market any more. I’ll miss most of the servers I’ve been working with but I won’t miss ANY of the customers. I’m moving back to Pittsburgh at the end of April. Back to live with my parents for a few months till I can leave with the Peace Corp.

That’s pretty much the major happenings of the last month.

L. Paul Bremer

2006-02-25T00:00:00.000-05:00

I’ve been going to some book discussions lately. I rather like being in DC for them. I skip the poetry ones but I’ve been to three: one with Jarred Diamond (wrote “Collapse” and “Guns, Germs, and Steel”), one with the ambassador to Italy during the early ‘80s (wrote “Mission Italy”), and now L. Paul Bremer for “My Year in Iraq”. (I should note that I haven’t had the chance to read any of these books yet.) It was good to hear him speak. It restored my hope. It was really good to hear from somebody that was there and in the thick of what was going on. He was there and knows the score. He told us about how the Parliament is working for democracy and how there is hope. He told us how things are better there and how they will continue to improve. It won’t be over night like the press and many in our congress demand. It’s not a short-term mission; it will likely take decades to be over. I hope that we “stay the course” or rather than having improved anything we will only see it get worse. I really enjoyed hearing him talk.

I was upset that I got there about 15 min. late. Even though I left about 1.5 hours before it started. Coming back took about 45 mins. One thing that I won’t miss about DC, when I leave, is the traffic. I’ll miss the cool book discussions though. Its cool being in a town where there’s always something going on. I don’t know where I’ll be going next, yet. I have an interview at a lab at Ohio State U. It is in Columbus where my older brother and his wife live. It’s hard to know if I’m interested in the position or not. The description given is pretty generic and not really helpful. The interview won’t be till the 6th or 7th of March. So it will be a little bit till in know more about that. If I don’t go there, I’ll likely go back to Pittsburgh. I’m still applying for the Peace Corp. either way. I got that application submitted just after Christmas. I have an interview on Tuesday. I’m interested but I’m not sure what they will send me to do. I guess I’ll have to ask all my questions on Tuesday.

So Sad

2006-02-23T22:17:00.000-05:00

Sorry guys. No funnies today.
I had heard about the bombing of the mosque, The Golden Dome, in Iraq on the radio. I didn’t really think much about it. Nothing new there, right. Just another bombing sounded like no big deal, we hear about them so much. When I got home today I was hunting through the paper for the comics. On the front page of the comics section (not really sure why this was in the style section) were before and after pictures of the mosque. If I can figure out how, I’ll attach some to this entry. It made me want to cry. Oddly enough I didn’t. Even though I’m rather girlish and cry at movies all the time. The complete destruction of this holy site is breath taking. I know that so much has been written about Iraq and everybody has an opinion on the whole thing. The opinion that we don’t hear enough is how truly sad the situation there is. These people are brothers; these guys share practically the same faith. Yet, this is how they treat each other. One can understand the bombing of the soldiers. Though it’s a poorly thought out view, they may see them as occupiers. But to bomb your own countrymen, because of their faith…? If they can’t be led out from their current line of thinking then there is little chance for any real change. I think that’s where all the planning has failed. The planners and leaders viewed these people as westerners with western values of “tolerance”. I use quotes there because we haven’t gotten it right yet, though we tend to do a little better. I can’t help but think about the middle ages: The wars between the Catholic and the Protestant church, the Spanish inquisition, the Crusades… It all sounds like they are still stuck back in the middle ages, that they haven’t come out of them yet. Then I think about Ireland and the racism that exists here and realize that we the West haven’t gotten it so right either. I don’t want to go on much more. I mostly just wanted to say how sad it makes me to see what’s going on.

I’ll have to keep praying. I didn’t see much hope when Ariel Sharon was elected and he took the first real steps to change the status quo in decades. Some days it feels like praying is all I can do. Some days it feels like all that can be done is to pray.

Fact or Fiction?

2006-02-03T23:05:00.000-05:00

I don’t know if you heard, but recently one of the authors that wrote a book that made it onto Oprah’s book club has been disgraced. One would imagine that being on Oprah’s book list would be enough but… The book was A Million Little Pieces. It was supposed to be a memoir about the author’s terrible life growing up. I don’t know who broke the news or how it got out but apparently it was pretty much all made up. He even went back on Oprah (apparently he was on the show as part of a book tour) and tried to defend himself. Oprah was acting all self-righteous and saying how hurt she felt, and really laying into him. (I should note that I don’t watch Oprah, they showed clips of the interview on The Daily Show. The most reliable news source I watch.) He was just saying that maybe not all of it was exactly right and that he may have changed parts of the story. I’m not sure what the big deal is. I mean if Dan Brown has taught us nothing else; he taught us that Americans have no ability to tell fact from fiction. I recently finished reading The Da Vinci Code. By recently I mean about 2 months ago. I read it at the urging of my friend Lori. She used the old “Pete, it wasn’t a very good book, you should read it” trick. So I read it and I’ve got to say that I understand why it was popular. It was short with short sections. It was not complicated. It was all about a conspiracy, even better it was about a religious conspiracy. Not that good over all though. I can’t believe that it’s been on the New York Times bestseller list for like 148 weeks. Definitely won’t ever be used to torture high school English students. I should write a book. I can write at least as well as Dan. I even have a plot in mind. I’m hesitant to say what it is. I mean, my blog is so widely read and I don’t want anybody to steal my idea.

I also recently finished End of Poverty by Jeffery Sachs. It was a very good book. Dr. Sachs talks about the possibility of ending the extreme Poverty that much of the developing world is stuck in. He has some great things to say. Though I did not agree with all of it. He says at one point that the Indian election of 2004 that resulted in Manmohan Singh becoming Prime Minister was largely the result of the population of India wanting economic change. On the list of reasons that people would give, that would be the last reason if it even made the list. The reason that Dr. Singh became Prime Minister is that Sonia Gandhi was the face for the Congress Party (in India they elect a party that forms a coalition government, the party picks a Prime Minister). Most voted for Sonia Gandhi because she is a Gandhi, even though she is Italian and married a Gandhi. That and the threat that if the BJP stayed in power, for like a 3rd or 4th term, they would be able to pass really strict laws about converting religions and laws about if you aren’t a Hindu then you aren’t Indian. That’s one of the rumors that was going around at the time. He also seemed somewhat naive about that prejudices of the US against Russia. He was surprised that the US government didn’t want to help Russia when the communists fell. People didn’t like Russians, just because they were Russian. I was also disappointed about one section where he says that someone he knows is having success using anti retroviral drug in the Caribbean to treat HIV/AIDS. One reason given for drug companies not just handing out the medicine like candy is that you have to take it on a specific schedule, which you can’t do without a clock. But that this guys has had success with treatment even in such a poor area. But there wasn’t any reference to a paper or even to the guy’s name. I was rather disappointed that I couldn’t find anything about it. For the most part I really enjoyed reading the book. It’s not any easy book to read. It’s not as simply written as Dan’s book. But it was an excellent book and I hope that important people that make foreign policies will read and listen to the book.

When You Should NOT Go Out to a Restaurant

2006-01-25T21:07:00.000-05:00

I’ve been inspired by my friend Tiffany to do a public service announcement. She also works in a restaurant (in another state). She has, on a number of occasions, written on her blog about actions that are NOT acceptable behavior in a restaurant. So here’s one from me.

If you are not able to control your kids, do NOT take them to a restaurant. The restaurant is not a playground for your kids. The staff are not baby sitters for you kids. You should not let you kids run around the restaurant, up and down the stairs, too and from the bathroom. They should not be left to stand in the middle of the doorway to the kitchen so that everybody has to walk around them. If they cannot sit for 1 hour while you eat: 1 eat faster, 2. go to McDonalds, 3. don’t go out. I would rather not have your sad measly tip then wait on your unruly kids!

If you hate your kids or they are giving you a headache, you should NOT go out to a restaurant. I don’t want to have a headache from your kids either. I also don’t need your crappy, rude attitude that you bring along with your headache from your misbehaving kids.

I am your waiter. I am there to bring you stuff that you ask for. So when I come and ask if you are ready or if I can help you decide, you can answer: yes or no. However yelling NO!! is not an acceptable response.

If you are too stupid to read the whole flyer, and miss the writing 4 inches below the list of happy hour specials that says that you have to be at the bar for them. And then your waiter goes to the manager and convinces him to make and exception this once. Then you should say thank you, Pete for saving me $3. You should not get more upset when I explain to you that I saved you the measly $3, you should SHUT YOUR MOUTH.

Also I understand that some waiters/waitresses are rude. They give the good ones a bad name. But unless they laughed when they dropped your food on your lap, then keep your mouth shut when you leave and see their manager. You should definitely not complain to the manager when your waiter got you the $3 off your meal (even though you are too stupid to read the flyer and don’t really deserve it but he has been working all day and just wants you to shut up). And if you are too stupid to tell the difference between yourself and the waiter (meaning that you were rude the whole time and the waiter wasn’t ever rude) you should NOT tell the manager that the waiter was rude.

I hope that someone has found this educational. If I’ve helped even one waiter/waitress, then it was worth it.

This was somewhat cathartic. I’ll have to do more posts like this. Thanks for the inspiration Tiff.

Happy HolidayS

2006-01-04T20:49:00.000-05:00

That’s right. Happy Holidays. I had 2 great holidays this holiday season. I hope that you all did too. I say that because there has been a controversy this year about a “War on Christmas”. I think that the media has too much time on their hands. I’m pretty sure they should all have to wait tables full time as well as be a “journalist”. Then maybe they would stay with real news. Apparently President Bush’s card said Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. (This is news?!?) And he was getting all this static about it. First of all I’m sure that he never even saw the card until it was on the news and even then I’m sure he didn’t really care about it enough to look at it. Even if he did see it I guess they were all forgetting that it’s a “Holiday Season” with Christmas, and New Years. I would mention the others as well but it was only the “Christians” that seemed to be making a stink. I’m surprised they didn’t raise the question of bad intelligence from the card people calling it Christmas-gate.

Anyway, as I was saying, I had a good time this year. I drove up to Pittsburgh from DC to see my parents and my little brother and sister-in-law. I drove up after getting out of work early. It took less than 5 hours. It was clear driving all the way up. I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I hadn’t gotten into the Christmas spirit yet. I had been in a pretty bad mood, because I had been working 2 waiter jobs. I started at a Japanese restaurant. Other than yelling WASABI! a lot it pretty much sucked. I didn’t like the managers at all. So I quit 2 days before I left for Pittsburgh. My older brother wasn’t going to be around and I didn’t think I would get to see any friends so I just thought I would be sitting around my parent’s house for 4 days. Little did I realize that that was exactly what I needed. I arrived just before my parents got home from the Christmas Eve Service. I wished I could have made it for that but we got to sit and talk for a little that night. Christmas day was nice. The Service at church was nice and I got to see some people and catch up a little with them. Some of the people that I had hoped to see weren’t there. My aunt and 2 cousins came over for dinner at lunchtime. One of them brought his girlfriend. She pretty much sat there and didn’t say anything except when directly asked a question. Then they left in the middle of the afternoon and my little brother and his wife J-Lo came over and we opened gifts. It was a good evening. Then for the next few days I just hung out and drank lots of tea and hot chocolate and really enjoyed having a few days off from work. Then back in DC for New Years. We had a party at my house. I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I don’t mind parties so much; it’s having them at my house that I don’t like. You can’t really show up late and you can’t leave early. Though it is easy to hide upstairs in your bedroom when you get over stimulated. But it was fun. We played Texas Hold ‘Em, some spades, and Fussball plus there was good food. Also people didn’t stay till 4 am like I thought they would. Most left by 100 or so. I was able to go to bed at like 130 and wasn’t kept up by the few people that were still there. I would have stayed up longer but I had to be at work at 10 am. I ended up with a huge headache too. I only had 2 glasses of champagne. It went away after 4 Advil. I also met someone at the party. Didn’t kiss her at midnight but nobody did that. What a lame party, no booze and no kissing. Anyway, I’ll be looking for her at church. She was white, though, from Arkansas. But she was cute with short blonde hair. Not rich but she had a good job. So, not an Indian princess but I still liked her. Anyway, I hope that you all had a good Holiday Season too; no matter where you were for Christmas or how far ahead of me you got to the New Year.

Hawaii Part II

2005-12-26T13:14:00.000-05:00

It’s been well over a month now and I think that it’s high time that I finish writing about Hawaii. Though in my last posting about my trip I may have made it sound like a disaster it was far from it. I had a great time. It was fun to see Heather and her brother Cam again. I always look forward to spending time with Lori. Any I had fun getting to know some of the friends and family of Heather and Alexis. Though there was rain nearly everyday it mostly didn’t interfere with our plans. When we needed it, the sun was out. The weather was really nice for the ceremony. Even if the pastor that did the ceremony wasn’t. Apparently she was pretty rude to Alexis, one of the brides, when Heather was late. She said that she had another ceremony that she had to get to. So we added her to the list of reasons not to use Turtle Bay Resorts ever again. Especially since they were a large part of the reason that Heather was late, as they had only scheduled one appointment for hair and nails and only had one person working in the salon. But both Heather and Alexis were to be all fixed up there. Then they couldn’t do room service either. I didn’t really get that story but basically they wanted to way over charge for food they couldn’t get there in less than 3 hours. I never actually heard what the girls did after that. Did they just not eat? Did they go hungry till the reception? I hope not. The reception was nice: the food was great, the weather was nice, but the bar tender wasn’t so great. He wasn’t very good at mixing drinks. But we all had a good time dancing and eating. I think that every Katherine, the vegan that made life hard for the food planners, was satisfied with the food.

The highlight of the trip for me was Saturday, after all the wedding stuff was done. Lori had a friend from high school that worked at a sea life park on the island. She is one of the dolphin trainers there. So we went and saw her shows and saw the park. She introduced us to one of the penguins and let us play with it some. Then later we got to meet one of the dolphins. We tried to get him to do some tricks but pretty much he only did it for Kelly, the trainer. She did get him out of the water for pictures with all of us. Cam really enjoyed the fish tank where you can hold a sea cucumber. He had some bad experiences with petting zoos but I think we got him over that experience. We also got to see the first know instance of a Wolphihn, half whale/half dolphin. It was an accident as they had put the female whales with the male dolphins for a night thinking there wouldn’t be any problems. Well, I guess the starts were rather romantic that night. The first question I asked and nearly every one I’ve told had asked is… is it sterile? Nope. It has had calves with a dolphin (I think). So they are ¾ dolphin and ¼ whale. They were hard to see, as they didn’t really come up out of the water for us. But we saw them swimming around. The park was small but fun. There were sea turtles and sea lions and a large tank with fish and manta rays and sharks. There’s also a dolphin adventure where you can swim with the dolphins. We didn’t do that though. I’d like to do that some time but we weren’t prepared to do it that day. That night I bought nearly all my souvenirs. Including a Hawaiian shirt for myself. I haven’t worn it yet though. It’s been a little cold for that. Then we went to a Thai restaurant with Kelly. The drive back home was a bit rough as we had trouble getting out of the city. (We did every time we were down there. Another reason to stay on the South Shore, not at Turtle Bay.) We were going to meet somebody that wanted Lori to take something back to his family in India. We were a little later than we though we would be but we got there. It was a good day. Then of course we had to pack since Lori was leaving the next morning and we had to be out by I think 11. So it was a late night of packing.

I really had a great time and if Heather does read my blog, I want to thank her again for planning things for us. We all loved our time there. I defiantly want to go back when we can see more of the other islands and get more time on the beach. Hawaii is still at the top of my list for Honeymoon destinations.

Apologies

2005-12-08T00:12:00.000-05:00

I think I should take a minute to apologize. I didn’t realize that certain people are reading my blog. Not that they shouldn’t be. I should just be a little more careful I guess. You shouldn’t take anything that I say here too seriously. I forgot that I was writing this to keep Lori updated and that she linked my blog from hers. I wonder who else is reading my blog. Frisbee Amy, are you reading this? If you are, I miss you. Too bad I wasn’t able to play Frisbee this fall. You should call me so we can go out sometime. Amy from the Fish Market? You should call me; now that we don’t work together anymore I really want to know if that was going to be a date. Adel, I like ice cream; you can give me more any time you want. Any random customer that I’ve had that’s pissed me off, you can suck it!
Anyway, thanks for saying that my writing’s improved. That was nice of you.

Anybody Want to Ghostwrite My Blog?

2005-12-06T23:22:00.000-05:00

I have plenty more to talk about from Hawaii but I want to take a break from that for just a sec to talk about something else. So when I was in Hawaii Lori told me that her mom didn’t think that I wrote my prayer letters for my time in India. She remembers my writing as being haphazard, poorly organized. She thought that my letters from India were well written. At first I just shrugged it off but now that I think about it, that’s a great idea. I should have had a ghostwriter for my prayer letters. What a great idea. Dave, you should totally look into that for when you go back to India. I wonder what else I could have ghostwritten. I should get a ghostwriter for my blog. Or I should have had a ghostwriter for my journal in India. That would have been especially nice sine I didn’t keep a journal. Anyway, just for the record, I write and edit this blog myself. Though it’s probably way more stream of consciousness than my letters. Good thing your mom doesn’t read this, Lori. She would probably feel all disillusioned.

Hawaii, Part 1

2005-12-04T22:41:00.000-05:00

Last week I was in Hawaii. I was without an internet connection for nearly all of my time there so I wasn’t able to blog. Sorry, especially to Dave. So here are some thoughts about my vacation in “paradise”.

The worst part of a vacation is definitely the flight back. It was worse than arriving and having to drive around the island for 4 hours to find a place to stay. I guess when I told everybody that I was coming on Monday they thought I meant Tuesday. It was also worse then driving all over the island trying to find a place to surf. The waves were too big on the north shore so nobody would rent us a board. Tthen lessons at the one place that would didn’t start till 100. We finally rented a board on the west shore. By then we could only spend about 40 mins in the water. Not worth the 3 hours of driving around the island looking for the right spot. I never did get to stand on the board. I never figured out how to catch the right part of the wave. Every time I started to stand up the wave would leave me behind. Cam got up to a crouching position on the board pretty easily. Way to go Cam! I must admit that Cam and Chad were good companions for the journey though. We had a few laughs. Especially at the Ford 500 that was driving really slowly as we were rushing to get back to get ready for the wedding. You could tell that the three of us got ready for the wedding really quickly. Our pants were all really wrinkled. We were so sure that we would have plenty of time to get out and back that we didn’t worry about it. I took the fastest shower ever when we finally got back. Even faster than my freezing cold showers in India. Then Cam and I rushed down to meet everybody at the resort. (We left Chad to get ready at somebody else’s condo where there was more room.) Then, of course, we waited another 30 mins at the resort for Heather to get ready. That’s all right. Better we wait for her than her waiting for us. Cam was best man, so we didn’t want to be the ones holding things up. But we got there ok.

The flight back was such a pain. I really hate all the “security”. What a pain. Plus I’m not in the best mood anyway because I have to leave to return to my sad life. Then my suitcase was over weight and I had to pay extra to get it home. I almost lost it with the airline woman. I should have started yelling. Maybe I could have gotten out of paying extra. The guy next to me on the plane was nice. He let me borrow an extra set of headphones that he had for the movie. It was Willy Wonka so it wasn’t really that great a favor. But it was a nice gesture.

All in all it was a good vacation. I’ll work on posting some pictures this week. I’ll also tell about the ceremony and some of the fun times.

Are We 5?!?

2005-11-14T17:04:00.000-05:00

So I had a tough start to my Sunday night shift. First off, I don’t think that I’ll be picking up too many more Sunday nights. Not unless someone really needs me to for a good reason. The money isn’t good enough, especially when I should be at church or something. So anyway it started with 2 women and a 10 year old kid. They didn’t like the music and it was too loud and the table was too close to the speaker. Then they all needed their own bowl of crackers for their soup. They couldn’t share. Then the one lady’s soup wasn’t full enough. It was as full as every other bowl of soup we serve. I went back and filled the bowl to the brim. I reconsidered realizing that I didn’t want to bother my manager with her yelling. So I dumped some out and brought her the bowl back. Seriously though, can’t share crackers? Go back to kindergarten! At least they left after soup. No tip but I’ll survive on not having the normal 10% that the cheap people of DC leave. I did get free mint chocolate chip ice cream from Adel in the ice cream shop. I know you don’t read this, Adel, but you rock the house.

So I still don’t know if it was supposed to be a date. Even with all the advice I got. Mostly because she never called. So we didn’t go out. I asked her about it last night. She told me that her roommate’s girl friend broke up with him. So he didn’t want to go out. Seems to me like most people would use that as a reason to go drinking but whatever. I think that she was about to ask me to do something this week but then she got interrupted. She had the chance too again later but never went back to it. I was kind of looking forward to seeing what the deal was. That and the debate to decide if it was a date. Maybe there’s still a chance.

Fishy Dreams and Dates

2005-11-07T19:39:00.000-05:00

I’m spending too much time at the restaurant. I know that because I had a dream about it the other night. I was at the restaurant, kind of. It was supposed to be the restaurant but there were bookshelves all over like at the library. And the tables were library tables. I had no idea which tables were mine, something that happens frequently. I did know which section was David’s, another server from the restaurant. I didn’t know where he was and his customers were getting all upset but I just kept saying I don’t know where he is and I can’t help them. I also was having trouble finding the kitchen. I didn’t know where it was. So I couldn’t get anybody silverware and if I don’t have silverware then I can’t go to the tables. So I was running around looking for the kitchen and David. The whole time Valentina, another server, from Bulgaria, keeps calling, “Petco!” That’s what she and the other Bulgarian call me. I don’t know why. They called me Petel for a while, saying that it was “Peter” in Bulgarian. But I don’t know what Petco is. Anyway I did eventually find the kitchen, though I couldn’t get in because the incline up to the kitchen was too steep and my shoes were too slippery. That’s so weird. I never even had a dream about Organic.

So I’m pretty sure I was asked on a date yesterday. I’m not really sure. I was running it by my advisor on the phone this morning but we got cut off. Anyway one of the waitresses at work told me that her roommates’ birthday is this week. She asked me if I want to go get drinks with them this week. I don’t know who else would be there. I didn’t really ask follow up questions. I just said yeah, I’d go. It was starting to get a little busy and I was taken by surprise by it. And it was just before she left for the night. It could be a date. She’s supposed to call tomorrow I guess. Anyway, we’ll see what happens.

The Rosa Parks of Bus Riders

2005-10-27T23:38:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a sad day. Rosa Parks dies. Rosa Parks is an icon from the 50’s Civil Rights movement for African Americans. Back then everything was segregated. The phrase “separate but equal” was used a lot. (How stupid a phrase is that? I thought a lot about that in India, when the women had to always be separate in church. Dave and I liked to sit on the wrong side.) When riding the bus, blacks had to pay the driver then get off the bus and get on using the back door. They were allowed to sit as long as there were no white people waiting for a seat or any white people in the row. One evening after work she was sitting on the bus with 4 other black people in her row. When a white person got on the bus they were told to move, by the bus driver. The others did but she refused to. She was arrested and that led to a large number of lawsuits against the municipalities against the bus segregation laws, bus boycotts, and large rallies. She was fined but the laws were eventually overturned. They tell us that she was an old woman that was especially tired. In actuality she was 40 and she wasn’t any more tired than usual after a day of work. She was an activist that had finally had enough. She knew that something had to be done. Not lighting the bus on fire, not getting people to turn the bus over on its side. She stood up to the bus driver and the law. I think it’s funny that the story I learned in elementary school was wrong. I wonder what else I learned in elementary school is wrong. Thinking back to the teachers I had, I bet there’s lots of things. I had some pretty bad teachers in elementary and jr. high school. I bet that’s the reason that I got fired from Georgetown and now have to wait tables at the Fish Market. They were probably all sick of hearing all the stupid things that I learned in elementary school that were wrong. I could have been someone big and important if I hadn’t thought all my life that Rosa Parks was old!!

Anyway… Rosa Parks has become the poster girl for being the first, even though Alabama wasn’t the first to have the bus segregation laws challenged. She rocked the boat and played a huge roll in breaking that and other injustices. She should be the poster girl for fighting the system.

Good-bye Rosa. I hope that your actions won’t ever be forgotten. I hope that we truly did learn a lesson about equality and the stupidity of racism.

MMM, Floor Pie...

2005-10-17T23:10:00.000-04:00

My friend Pam sent this. I picked Ice Cream and Chocolate Cake/Chocolate Icing. They are partly right for me. How about you guys?

Pick your dessert, then look to see what psychiatriststhink about you! If all of the desserts listed below were sitting in front of you,which would you choose?
(Sorry, you can only pick one!)
1) Angel Food
2) Brownies
3) Lemon Meringue
4) Vanilla Cake/Chocolate Icing
5) Strawberry Short Cake
6) Chocolate Cake/Chocolate Icing
7) Ice Cream
8) Carrot Cake

Now that you've made your choice, ! this is what research saysabout you!

Angel food - Sweet, loving, cuddly. You love all warm and fuzzy items. Alittle nutty at times. Sometimes you need an ice cream cone at the endof the day. Others perceive you as being childlike and immature at times.
Brownies - You are adventurous, love new ideas, are a champion ofunderdogs and a slayer of dragons. When tempers flare up, you whip outyour saber.You are always the oddball with a unique sense of humor and direction.You tend to be very loyal.
Lemon Meringue - Smooth, sexy, & articulate with your hands, you are anexcellent after-dinner speaker and a good teacher. But don't try to walkand chew gum at the same time. A bit of a diva at times, but you havemany friends.
Vanilla Cake/Chocolate Icing - Fun-loving, sassy, humorous. Not verygrounded in life; very indecisive and lack motivation. Everyone enjoysbeing around you, but you are a practical joker. Others should becautious in making you mad. However, you are a friend for life.
Strawberry Short Cake - Romantic, warm, loving. You care about otherpeople and can be counted on in a pinch. Yo! u tend to melt. You can beoverly emotional at times.
Chocolate Cake/Chocolate Icing- You love to give as well as receive.Very creative, adventurous, ambitious, and passionate. You have a coldExterior but are warm on the inside. Not afraid to take chances. Willnot settle for anything average in life. Love to laugh.
Ice Cream - You like sports, whether it be baseball, football,basketball, or soccer. If you could, you would like to participate, butyou enjoy watching sports. You don't like to give up the remote control.You tend to be self-centered and high maintenance.
Carrot Cake - You! are a very fun loving person, who likes to laugh. Youare fun to be with. People like to hang out with you. You are a verywarm hearted person and a little quirky at times. You have many loyalfriends.

Still Wanting, Never Having

2005-10-14T14:10:00.000-04:00

It’s always funny when you bait someone and they only seem to latch onto something else. Like they missed it.

Anyway... I was asked to clarify the story I posted about Lori’s keys. It was when we were in the evil Starbucks. I wanted Panera for the free broad band but Lori wouldn’t have it. When we went in the evil house of coffee the T-Mobile hotspot sign tricked me into thinking that I would be able to spend my time typing e-mails rather than read the collection of smut books. I took Lori’s keys and went to the car to get my laptop and returned to the store. Lori’s friends came and left and I think Lori wanted to get something from the car. She asked me for the keys. I checked my pocket and they weren’t there. I said I didn’t have them I must have given them back. She insisted that she didn’t have them. If I didn’t have them and Lori didn’t have them and they weren’t on the table the obvious solution is that they were in the trunk. Well Jeff and I briefly entertained the possibility of breaking into her car but that wasn’t going anywhere. So AAA was called to get them to open the car. I was sure that I wouldn’t have locked them in the car but what else could have happened to them. What if one of her friends had taken them? So they were called and I had my vindication. I’m still not sure why she didn’t get suspicious about the keys that didn’t work in her car but whatever. Nobody believed that I hadn’t left her keys in the trunk. Lori didn’t even believe me that I didn’t have the keys. I can think of funnier things to do to someone than tell her that her keys are in the trunk when they aren’t. So we waited for her friend to come back. Well, some of us waited. Some people couldn’t wait and ran right for Buffalo Wild Wings.

You Always Want What You Can’t Have

2005-10-12T11:57:00.000-04:00

Well, I’m in Rochester; visiting with Lori. Well, not right now. Right now I’m at Panera Bread while she’s off at her breakfast date. It’s a pretty long “breakfast” date, she left the house at about 940 and she isn’t supposed to get back till 1200. Plus it’s nearly 12 now and she hasn’t called me to see if I’m back so she can get it. I don’t know about that. Anyway, I’m at Panera because it’s about a million times better than Starbucks. For one thing the wireless Internet is free here. At Starbucks you have to pay for it. It said on the window at Starbucks that it’s a T-Mobile hotspot. Well, Catherine Zeta Jones is a T-Mobile hotspot but Starbucks was stone cold. I wasn’t going to pay. So I had to wait till this morning to get a connection. So finally I could do the last post and this one.

So for the last 2 days Lori and I have been going around seeing her friends in the area. It’s been good to see her; I miss her. She’s been having a hard time in India. She likes being in India but she doesn’t like the company that she works for. We’ve been talking a lot about that and other things. Will she keep with the company for the whole year? Will she stay in India? What if she moves back? Will she find an Indian guy to marry? You know, all the normal stuff. So we’ve been having a good time together.

This is also a week of meeting significant others. I met my friend Pam’s new boyfriend, Don and Mike’s new girlfriend, Kris. Kris was pretty cool. She fits in well with the group. She was able to handle Jeff and Chris well. When the picked on her like they do everyone she was able to give it right back. I think that she’s a good match for Mike. It’s hard to say about Don though. He seems really nice but I met him with Pam and Lori. We were talking (mostly laughing) so much that there wasn’t much room for him to talk. But he was participating a little. He seems like a keeper. I think I’ll get to see him tonight again. So there’ll be more time for judging then.

I’m showing my India Pictures tonight to Pam and Mike. I don’t know who else will be there. It will be emotional for me. Reliving it all and missing the people and friends. But I’m glad that I’ll finally get to show them.

Also, just for the record: I was vindicated and did not lock Lori’s keys in the trunk. Her friend took them off the table when she left.

Where Did You Learn to Count

2005-10-12T10:48:00.000-04:00

I wrote this on Monday but couldn't post it till today because of stupid Starbucks. I'll write about that in another post though:

I’m sitting in Dulles Airport. It’s 730 am and I already have stuff to say about my trip. Usually when I fly somewhere I get Gate Z50. The farthest gate possible. That’s fine, I’m used to it. It’s the story of my life. So when I checked in today I was shocked when I saw that I had gate A1! I’m smiling as I take the shuttle to concourse A. As I walk down the steps marked Gates A1-A8, I can’t help but smile about my short walk. I get down to concourse A and THE GATES ARE NUMBERED BACKWARDS!! It starts with gate A5. Freakn A! I still had to walk the farthest distance possible. That’s my life.
I’m heading to Rochester NY to see my friends from college. Well, actually I’m going to visit Lori. The one whom I started this blog for. I’ll also get to visit with some other college friends too. This will be a better trip than the one to Minnesota. If for no other reason, I brought something to eat on the plane. There are other reasons though. I’ll get to see Pam. The laughs never stop with Pam. When I’m with Pam I never have to say anything funny. I’m usually laughing too much to get anything out. Plus I’ll get to see Mike. Mike and I were roommates my senior year in college. Mike and I always have fun. I don’t think that I’ve seen them since Christmas. This will be good week that will end too soon. Well, I don’t know when I’ll get to post this. Stupid Dulles Airport is too cheap to have free wireless. Maybe I’ll be able to do it tonight at Pam’s.

Information that would have been useful YESTERDAY!!

2005-10-05T23:36:00.000-04:00

I had a good time this weekend. I got in late on Friday and had dinner with my friend at Red Robin. It was good to catch up with him about life. Then we went home. It was my first time visiting them so I got the tour, which included a demonstration of his entertainment system. He has a very large TV (I don’t remember the measurements) with 6.1 Dolby surround sound. I also learned what that means. It was awesome. We watched a few movies over the weekend. It was awesome!

On Saturday we went running. Jeff has been running to try to be healthier. They usually run a 5K, about 3 miles, at about a 12 min. mile pace. I knew I could handle that. However, when we arrive the trainer says that she is going to run 5 miles and that anybody that wants can join her. Jeff decided that it would be good for him to do and I wasn’t going to just play on the jungle gym in the park. So I ran 5 miles with him. It took a little more than an hour. It was good but I was so tired the rest of the day. Plus my legs hurt pretty much until Wednesday morning. I was pretty close to falling asleep at the ceremony. My suggestion to all of you is not to run 5 miles cold just before a wedding. Just a thought that might help you someday.

I arrived at the wedding that afternoon a little late. I got there just in time to walk down the aisle to my seat just behind the bride. It was a nice service. The reception was okay. The only person that I knew was the bride. Nobody from college was there. I was a little surprised. Also a little disappointed that I didn’t get to use a good cover story. I’ll have to use the mortician idea next time. Instead I got to meet some of the groom’s friends from college, Northwestern. They seemed like a good group of people. They were the ones that decorated the car. They stuffed it with balloons, stuck cookies to the roof, and tied cans to the rear bumper. So I got along with them well. I did the dollar dance with the bride and left. I didn’t feel like doing much more than that.

The rest of the weekend went quickly. We watched some Sunday afternoon football. Then I flew home. The plane home was packed but I had my combos. No going hungry this time!

So Hungry

2005-10-03T00:21:00.000-04:00

I wrote this on Friday but couldn't post till now:

I’m writing this on the plane flying to Minnesota. My friend Kelly from college is getting married. I’m a little bitter that they don’t serve snacks on Northwest anymore. Well you can buy a tiny bag of trail mix for a dollar. I wish I had known, I would have bought a large bag of something before getting on the plane. I’m hungry and that makes me bitter. I was waiting for dinner till I landed but now it’s getting hard to wait. On the way back I’m bringing a large bag of Combos.

As I said I’m on my way to an old friend’s wedding. I have mixed feelings about going. It would be easier if I was married (still accepting applications/suggestions) or if I had someone to come with me. At first I thought that I probably wouldn’t know anybody there. I’ve realized that I probably will. Tony and Heather will probably be there. It will be cool to see them again. Not really interested in talking to Jay and Melody again. Maybe they won’t be able to make it. I’m pretty indifferent about seeing Chris and Amy. I’m not sure if I’ll see anybody else that I know. I don’t know whom Kelly kept in touch with over the years. I guess I’ll see. I have to decide what to tell them all that I do. I could tell them all that I work for Georgetown still or I could tell them that I’m working at the new job that I expect to hear back from soon. I could make up a totally fake job. That could be fun. I could say something about I’m a trouble shooter for the CIA. Then say that I can’t say much about my job. Hard decision. Thinking about what I could use for stories makes me a little more excited to go. Though it doesn’t make me less bitter about no free plane snacks.
It should be a good weekend. I’ll be visiting some of my brother’s college friends. They were at our house for Sunday dinners a lot. So I know them well. I’ll have to ask if we’re going to have lasagna. Well I’ll write more about how things went and what my cover story was. No pictures of the wedding like James, though. I didn’t bring a camera.

I’ll give you what you deserve…

2005-09-28T00:27:00.000-04:00

So I’ve been waiting tables for nearly 2 months now. It gives me an interesting view into the heads of other people. A view I mostly could do without. There’s a PhD. thesis for some psychology major in the restaurant business. For one thing I’ve found that though most people say they give at least 15%. It’s much more common to get closer to 10% than 15%. And in case you were wondering the verbal tip (you did a great job, we enjoyed everything so much) doesn’t help to pay off the school loans. So say it with a real tip. This even happens to the cute waitresses and the experienced waiters we have. So it’s not just that I suck as a waiter.

It’s funny what makes people angry. I had a table flip out on Sunday because I thought that I could have scallops put on a dish to replace something and I was wrong. So when the manager (Chris, the cool manager) said, “it can be done but it will cost extra” they started to yell and say that since I said it could be done then we have to do it and can’t charge them for it. My manager realized quickly that they weren’t going to calm down so he got the head manager. Chris wanted to make them pay the bill anyway but the head manager just let them leave. Now I realize that I had made a mistake but it’s not like I dumped a bowl of soup on them. Even worse is that table threw me off for the rest of the night. I couldn’t get my rhythm back and I just ran from table to table. I did all right but all night I felt like I was doing it all wrong and that I was going to get lousy tips the rest of the night.

Another one is that people don’t like to have to pay for anything. I had a woman order a Bloody Mary the other day. She said she really had a craving for one. She drank a few sips of it and pushed it to the side and asked for an Iced Tea or something. So I asked her if it wasn’t any good or what. She said it was fine but she just didn’t really want it. So when I brought the bill and the Bloody Mary was on there she complained. Saying that she didn’t think she deserved to pay for it since she didn’t really drink it. But it wasn’t made improperly, it didn’t taste bad, she just decided after she had it that she didn’t want it. So the restaurant deserves to pay for it because you ordered it and decided not to drink it? Should I take a dollar off your meal because you didn’t feel like eating the fries that you ordered with your meal? Didn’t finish your salad? Let me take off 50 cents for that. The manager (Chris) just deleted it off her bill. Not worth fighting I guess. It’s funny what people think they deserve.
I’m not bitter enough about it to serve sneezers yet. Not that I would or have seen it happen yet. But I’m seeing how servers could get that frustrated with people. I wonder what customers would say if I just told them that I deserved a way to release the frustration of having to deal with them.

But I’m Going to Need That

2005-09-23T12:48:00.000-04:00

I had my interview on Wednesday. It went pretty well. There were actually 5 interviews. The first one started just after 900 and I finished just after 1200. I didn’t really sleep well the night before. Not because of playing computer games as some might think. I was nervous about the interview. I had prepared a lot for it. But I was still anxious.

When I arrived the security guards stopped me at the door. They didn’t like the crowbar. I told them that it was necessary for the demonstration. I mean if we’re tearing down old labs, I’ll need to show my skills. They didn’t buy it. They made me leave my Swiss Army Knife in the car too. When I went back to my car, I got an SMS from Dave wishing me luck. I’m glad that I had to go back to the car.

When I got there, the doctor that runs the office wasn’t there yet (I’ve been to a lot of interviews where the interviewer was late). So I met with one of the other team members first. It was nice to start with her because it helped me to relax and hear some of my answers live. Then I met with the doctor that runs the office. Then I met with 3 other people that work in the office. There was a 6th person that I probably would have had to meet with had he been there. He was out for the day. All the men were ex-military. I felt a little out of place. I don’t know if I stood up straight enough. All in all it went really well. One guy told me that he was pretty impressed with my resume. He said it was very good for how young I am. That felt good. Then in the next interview the guy tore my resume apart. He was the non-science person in the group. So he couldn’t talk about any science stuff but he looked really carefully at the format and how I wrote things. There was a mistake in dates that he found. Then he asked all these little clarification questions about everything. He was the hardest interviewer of the 5. Though he wasn’t the one that seemed to think that I wasn’t qualified or able to do the job. One of the women that was a PhD. talked like she didn’t think I could do it.

All in all I would say that it went pretty well. Now I just wait. They are going to have a meeting about me. They will talk about their impressions of me and if they think I would be a good fit for the group. Then I will hear back from them. I tried to get a time frame from them but I wasn’t successful. All he said is that they would meet some time soon and then I would hear back from them. This would be a great job. I hope I get it.

Finally, an Interview.

2005-09-20T15:07:00.000-04:00

I have an interview tomorrow. I don’t really know too much about the job but the little I’ve heard has me pretty interested. It would involve traveling to Russia and working in labs there. Working on safety and security I think. I don’t know if I have to move to Russia or will be traveling back and forth. I think I want to travel back and forth some. Spending a few months there and then coming back for some time. I’m getting nervous about the interview. I wrote down some answers to the common questions. Like “why should we hire you” and “tell me about yourself”. That should help me to be ready for tomorrow. Still a little nervous though. I’m sure I’ll be really nervous tomorrow. I think it will be fine though. The Doc that I’ll be interviewing with has a good sense of humor. Plus most of the nervousness is anticipation. When it finally starts I should relax a little. I hope I sleep well tonight. I’ve been having trouble sleeping. Plus tonight is guild night for World of Warcraft. I’m close to level 25 and I want to get moving on levels. I’ll just have to start early so I can finish earlier.

I’m in love with Col. Wilma Deering

2005-09-13T14:52:00.000-04:00

I’ve recently had a loss of innocence. I know that’s hard to believe, how much more can I have, especially after all my time with Pam. I’m sure most of the people reading this don’t know whom Wilma Deering is. She was one of the main characters in the TV series Buck Rogers. (http://www.buck-rogers.com/film_and_series/) It was a favorite back in the early ‘80s, along with A-team and Greatest American Hero. Her role as the main female role was of course to create sexual tension with the real main character. Mostly that was accomplished through the use of short skirted or spandex Uniforms and acting like she has the hots for Buck and is jealous of every woman that makes an appearance on the show but rebuffing any advance by him. Sounds familiar. I don’t want to mention any names but it starts with L. DeChellis.

Anyway, Buck Rogers is now showing on the Sci Fi Channel. So I’ve been catching it when I can. I’m almost sorry that I have been. I remember this awesome show with great space battles, and ray guns, and aliens with strange powers, and robots. What I’ve been seeing isn’t any of that. Much of the “special” effects are about as good as the original Star Trek episodes. I’ve also been watching old reruns of MacGyver. He’s not really a very good actor, but we loved that show. It’s fun to watch and remember the episodes. But it also makes me wonder what else I remember better than it was? Mr Rogers, Sesame Street, the Muppets?!? Well, I shouldn’t get carried away. The Muppet Show was awesome. I better not dwell on this too long. I might start to get depressed. Plus if Wilma ever reads my Blog it might hurt my chances with her.

Psst. Hey buddy. Wanna buy a dog?

2005-08-23T20:23:00.000-04:00

This weekend I went to a picnic. It was with some of the people that I played Frisbee with over the summer. (Frisbee-Amy wasn’t there.) There was a couple there that had just bought a dog. OUT OF THE BACK OF A VAN! They said it was an animal rescue type organization. In Tennessee there aren’t laws about having to get your dog fixed. So the shelters euthanize the dogs pretty quickly after they are brought in. So there’s this “underground railroad” for dogs. They (I don’t know who they is) go and get the dogs and bring them up to West Virginia. Then they sell the dogs out of the back of a van in a parking lot. Is that what Chris Farley was talking about? LIVING IN A VAN, DOWN BY THE RIVER!!

GOOOOAAAAALLLLL!!!!!!!!!

2005-08-11T14:45:00.000-04:00

Now that I’m unemployed I’ve been languishing in self-pity. I’ve been sitting around in my underwear watching Gilmore Girls repeats and eating ice cream. And that’s on the good days… Actually I’ve been applying to all kinds of jobs and complaining because I don’t hear back from them that day. Seems to me that if I can e-mail them my resume they should be able to read and reject it in the same day. Anyway I applied at a jewelry store. The manager asked me why I wanted to work there. The only good reason that I could think of was that I would probably meet a rich (possibly Indian) princess and then I could get married and quit. Or at least flirt with the cute girls that came in. I didn’t say that though. I made something up about how I like to meet people and help them with stuff. I called her a few days later to see what she thought and she said I didn’t have enough experience. I don’t think that you can say that for any job that you fill out an application that they just tore off of a pad of applications. I should have told her that I just wanted to flirt with the hot girls that came in. I’ve also applied to some restaurants in the area. I got an offer from one. I’m pretty sure that the only reason is that I have a friend that worked there and he called and told them that I’m cool. Seems to me that if I worked on an ambulance and managed 7 foreign post docs in a lab I can handle 3 tables in a restaurant. So I’m supposed to start the restaurant job on Monday. Then last night I got a call from the area manager at a snooty furniture store near me. I applied there and didn’t expect to get an interview because I don’t have experience in their field. But I have an interview on Friday. Like I said, it’s a snooty store so there’s a good chance that the pay would be good. I would rather work there since the restaurant isn’t that close. Plus as long as I’m not the furniture mover it will probably be less work. I know that there isn’t a store manager. I’m not getting my hopes up for that though, I’m sure that being a building manager and managing 7 foreign post docs, doesn’t count as experience. I think that the furniture store has the lowest princess quotient of them all though. I have applied to lab jobs, where my experience is obviously applicable. But I haven’t heard from any of those.
Worrying that I would take a temp job and have it not be so temporary; I asked my roommate to help me and kick my butt a little to make sure that I’m working on getting on with my life. So we went out yesterday for coffee and talked about setting goals. He told me about his mid-career crisis and how he set goals and got some role models and got things together. (So I have some open positions for role models if anybody wants to apply. Make sure you have some good experience in those areas. I’ll send you and application if you’re interested.) It was a good conversation. We set some goals for me to take the GREs in the next few months. We talked about how I want to change professions to International Development and Aid Delivery. He suggested that I read some books about it so I can be sure to talk intelligently about the subject. He said I should go to conferences and talk to everybody that I can about it. I need to network. I don’t really know how to network. It was good for us to sit and talk about it. I’ve been saying for some time all these things that I want to do. It feels good to have goals to work with. Well, time to work on some of those goals. Maybe I’ll put some pants on first.

GET OUT!!!

2005-07-24T12:31:00.000-04:00

That’s a funny phrase. In India we were talking about how hard that one is to explain to people from another culture. Especially if, like Elaine, you hit the person and shove them halfway across the room.

For some time now I’ve been saying that I want to get out of science. I really enjoy science as a discussion topic and sometimes it’s fun to read about. Like in an Isaac Assimov book. But as a profession I find it quite tedious. The research is at least. The thing about research is that it by definition will be fraught with failure. If it were easy and obvious, someone would have already done it. That isn’t an explanation for failure that seems to work with PIs (Primary Investigators). And of course, it doesn’t help when you have the good old “No Science Zone” that I possess, it’s my super hero power. Well, this week my zone was too strong for my boss. I got canned. Tuesday morning I was taken into the office and was told that it wasn’t working out and that it was my last morning there. I was to empty my desk and then I could go. The reasons given for getting rid of me were all true. None were worthy of firing, certainly not since it was the first time he said anything about any of them. But it was within my probationary period, so he could have fired me for wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Especially since we all know , “only two kinds of people wear Hawaiian shirt’s: big fat party animals and gay people”. Well the basic reason stated was that I wasn’t motivated enough to do the job or to make things work. Which is true but what I should have pointed out to him was that he was never really around to inspire me to do anything. Only being around 2 or 3 days a week and then being in a meeting all day doesn’t give me much time to try to trouble shoot things. Also when the best he does is tell me that my boxes are dirty and that’s why things are coming out so unclear, it doesn’t seem that he cares much, so why should I. Well, I didn’t. And so after saying that I want to get out of science, I’ve been told to get out first.

Hopefully I’ll be able to take the hint and stay out. At least stay out of research. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to start a career change to an international relations type job. I’m particularly interested in aid delivery and infrastructure development in underdeveloped areas. Just so I don’t have an anti-aid zone around me too. “That can’t be good for business. That can’t be good for anybody.”

Making a Better Idiot

2005-07-12T21:36:00.000-04:00

I had a friend in college (that’s Uni for you non-Americans) that used to say that if you make something idiot proof, the world will make a better idiot. He was weird. Most of what he said made me laugh at him.
Things have been pretty slow at work. It tends to get kind of boring. It’s hard to look busy when you have nothing to do. That of course doesn’t matter most days because my boss leaves by like 300, on the days that he comes that is. But on the days that he’s there I try to look like I’m doing something. If that fails I’ll usually pretend to be reading a Science magazine or even a neuroscience textbook. Well on Friday I had nothing to do. I had no reason to go to work, except that it was payday. I figured I’d make some buffers and solutions that I didn’t need but it made me feel like there was a reason for me having come to work. I figured at least when I don’t have anything expected of me then I can’t not live up to expectations. I couldn’t screw things up, right. So during my buffer making I went to the freezer room, can’t remember why. So as I was putting back whatever it was that I had taken out, I knocked out a slide box. It wasn’t full but it mostly was. There were lots of slides on the floor, more than a few of them broken. I put as many as I could back in the box and the broken ones that looked like they could still be used I piled in the box and put it back in the freezer. I went and told our student, the owner of the box, what I had done. She was so nice. “Oh, that’s no problem. It’s no big deal.” So she goes to the box and because I had it out of the freezer too long most of the slides had frozen in their new slots. So she can’t reorder the box without thawing it again and she can’t thaw it again without hurting the tissue on the slide. So she can’t reorder them to know which slides she has and which ones I broke. So when I don’t have my own science to make not work, I go looking for other people’s to screw up. At least Leslie can’t fire me.

The Perfect Match for Pete

2005-06-29T22:59:00.000-04:00

My roommate helped me this morning to realize what a good match for me was. He had gone swing dancing Tuesday night. I didn’t go, it was a different group that from last time. No Amy, so what would have been the point. Anyway, he was meeting a girl that he had gone on a date with the week before. Well apparently she had brought a friend along. Then this morning before I left for work he was telling me about it. He says that his date had brought a friend that would be a good match for me. That always makes me laugh. I like to hear the kind of girl other people, especially those that have known me for 2 months, think would be a good match for me. So I ask him, with a smirk on my face, “really, how was she a good match for me?” His answer… “She’s attractive.” Now I should say at this point that I do like attractive women. I have had many crushes on attractive women. But that’s usually not my only criteria for a decision on whether or not we would make a good match. That was actually all he had. No other reasons for her being a good match. I later found out that she’s a doctor. So that could fit into my plan to marry a rich princess. But for those of you out there looking for a match for me, now you know what to look for.

New Nobel Prize Category

2005-06-14T00:41:00.000-04:00

So I went swing dancing this weekend. I haven’t gone swing dancing since college, 6 years ago. I was reminded by the middle of the first song why that is. Swing Dancing is definitely not one of my talents. It won’t be appearing on my resume.

The night started out with my roommate Eric and friend Jenn and I driving out to the place together. We get there and see one of the guys from Bible Study that we were meeting there. He had already paid. It was $18! I thought he was joking when he told me that. But I was stuck there so I borrowed 18 bucks from one of the other guys and we went in. There was a lesson (which I really needed) to start off. The teachers were really good. They were funny and they did a really good job showing us the steps. Also they had us rotating to a new partner every few minutes. That was nice because it helps you to scope out the crowd. It was bad because it let too many girls know that I was not the person that they should dance with.

During the rotations I met a pretty cute girl named Amy. After the lessons were over and the band started playing and Jenn had danced with me for 2 songs (probably mostly because she thought I’d call her mom and tell on her), I was ready to strike out on my own. I was talking to a guy from our bible study and Amy was talking to him too. She knew him from playing Frisbee together. So we talked for a few minutes then I asked her if she wanted to dance. She apparently didn’t learn, or remember, from the lesson and said yes. We get out on the floor for the last few bars, which was average for me. It generally took me most of the song to get up the courage to ask someone to dance. So anyway we finish out that song and she stays with me for the next song. I was really terrible. I couldn’t find the beat and even if I could I didn’t know what steps to do. The lessons were good but they didn’t teach how to do an 8 step. Then she actually stayed on the floor for a third song (really it was 2.1 songs total). After that she had enough and we split up. I went off to find other victims and she went off to find someone that wouldn’t jerk her all over the place. There were at least 2 other songs (really one total since it took half the song for me to ask) that she was willing to “dance” with me. She was also the only one that smiled back at me. The other women pretty much didn’t smile back at me at all. It was a pretty fun night all in all. Doubt I’ll ever get to tell her she deserves a humanitarian award for being so patient.

One what?

2005-06-09T22:30:00.000-04:00

Last week I went to this cool conference. It was put on by the One Campaign (www.one.org). Dave e-mails me, from Australia, saying I should go to it. It was great that he only gave me like one day’s notice for it. I had a little trouble finding the church but I’m really glad I went. They talked about their work to end global poverty. They are campaigning to have the G8 countries forgive the debt of African counties. The condition is that they have to spend the money on education and healthcare. It was really great to hear about how much they are doing.

The US ambassador to Madagascar was there also. I thought that it would be really great to hear her speak and that she would have something great to say. I was kind of wrong on that. By “kind of” I mean totally. She went on and on about the movie Madagascar and how we should go and see it but we should also know about the real Madagascar. But she didn’t tell us anything about the real Madagascar! She rambled on and on for soooo long. The rest of it was good. I didn’t really get the interpretive dances but it was nice. It’s a great group. Those of you that don’t know the group should check it out.

It’s sad to me that George Bush seems unwilling to follow Tony Blair in this plan. It would be really great to see him support this project. I know that not all the countries in Africa could accept this but it would be so great for even just a few to start with. We just have to pray that the leaders of the G8 countries and the African countries will make the right choices to help the poor and the hopeless.

Cheap Indian Shoes

2005-05-25T23:08:00.000-04:00

My shoes are falling apart. I bought them in India about a year ago now. The glue that holds the sole to the canvas has pretty much let go. I’m not sure that they will last too much longer. It’s not a good time to have to go buy shoes. I don’t have the money to buy new ones right now. I have way more important things to spend my money on, like my new computer. But I have to use my shoes to get to work. So I may have to have to just buy new ones. My boss probably won’t pay me if I don’t go to work. What a horrible cycle. I have to go to work to get money. If only I could find a way to get rich quickly, without much work. A “get rich quick scheme”, if you will. I’ll have to see what I can come up with. I’ll let you all know.

And the award for the most naive person in a supporting role goes to…

2005-05-16T23:17:00.000-04:00

I’m not sure what my deal is. I must be a homozygous knockout for the having a clue gene. (It’s probably not a good sign that I would say that.) Last Thursday I was sitting at home eating dinner minding my own business and my roommate asks me if I want to go to some coffee house that has live music. So I’m like, yeah, that sounds good. So he goes out for a little during the early evening and then comes back later and wants to go to a sports bar where we can watch the basketball game. Now I don’t care about basketball but I like beer so it’s not a total loss. So we stop at one for like 2 minutes on the way to the one that he wants to go to. I’m thinking that’s kind of weird but whatever. So we sit down at one place and get a beer. He finishes his pretty quickly and half way through my beer he’s like man lets jet. There’s still a quarter left in the game and half of my beer too. I said that too him and he says I’ll help you with the beer and pours half of it into his glass. Now I didn’t pay for the beer but it seems to me that when you buy a beer for someone you should probably let them drink it and not take it back. So we leave that bar when he finishes my beer for me and we go to another place. We see the last 30 seconds of the game at the third bar. Then we leave. I’m like wow that was pretty much a wasted night. But at least I didn’t pay for the half a beer I had. So then at the car he sees 2 girls walking though the parking lot that he had seen in the bar. So he says hey they were in the bar, they’re checking us out. They’re doing the same thing we are, I’m going to go talk to them. That’s about when it hit me that the night wasn’t about the game so much as cruisin’ for chicks. Way to stay on top of things Pete. You’re sure to win this prestigious award next year too! Ahh well, at least I got half a beer.

Slow Down There!

2005-05-11T23:21:00.000-04:00

So now that I’ve moved into my new, new place in DC it’s time for me to figure out how to get to work. Not that I haven’t been going to work. It’s just that I have to find a faster way there that won’t make me go broke. If I park at the metro station near me, it costs $10 to park and ride. Today I drove up to where I used to live and rode the bus and metro from there. So I didn’t have to pay for parking and the Metro ride is cheaper since it’s not as far. But the busses are so unreliable that it added like 20 minutes of just waiting at the station. During that time 2 busses that I should have been able to take were supposed to have come. But they didn’t. I can’t believe that the busses in DC are so bad. Inconceivable! So I’m going to drive up there again tomorrow and see if I can park closer to the station so that I can walk to and from the station easily. That should help me to cut my time down to about an hour. That’s not that bad for the DC area.
Work was about normal. The experiment that I’ve been working on didn’t work. It worked last time. So it should take another try or 2 before it works again. That will give my boss plenty of time to give me dirty looks and reconsider why he hired me. But then that’s life when you have an anti-science zone around you.

Boxing Day

2005-05-06T21:07:00.000-04:00

Well, it's come. I'm moving tomorrow. I'm moving to a new house in the DC area. After living in the Town House that I'm currently in for 3 weeks, my roommate told me to leave because there is a possibility of personality conflict. One would ask, “”did you pee on his bed? “No”, I would answer. I have been watching a lot of TV. He would rather I didn't watch TV or spend time in the living room so that he and his girlfriend can have the living room alone. But mostly, he wants to have a friend of his move in instead of me living here. It would have been better if he had just told me no, I can't live here before I moved to the area. But then I guess if he had told me upfront then it would go against his character of being a dick.

So I'm moving. I'm not excited because now I'm worried that everybody in DC is like that now. Like this new guy will be all stupid like the guys I'm living with now. Probably he’s better. He’s not as bad as these guys. I’m just worried because of the experience that I’m having now. Yesterday the one roommate told me that he would be able to help me move but then today he told me that he has to work. How nice for him. I haven’t seen the other one. Which wouldn't upset me but we do have some things to settle. Also I haven’t told him off yet because I figured that things around here are bad enough. I was hoping for the chance to do that after I left. But we'll see.

Anyway, I'm all packed up with everything in boxes. I'm just waiting to start tomorrow. It'll be good to get out and finally get settled. Since I've been here for a month already. Seems like its time to get settled in. Plus my boss hasn't figured out that i'm jinxed and that there is a zone around me in which science can’t be done. Once he figures that out work won’t be so fun. So I’d like to have things at home going well before he realizes that. Then I’ll have to deal with all this crazy stress at work. I won’t be able to take the stress from both sides.

In The Fast Lane To Hell

2005-05-02T23:43:00.000-04:00

Actually I just merged from the entrance ramp to the highway. I put ear tags on some mice and I took tail snips so that I could genotype them. When we used to talk about the animal trials going on at Pitt, we would talk about different ways to do an experiment. One way was just as good as the other it just meant that you would go straight to hell rather than taking the slower way. I should take this opportunity to point out that I’m not against animal trials. They are useful. They save lives, teaching us about how drug therapies and other procedures can help doctors. CPR was invented on dogs. My lab at Pitt was working on a solution to replace normal saline that would protect the organs better than saline does. Research isn’t always done in a good way, respectful of the animals that God created for us to rule over. But animal research done in a moral way is a good thing. I would just rather that someone else was doing it. Preferably far enough away so that the lightning blot won’t hit me.

Does anybody know why we don’t cast lots anymore? I’ve been wondering that for some time. Thing would just be so much easier if, when I had a decision to make, I just pull out the old sacred dice and toss them down the craps shoot. Where should I live? Should I take this job or wait for another one? Should I hop on a plane and visit Dave in Australia or Lori in India? I’m just saying. That’s one tradition that we should have kept from the Old Testament.

For those keeping track, the title for the April 28th post is from the Ice Tea song (Ain’t Nothin’ but a) Hoochie Mamma.

Shock This!

2005-04-30T21:50:00.000-04:00

I just had one of those experiences. It’s hard to believe that I’m still experiencing culture shock. I went to the mall today. It wasn’t the first time that I went to one since I got back to the US. For some reason this time it got to me. As I walked through the mall looking at the stores, not going into most of them, I found myself appalled by the whole thing. It was the same trendy store, one after the other. Gap, Limited, Abercrombie, then the trendy kids clothes stores with a diamond store and a coffee shop thrown in for good measure. I just marveled at the greed and the consumerism that I saw and remember myself taking part in. Wishing that I made more money so that I can buy some really powerful computer for games. Or get a better apartment without roommates to piss me off. I find myself forgetting the lessons that I was supposed to have learned. I miss India, even the armpit region. I miss the simpler life. I miss the roommate that I had there and the friends that I made. I want to go back. I want to go to a new place for new experiences. I’m excited about the future, and going for a new adventure. I don’t want to wait. I want to go now. All in good time I suppose. All in God’s time.

You ain't nothing but a sugar momma

2005-04-28T20:45:00.000-04:00

I'm not so happy with roommates right now. I gotta get married. Man, that must be the life. You have a roommate to take with you where ever you go. I just moved to DC and my roommates suck. Hard to believe that I could know that after only about 3 weeks. But here I am getting kicked out of the house because they want some friend to live with them instead of me. It sucks that you have to sign contracts from day one to get people to live up to the commitments they make. Should have signed the lease first. Anyway if I was married I wouldn't have to deal with it. Even better if she's rich and I don't have to work. I'm all about being a stay at home dad/homemaker. If there's any takers on that, feel free to e-mail me. No caste bared. I like to travel, so it's alright if you're not in the US.

Extra Points if you know the reference in the title.

You marked your tubes all wrong

2005-04-20T22:23:00.000-04:00

I think that many of my posts will be ranting about my job. I'll have to not do that too much. That could get annoying.

So the problem with a change of dynastys comes in the marking of tubes. You see the way one person marks their tubes isn't the way that anybody else would mark their tubes. So you look and think about it and you ask everybody else in the lab and try to figure out what they were saying. But you always end up adding the antibody at 1:20,000 rather than 1:40,000. So you get twice the amount of antibody that you want and you end up with bands so big and dark that you basically wasted the last 3 days on the whole western blot. Oh-well. Atleast it was just a test run anyway.

My friend Dave that I met in India called today. I always enjoy talking with Dave. We always laugh about the US (my home land) and Australia (his home land). It's fun to laugh about world politics. Plus Dave has a good sence of humor and was the only one at The Duncan that would get my jokes. So we have lots of laughs when we talk. I'm so glad that I went to India. I met some awesome people.

Gels, Crick, and the Metro

2005-04-19T23:13:00.000-04:00

Hi Everybody. It's funny that I said everybody because there's probably like 2 people that will be reading this. One is my friend Lori in India. She's the reason I'm starting this. Not that I'm likely to put much more here than in my e-mails to her. But whatever. Dave is the other person that will be reading this. Dave, I'll put all the lines that I think of that I know you'll laugh at. Like "I'm bi-polar in one way", or "we don't want any adult content at the evening service". Dave we have to get together again some day. I like how you get my sense of humor. When I figure out how I'll put a link on my blog to Dave and Lori's blogs.

So, what's been going on with me? I just started working at Georgetown University. I'm a lab tech in the Neuroscience Department. I've been doing these PCRs. So annoying. In normal lab fashion it worked for the first 3 times I did it and no longer. I just started Western Blots today. That means more gel runing fun. We'll see if they go any better.

On my way too and from work I've been reading a book by Francis Crick about how he descovered the structure of DNA. Well acctually so far it's about how he thinks he was a genius child and way too smart for his time. That's not how I understood him to be. Then he writes about Darwin and how he was a genius. Again, not how I understood it to be. I got to thinking that in both cases it was an otherwise mediocre scientist bumbled themselves into fame without even realizing what they had done. I think that bodes well for me. I should be able to blunder into something. And I definatly won't know what I did.

Anyway tune in later for more random thoughts...