Wildflower

A new sort of flower made its appearance in my garden.

We used to own this old funky sailing boat called a "WildFlower" (hence the big "W" on the sail). We'd take it out for little rides with friends and family, and most of the time we'd end up capsizing it and swimming all around it.



It's been practically abandoned for years now, and I decided to use its main sail to make a tent for shade in the garden.

A few drills and knots later... voila'!







P liked it!

My baby's taking me home

It's one of those all or nothing deals. Either click and listen to all 5':41'' of it, or don't bother, it won't be worth it.

Sound quality not great, but still a masterpiece.

sniff good luck

A gift with a message, taken to heart.

chompers

I’ve been going through a rough patch, it’s true. I’m not shy about it. I just don’t want to make it any rougher.


(click)

The buka, of course, is the bright spot. She’s been eating solids for a month and a half now. We started with rice cereal in the afternoons. Then we added fruits in the morning and vegetables at lunch. Now she eats meat along with her veggies, leaving me, once again, the only vegetarian in the household -- which is really too bad, because, as I read yesterday in Harper’s, “vegetarians, a new study found, are more intelligent than normal people.”

I actually aspire to normal.

But back to the buka. She eats like the quintessential baby bird, her patient little mouth agape between bites. She eats and eats and eats, and cries when the bowl is empty. I think we all know the feeling. A round or two of (ridiculous) song and she’s over it.

Two weeks ago, we met Maria downtown for coffee. We found a nice seat in the sun. Maria smiled at the buka, the buka smiled back, and I smiled bigger than I’d ever smiled before, because -- the buka had teeth! Just like that, I saw two little chompers just breaking the skin. I loved the buka’s toothless smile so much, I wasn’t in a hurry for her to get teeth, and in fact, I wasn’t expecting them any time soon, having noticed none of the typical signs of teething. Those teeth really took me by surprise (Maria was less impressed), and I still look for them, the way I look for the buka herself when she’s sleeping soundly on quiet mornings.

Sometimes I think “oh no” when I hear her stirring, because that means my work is about to begin. But when I don’t hear her, I imagine the alternatives, so much worse, all of them.

She’s 7.5 months old.

Kiva

Change the world one loan at a time - visit Kiva.org to find out how

---
Update: This still looks like a great idea. But there are a few things I'd like to dig into a little deeper. Specifically:
- At a quick glance, I am not sure exactly what control there is over the "field partners", who profit through an interest rate received from the people receiving the loans. How high is that interest rate? Are the procedures followed in case the people default on their loans lenient enough? The field partners should be compensated for their efforts, but they don't risk any capital after all...
- Though I wouldn't participate in such a scheme in order to make money, I would prefer that there was a (small) compensation for the people lending money, in the form of a very small interest rate probably. I like more the idea of this being a way of making a difference from "within the rules of the market", rather than simply a different way of offering charity through an organisation, which is what this is, in essence, since the loaners undertake a risk with no compensation for it (other than the obvious moral compensation of having helped poor people improve their businesses and lives).
- There might be other such efforts that I am not aware of. I only accidentally bumped into this.

Last night the dj...

No, he didn't save my life or anything like that. But he was REALLY good. Jumping from OMD to the Dire Straits, back to Depeche Mode, from there into a greater tour of the 80s electropop, 90s dance scene, and even the odd Greek pop song, peculiarly the kind that almost doesn't sound greek. In the end there was about 6 of us jumping around like silly, and he kept us all there for an hour or two switching from one tune to the next without even leaving them on enough for us to shout "wow!". And not a single casualty.

It was one of those "for old times sake" parties (for me anyway), where you wonder if so and so will be there and if they will have changed as much as you have, and what that other guy's wife will look like etc... Well in the end H hadn't changed a bit, almost none of the others were there, and that other guy's wife was nothing like I expected!

For a while my only companion, except some random conversations about work and kids, was a bottle of baccardi. But then the good music kicked in, and with it some memories surfaced, the good kind, and before I knew it I was completely wasted.

And yes, Sissy, I'm drinking lots of water.

S&M

I remembered this morning that story about the sadist and the masochist. The masochist would beg "please hit me, hurt me...", and the sadist would reply with a naughty smile... "nope!".

Confused? I know, me too...

But it's impressive how many different situations the morale of this little absurd episode can be applied to.

PS. This is all a little abstract... and I don't really get it either.

Bermuda

There's this bird in my garden, that sounds exactly like my phone.

Extremely annoying...