Saturday, March 15, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
What do you see here?
It's another 4-legged friend! This one looks a little friendlier, if a bit out of place.Last night, we were eating at our favorite southwest hamburger grill (which shall remain nameless). The weather was really nice, so we chose to eat outside on their cool "rocking tables." The benches are connected to the table, and the whole thing will rock gently while you enjoy your Big Mouth Burger. This also is a much easier way for the two grownups in our family to enjoy the meal, since the two junior members of the clan are free to play untethered on the play area.
When we arrived, there were three young men eating at the next table. They finished before we did and exited the scene. Since we weren't right on the beaten path, and since it was several hours past peak rush time, the waiters were a bit slow in clearing the table. The dining area is separated from the adjacent garden area by a short concrete wall with an iron rail on the top.
Several opportunistic felines have taken up residence in the aforementioned garden. We happened to catch this one as he lifted a not-quite-bare chicken wing bone and made it into a carry-out special. This was actually his second trip to the table, as we didn't have our phones out the first time he was up there.
I told Beth that we shouldn't name the restaurant, so as not to cut into their business by tarnishing their reputation, but she said that she had seen the cat up close and personal, and we're still going back. A lot.
And this guy is much more welcome to share a meal with us than our most recent 4-legged guest!
Saturday, March 08, 2008
We should be in pictures!
Recently, we had to get some more passport photos made, since we're always needing them for some official form or another. This time, we snapped the photos at home standing in front of one of Sawyer's white baby blankets, and then I took them to a Fujifilm store nearby. There are Fujifilm and Kodak stores on every other corner here, but I learned this week that they're not all created equal. There is one near a big shopping mall where lots of foreigners hang out, and the guy there is a pro with Photoshop. We basically take him a rough draft of what we want printed, tell him what we really want it to look like, and he comes up with great prints. So I walked into this Fuji joint near home, thinking it would be similar. It was similar--they both have green Fuji signs, and computers and printers and photography stuff. I asked the older gentleman at the desk if he could print from my thumb drive, and he directed me to a younger lady beside the printer. She handed my thumb drive to a 20-something guy who was sitting behind the printer at a computer, also running Photoshop. He took my thumb drive and stuck it way in the back of his computer and found a USB port. The other shop we go to is well organized and clean, and just looks pretty professional. This place was a half-inch deep in photo trimmings and old pictures. I was a little nervous. There were stacks of old CD-ROMs all over the place. The computer equipment looked a little less than state-of-the-art, but it seemed to be functional. The whole store was probably 10 feet wide and 15 feet long, plus a small studio room in the back for taking wedding pictures and such.
I told them that I just needed 20 passport-sized prints of each of these two pictures. After about 10 minutes, they handed me an envelope with the 40 pictures I requested, plus a couple of 3x5 inch prints of each of us, plus the lovely little strips you see above (at no extra charge). I was almost tempted to get an 8x10 of myself with the purple bubbly heart frame, but decided to wait on that for a while.
The pictures below are what we didn't use for our passports this time. I was trying to make a serious face, and just couldn't quite get it together.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Ratatouille in Africa
This post originaly written on Sunday, March 2
As I write this, there are three men in my kitchen. One of them is my husband, and the other two are the doorman for our building and a relative of his. They are in our kitchen (and have been for quite a while now) because when I went in to finish the dinner dishes after getting the kids to bed, a rat scurried out of our sink and behind our washing machine! Yes, the sink I was walking toward contained a rat! And not a small one, I might add.
Jason came running from the bedroom to see what all the commotion was about, and when I told him, he quickly decided that the boab should handle getting him out of our kitchen. After all, what are we paying them for if not for rodent removal? So he went outside but couldn't find the boab, so he asked his wife what to do about a rat in our kitchen, hoping she would share some ancient Arab secret for trapping rodents. Her solution? "Hit him!"
She came in with the other boy and they tried to catch him, but when the rat ran toward her, she got so scared that she dropped the plastic sack she was supposed to catch him in. Apparently, there are some things that we all feel the same about!
So that's why three grown men are standing in my kitchen moving things around trying to find the rat that we're sure is in there. It's been about an hour now since we first saw him, and he has disappeared.
Okay, it's later now, and the rat is gone. Jason finally found him, hiding in a water drip pan under our refrigerator. The boab wore Jason's big thick grilling gloves to grab him by the tail and pull him out. All in all, it was pretty gross and traumatic.
Here are a few pictures I took after the fact. I was afraid to take the camera in the kitchen while he was still there because I knew if I saw the rat I would drop the camera!
The site of the original spotting. He ran from under that green bowl to the corner behind the washing machine.
All the stuff that got moved to the table so they could get to him.
The hiding place. He was under that fridge for a good half hour while they tore our kitchen apart looking for him. Finally, after the boab and crew had left, Jason spotted that skinny tail.
Here's one of the boab's sons. He was curious enough to come stand outside the door with me, but not really interested in getting any closer to the action.
I think he was proud to have his picture taken, though.
As I write this, there are three men in my kitchen. One of them is my husband, and the other two are the doorman for our building and a relative of his. They are in our kitchen (and have been for quite a while now) because when I went in to finish the dinner dishes after getting the kids to bed, a rat scurried out of our sink and behind our washing machine! Yes, the sink I was walking toward contained a rat! And not a small one, I might add.
Jason came running from the bedroom to see what all the commotion was about, and when I told him, he quickly decided that the boab should handle getting him out of our kitchen. After all, what are we paying them for if not for rodent removal? So he went outside but couldn't find the boab, so he asked his wife what to do about a rat in our kitchen, hoping she would share some ancient Arab secret for trapping rodents. Her solution? "Hit him!"
She came in with the other boy and they tried to catch him, but when the rat ran toward her, she got so scared that she dropped the plastic sack she was supposed to catch him in. Apparently, there are some things that we all feel the same about!
So that's why three grown men are standing in my kitchen moving things around trying to find the rat that we're sure is in there. It's been about an hour now since we first saw him, and he has disappeared.
Okay, it's later now, and the rat is gone. Jason finally found him, hiding in a water drip pan under our refrigerator. The boab wore Jason's big thick grilling gloves to grab him by the tail and pull him out. All in all, it was pretty gross and traumatic.
Here are a few pictures I took after the fact. I was afraid to take the camera in the kitchen while he was still there because I knew if I saw the rat I would drop the camera!
The site of the original spotting. He ran from under that green bowl to the corner behind the washing machine.
All the stuff that got moved to the table so they could get to him.
The hiding place. He was under that fridge for a good half hour while they tore our kitchen apart looking for him. Finally, after the boab and crew had left, Jason spotted that skinny tail.Here's one of the boab's sons. He was curious enough to come stand outside the door with me, but not really interested in getting any closer to the action.
I think he was proud to have his picture taken, though. Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Our Little Rembrandt
I apologize for being slow in posting. I have an exciting story to tell about an unexpected four-legged visitor we had a few nights ago, but I don't have time for that tonight, so I thought I would just quickly share this beautiful masterpiece that Lee Anna drew for me today. Although I'm sure you didn't need the lable to tell you who it was, she was gracious enough to write my name on it. She also explained that you could tell it was me because there was no beard.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Nile Cruisin'
When one lives in a land that boasts 7000 years of recorded history, it can be challenging to keep it all in perspective. At least once a week, we ride by a fortress that was built 1000 years ago to hold off the Crusades. But that’s the “modern” part of town. Just across the river from there, you can see the big triangular tombstones of the pharaohs that date back 4500 years. The temples we visited on this trip were built in the Greco-Roman era, just 100-300 B.C.
Records show that at the time of Christ, there were already tourists coming from Rome and other places to see the pyramids. So, in a tradition that’s almost as old as tourism itself, we’re going to show you a lot more pictures of our trip than you really want to see.
After the slideshow, you'll find more details about the trip, for those of you with enough time and interest to keep reading. And as a special bonus, you can also have yourself a little sing-along while you watch the slideshow. The regular version of the song was copyright protected, so we were only able to use the karaoke version. Have fun!
We flew early Friday morning up to Aswan, and found a beautiful city with clean air, very little traffic and a ton of little horse carriages with drivers who were eager to show us around their fair city, for a small fee, of course. Our guide told us Aswan’s population is around 1 million, and I think each of those million had a horse and buggy by the river. There are 275 ships like the one we rode, each carrying around 150 passengers up and down the Nile. For those of you mathematically challenged, that means there are a bunch of people riding the river looking at old stones. When the boats were docked, they docked 3 to 5 wide, and if our boat was a later one, we’d have to walk across several others to get to shore.
When we arrived to check in to the boat, the reception guy said he was going to upgrade our room to a suite. Our theory is that he did this because almost everyone else on the trip was part of a big group, and they needed to put someone in the suite. Whatever the reason was, we were happy! So we had an extra little sitting area that most rooms didn’t have, and we had a private door that led to a balcony outside, right next to the bridge where the captain was controlling this big rig. We think it was the best room on the boat, since it was on the top level and on the right-hand side, it had the best view every time we were docked.
Trying to describe the size and shape of the things we saw probably wouldn’t do it justice, so you can see the pictures. But I will educate you on a few of the things I learned about the things we saw.
The first temple we visited was over 2000 years old, but in the 1970s it was moved to a different island. The Aswan High Dam was finished in 1971, and the Philae Temple was flooded by the newly-formed Lake Nasser. When archeologists saw the damage that was being done by the water, they had a wall built around the whole island, then let the thing dry out in the sun for a whole year. After that year, they cut this whole temple into 40,000 blocks, and numbered the blocks and reassembled the thing on a higher island, not far at all from its original location. This feat seems to me almost as amazing as the original building of walls 100 feet tall made of huge stones.
The High Dam itself was really impressive. It was built to replace the old dam, built around 1900. The material used in the high dam was enough to replicate the Great Pyramid 17 times. When it was built (1964-71) it affected the fisheries in the whole Mediterranean Sea. Nutrients that had always been transported by the river into the ocean were now being deposited at the bottom of the lake. The dam has enabled the government to provide water during drought years and contain waters during severe floods.
Also in Aswan, we got to see an unfinished obelisk. Beth asked on the way there why we would want to see it if it’s unfinished. So we learned. To make an obelisk (think Washington Monument shape) you go to the granite quarry and find a good solid piece of granite, then cut around it in the shape of an obelisk. Several that were taken from this quarry were over 75 feet tall (and heavy as anything you can imagine). Well this unfinished one would have been 40 meters high, but while it was being cut cracks were discovered, thus making it impossible to stand it up. I’m sure the Pharaoh who was being honored by this one was not happy. I think that might have been the origin of the phrase “heads are going to roll.” So they had to abandon the project, but they couldn’t really put back the parts that they had cut, so now there’s a big 130-foot obelisk laying in the ground, still connected on the bottom side. We saw several obelisks on our trip, and somehow the ancients were able to float these things a hundred miles on the river and stand them up, even though they weigh about as much as Birmingham.
Thanks, Lee Anna, for winning this trip! We’ll take you back when you’re old enough to appreciate it.
Records show that at the time of Christ, there were already tourists coming from Rome and other places to see the pyramids. So, in a tradition that’s almost as old as tourism itself, we’re going to show you a lot more pictures of our trip than you really want to see.
After the slideshow, you'll find more details about the trip, for those of you with enough time and interest to keep reading. And as a special bonus, you can also have yourself a little sing-along while you watch the slideshow. The regular version of the song was copyright protected, so we were only able to use the karaoke version. Have fun!
We flew early Friday morning up to Aswan, and found a beautiful city with clean air, very little traffic and a ton of little horse carriages with drivers who were eager to show us around their fair city, for a small fee, of course. Our guide told us Aswan’s population is around 1 million, and I think each of those million had a horse and buggy by the river. There are 275 ships like the one we rode, each carrying around 150 passengers up and down the Nile. For those of you mathematically challenged, that means there are a bunch of people riding the river looking at old stones. When the boats were docked, they docked 3 to 5 wide, and if our boat was a later one, we’d have to walk across several others to get to shore.
When we arrived to check in to the boat, the reception guy said he was going to upgrade our room to a suite. Our theory is that he did this because almost everyone else on the trip was part of a big group, and they needed to put someone in the suite. Whatever the reason was, we were happy! So we had an extra little sitting area that most rooms didn’t have, and we had a private door that led to a balcony outside, right next to the bridge where the captain was controlling this big rig. We think it was the best room on the boat, since it was on the top level and on the right-hand side, it had the best view every time we were docked.
Trying to describe the size and shape of the things we saw probably wouldn’t do it justice, so you can see the pictures. But I will educate you on a few of the things I learned about the things we saw.
The first temple we visited was over 2000 years old, but in the 1970s it was moved to a different island. The Aswan High Dam was finished in 1971, and the Philae Temple was flooded by the newly-formed Lake Nasser. When archeologists saw the damage that was being done by the water, they had a wall built around the whole island, then let the thing dry out in the sun for a whole year. After that year, they cut this whole temple into 40,000 blocks, and numbered the blocks and reassembled the thing on a higher island, not far at all from its original location. This feat seems to me almost as amazing as the original building of walls 100 feet tall made of huge stones.
The High Dam itself was really impressive. It was built to replace the old dam, built around 1900. The material used in the high dam was enough to replicate the Great Pyramid 17 times. When it was built (1964-71) it affected the fisheries in the whole Mediterranean Sea. Nutrients that had always been transported by the river into the ocean were now being deposited at the bottom of the lake. The dam has enabled the government to provide water during drought years and contain waters during severe floods.
Also in Aswan, we got to see an unfinished obelisk. Beth asked on the way there why we would want to see it if it’s unfinished. So we learned. To make an obelisk (think Washington Monument shape) you go to the granite quarry and find a good solid piece of granite, then cut around it in the shape of an obelisk. Several that were taken from this quarry were over 75 feet tall (and heavy as anything you can imagine). Well this unfinished one would have been 40 meters high, but while it was being cut cracks were discovered, thus making it impossible to stand it up. I’m sure the Pharaoh who was being honored by this one was not happy. I think that might have been the origin of the phrase “heads are going to roll.” So they had to abandon the project, but they couldn’t really put back the parts that they had cut, so now there’s a big 130-foot obelisk laying in the ground, still connected on the bottom side. We saw several obelisks on our trip, and somehow the ancients were able to float these things a hundred miles on the river and stand them up, even though they weigh about as much as Birmingham.
Thanks, Lee Anna, for winning this trip! We’ll take you back when you’re old enough to appreciate it.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Here We Go!
Monday, February 11, 2008
Just Some Stuff
I just uploaded the pictures we've taken in the last month. Here are a few interesting ones. 
This is Sawyer just a few days after we got back from the states, obviously still struggling with jet lag a little bit. One minute he was eating, the next minute he was snoring. The down side to having your toddler fall asleep at dinner time is that it means he'll probably be back up and wide awake at bedtime. And it might take A LONG TIME to get him back to sleep. Trust me.
And here we are looking at ourselves looking at ourselves on Claire's computer, thanks to the wonders of Skype video chat. Claire was using her computer to show us the new furniture in Mimi & Papaw's bedroom, but when she walked by the mirror, the kids got excited because they saw themselves. So Jason thought he should take a picture of it all, just to make things a little more complex.
And finally, here's Lee Anna showing off the latest Middle Eastern fashion statement. Well, not really. Actually, she picked up a little case of head lice a few weeks ago, so she got to spend a few days hanging out at home and sitting very still while Mom & Dad shined the flashlight at her head. (Is your head itching yet? Just try to finish reading this without scratching!) Lee Anna did amazingly well with all the sitting still. I've already told Jason that if Sawyer ever gets head lice, I don't intend to try to get him to sit still for hours in a chair. There's no way he could do it. We'll just shave his head!
This is Sawyer just a few days after we got back from the states, obviously still struggling with jet lag a little bit. One minute he was eating, the next minute he was snoring. The down side to having your toddler fall asleep at dinner time is that it means he'll probably be back up and wide awake at bedtime. And it might take A LONG TIME to get him back to sleep. Trust me.
And here we are looking at ourselves looking at ourselves on Claire's computer, thanks to the wonders of Skype video chat. Claire was using her computer to show us the new furniture in Mimi & Papaw's bedroom, but when she walked by the mirror, the kids got excited because they saw themselves. So Jason thought he should take a picture of it all, just to make things a little more complex.
And finally, here's Lee Anna showing off the latest Middle Eastern fashion statement. Well, not really. Actually, she picked up a little case of head lice a few weeks ago, so she got to spend a few days hanging out at home and sitting very still while Mom & Dad shined the flashlight at her head. (Is your head itching yet? Just try to finish reading this without scratching!) Lee Anna did amazingly well with all the sitting still. I've already told Jason that if Sawyer ever gets head lice, I don't intend to try to get him to sit still for hours in a chair. There's no way he could do it. We'll just shave his head!
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Positive Thinking
Today my parents and sister went to Jackson, Mississippi to have lunch with my grandmother for her 93rd birthday (if you haven't already, you can see watch kids' birthday videos for her below). They ate lunch (along with several other relatives) at a nice restaurant and afterwards they brought out the cake. They all sang Happy Birthday to her and then waited for her to blow out the candles. But instead, when they song ended, she just sat there. Then she looked around at them and said, "I want to know why not a one of you sang 'And many more'!"
She fully intends to have many more, and I'll be surprised if she doesn't! Happy Birthday Grandmother!
She fully intends to have many more, and I'll be surprised if she doesn't! Happy Birthday Grandmother!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)