New Site

I have a NEW blog site to chronicle my year in Sudan.

http://www.emilyinsudan.blogspot.com/

I'll be keeping that site updated with tales of my journey. Check it out.

Eastbound. Again.

I go in for my last shift tonight. Whew. This has been a fast four weeks. I've worked a LOT, played a little and spent some time thinking about the "what now?" in my life. As is usually the case, I have no idea where my feet will fall next. I can only successfully plan about 2 to 3 weeks out, it seems.

Time will tell.

But, I come home tomorrow and it will be good to be in Dallas for a while. Maybe I'll stay until the rest of the country stops being a dang, cold mess. As I type, "sunny" California is covered in a blanket of damp, cold fog.

Someone please tell me Dallas is warm and sunny...

Crappy Innovation

Why does this "gleaming monument to personal convenience" have an astroturf seat cover?

And, a bullhorn?

Dear Friend-

Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen. We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted! After interviews have been compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought. Our faculties do not play us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude

Emerson

Colour like no other

I've since discovered that "intestine soup" is actually menudo, a traditional Mexican dish made with "tripe" or cow stomach. And, I guess it isn't so weird that a hospital 2 hours from the Mexican border would serve a traditional Mexican dish.

It's still gross, though.

Didn't Ricky Martin get his start in a boy band called Menudo?

Things that make you go hmmmm

In other news, I recently rediscovered a commercial on youtube that I LOVE. How fun was it to make this commercial, I wonder?!

Are you gonna eat that?

I ordered soup in the hospital cafeteria last night. It looked good. It didn't have a name, but the main ingredients were hominy and [what I thought was] chicken. But, the more I ate the "chicken", the more I realized that it was very unlike any other chicken I'd ever eaten. Then my spoon uncovered a large (tubular) piece of the "chicken" and I realized what it was...

Intestines.

What kind of a hospital serves intestine soup?

Al Gore and his global warming

Several mornings ago, I conversationally mentioned the cold weather to a random guy at the bus stop (because all great conversations begin with obvious statements...). He disdainfully muttered "Damn Al Gore and his global warming".

Somewhere Al Gore is feeling like a wounded messenger.

I'm fairly certain this bizarre weather isn't Al Gore's doing, but this week it snowed in Malibu [insert Ed Young's rewind sound effect], this week in SNOWED in MALIBU, and I want someone to be held personally responsible.

Random bus guy and I suggest Mr. Gore.