Le Weekend

It has been an ideal weekend in many ways. I spent lots of time with the kiddies. Managed to steal two naps in as many days. Worked in the garden some and visited family for some food and a relaxing social time.

My kids, in case you haven't heard, are the smartest and most loving little things ever made. I get comments like, "I love you, daddy" out of the blue. Sometimes, when I am carrying the boy (now seven), I think back to when he was a toddler and so easy to cuddle and wax nostalgic for those days.

The girl is feisty, smart as whip and tries hard to bend us to her wishes. Showing me a hang nail and saying she needs a Dora band-aid for it, is a favourite excuse to keep herself from going to sleep. Asking to have just one more book read to her and then reneging and asking for "just one more okay, daddy?"

And the wife, in all her permutations is, how you English people say, 'a keeper.'

Le sigh...

Tarah By Lisa

My friend, Lisa, drew this picture of Tarah. Cute. And Tarah loves it.

My Word Cloud

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. Click on the graphic to see it in a larger size.

Great! Just Great!!

• I put up my new blog a few weeks ago and now find that not only did most of my sidebar's content not transfer over, but my new content is not showing up on most peoples' browsers. Thanks a lot Blogspot! I would send them a note to try and figure this out but my last e-mail to them regarding a password issue went unheeded for, well it's been over a year now. I'll just dig around their FAQ and hope for the best. I guess you get what you pay for and in this case, I don't pay a darn thing!

• One of my neigbours is a couple with a teenage daughter. They live near one of the paths that runs through our complex, an enclave actually. Anyways, they are from some Caribbean nation and boy, are they LOUD TALKERS! Which led me to wonder: Is the air thicker down in the Caribbean? Then why all the loud conversations? Shut up already...speak softly, the air is thin in these here parts.
  

• On a less grumpy note: We had to buy a car on account of the fact that the previous 8 year old Toyota Crappola died on us. Something about the timing chain snapping at highway speeds and the pistons (which apparently play a crucial role) damaging they-selves and the all important gasket(s) and the engine went boom. Something like that. So we now have....wait for it....a brand spanking new HONDA FIT! Yea! Hurray!! Huzzah! and all that....especially all that!! I like it, I like it a lot. The car, she's white. I am so all prepared to pimp her up, so I can ride with my ride in the 'hood. My God, I have no idea what I'm saying, but, damn! I will be christening the wee lass...if you have any ideas, I am accepting suggestions.
• Okay, 'nuff said.
  

Found

What you should know about the Cow Killer Ant. (Much nicer picture at this link).
Common Name: Red velvet ant or "cow killer"
Scientific Name: Dasymutilla occidentalis (Linnaeus)
Order: Hymenoptera

First off; Its not an ant, its a wasp.
the females have no wings. (this is one of those)
she lays her eggs in the ground nests of bees. her young eat the bee's young.
The "Red Velvet Ant"(this kind) is the largest of the velvet ants.
it gets 3/4inch long.

Question: You're much braver than i am, getting that close. i know they're wasps, but can they fly?

Answer: Nope, they can't fly but they can run and they are pretty handy with those Chinese throwing stars.

At the Hospital

My father has been admitted to the Sunnybrook Hospital due to a blood infection or Sepsis. Sepsis is a

condition in which your body is fighting a severe infection. If you become "septic," you will likely be in a state of low blood pressure termed "shock." This condition can develop either as a result of your body's own defense system or from toxic substances made by the infecting agent (such as a bacteria, virus, or fungus).

My father has sepsis due to a bacterial infection. Exactly what kind of bacteria is yet to be determined. Thus the use of an all around anti-biotic: Amoxicillin.

Being at the hospital:

1. The nurses all equally avoid eye contact or any sign of personality. It is probably a professional hazard to show you care as one needy patient can be difficult enough, but a floor full of needy people, in the long term, would, I'm sure, lead to burnout.
Thus, all the nurses avoid eye contact, refuse to smile with patients and family members, appear very matter of fact and blase about most everything.
Approach the nurse's station and you will find the 'he who smelt it, dealt it' rule in effect. That is, the first nurse to be foolish/kind enough to look up gets nailed with a patient's request for this or that.
The nurses are, after all, only here to look after the patients, but not to only look after the patients.

2. They allow family members to remain in the patient's room but have a single non-reclining chair. You would think that having a family member around to take care of the little things makes life easier for the nurses, so why not make people reasonably comfortable while they're present acting like hired hands?

Flickr Group

This pic is from Amelia PS' Flickr website. I love the easy companionability in the photo. The photo is part of a "Stolen Moments" set.

Mahna Mahna

Facelift

Hi Kids and other lurkers,

I am changing the look of my blog a little bit and updating some links and stuff like that. Let me know if you really don't like anything and I may do something about it.

How I Feel

Pious Me

My Watch List

Here's a list of people I wish I had the time to read and sometimes do. The list is cribbed from foreignpolicy.com's Top 100 Public Intellectuals list:

Mahmood Mamdani, Uganda
Cultural anthropologist

Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman professor of government in the anthropology, political science, and international affairs departments at Columbia University and was director of the Institute of African Studies there until 2004. He is the author most recently of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror.

Olivier Roy, France
Political scientist

One of the world’s top scholars of political Islam and terrorist movements, Roy is research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research. His 1992 book The Failure of Political Islam remains essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand contemporary Islamism.


Fareed Zakaria, United States
Journalist, author

Zakaria is the editor of Newsweek International, overseeing all Newsweek's editions abroad. Zakaria has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and the webzine Slate.

Ramachandra Guha, India
Historian

An Indian historian, columnist and MacArthur fellow, Guha has taught in the United States, Norway, and now in Bangalore. He is author of India After Gandhi.


Alex de Waal, Britain
Writer, Africa activist

A program director at the Social Science Research Council, de Waal is a frequently cited expert on the Darfur crisis and on African health issues.

Currently Reading...

Jack McDevitt's, Cauldron. "One of Library Journal's Five Best Science Fiction/Fantasy novels of 2007." This is my third book by this writer of hard science fiction.

The Reign of Thuggery on the New York Review of Books' website. The article is an account of Mugabe's extraordinary reign in Zimbabwe and the short sighted response of African leaders to the despot.

Zap Was There

I had the good fortune to see and hear Salman Rushdie speak in the flesh last night. No, he wasn't naked! He was pushing his new book, The Enchantress of Florence. Here's a negative review of the book.


In answer to the question, 'What are your favourite novels?' Rushdie told the story of how on being asked the same question, V.S. Naipaul said while looking up at the sky, "I am not a reader. I am a writer." Which only goes to solidify my views on Naipaul.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the droppy-eyed wordsmith and I'm glad I took it. For my efforts, I have a signed copy of this latest book and I'm thinking it's time I began to read his works in chronological order again.

Seth Paryani - Self Portrait