Accomplished

So although I took off two weeks in the middle of the quarter to go to Uganda, I still got 20 credits and stunning evaluations. Hells fucking yeah! It is Christmas break and I am so ready to have some serious fun! Randy and I got a nice hotel reservations in Seattle next week and I will have 2 and half weeks off of work. My family and I are planning to slide down a mountain on innertubes and then go to the ocean for a few days. Then of course there is my birthday, Christmas and New Years to look forward to, and the gathering of friends from out of state (Kale, Natalia, and James). Life is good, life is grand.

He is having fun making up stories to tell his students about how it happened. Maybe he got in a fight with a bear, or got trampled at Walmart. Or maybe this injury got him in the Guinness Book of Records for the man with the most black eyes in a lifetime and he won a split decision over Rocky Balboa after going the full 15 rounds.

Poor Dad!

I was working with my dad yesterday and he was bent over a hole in the pavement while sawing this pipe when suddnely he lost his balance and smashed his face really bad into the edge of the asphalt. It was horrible! Blood was running down the bridge of his nose and he had gravel chunks embedded in the wound. He was just all scratched up all over his face and arm. He had to get stitches and now he has raccoon eyes. I'm just so glad he didn't smash his teeth in. Poor daddy!

Help me Yan Di!

The use of tea has been traced back to about 5,000 years ago to the ancient time of a legendary ruler Yan Di, the holy farmer. The Chinese people often call themselves descendants of Yan Di. Yan Di, who was thought of as the god of farming, invented many farm tools and taught people how to grow crops. Archaeological excavating and historical records prove it is a fact rather than legend that the holy farmer founded methods of agricultural production. According to Chinese legend, the holy farmer was also the god of medicine. In order to save the common people from pain, he would select various wild plants as medicine. He would taste the wild plants himself first to learn their effect on the human body. Legend has it that one day he was found poisoned seventy-two times while tasting herbs on a mountain. Later he found a plant and brewed the leaves in a pottery tripod and then he drank the liquid. As a result, the toxins in his body disappeared. The plant was tea. Ever since then the Chinese people have treated tea as a precious medicine.

So I'm hoping I can light a candle for this god so he will help me with my exam next week. Or maybe I should just drink lots and lots of tea.

Uganda Photos

There will be more to come. I'm just pressed for time (as usual).

la la la

Weekends provide some much needed downtime. I suppose they should be for hanging out with friends but at the end of the week, all I want to do is drive to Gig Harbor and just for one night, hang out in front of the fire, talking with my parents and reading for my class. This has been my Saturday night for the past 3 weeks.

Yesterday I went to a funeral for a 6 month old baby. It was open casket and the baby's five year old brother and grandpa were standing in front of it as I waited my turn. I have never seen such a small casket. I couldn't stop crying. The baby's mother was nearby with her head in her husbands lap, wailing. I learned what its like to hurt in that way this year, but it must be so much more intense when its your young child. Going to the funeral was a painful experience but necessary. I don't want to shelter myself from other people's pain anymore. I know how it felt to watch my dear sweet Grandma die, and I am still in mourning for that. I still cry every few days. Something will remind me of her, like a cute old lady in a grocery store, and I will duck into the next aisle to hide my tears.

Anyway, I'm late picking up Randy, but I was going to try and post some pictures from Uganda. I guess we will wait on those and I'll post them over Thanksgiving break.

And Tengo Makes Three

So I'm getting Josie a child Sigg bottle and an adorable book about to gay penguins that raise an egg together. It is actually a true story and is totally adorable, but that didn't stop crazies from trying to have it banned from their schools.

Gay penguin book shakes up Illinois school

SHILOH, Ill. — A picture book about two male penguins raising a baby penguin is getting a chilly reception among some parents who worry about the book's availability to children — and the reluctance of school administrators to restrict access to it.

The concerns are the latest involving And Tango Makes Three, the illustrated children's book based on a true story of two male penguins in New York City's Central Park Zoo that adopted a fertilized egg and raised the chick as their own.

Complaining about the book's homosexual undertones, some parents of Shiloh Elementary School students believe the book — available to be checked out of the school's library in this 11,000-resident town 20 miles east of St. Louis — tackles topics their children aren't ready to handle.

Their request: Move the book to the library's regular shelves and restrict it to a section for mature issues, perhaps even requiring parental permission before a child can check it out.

For now, And Tango Makes Three will stay put, said school district Superintendent Jennifer Filyaw, though a panel she appointed suggested the book be moved and require parental permission to be checked out. The district's attorney said moving it might be construed as censorship.

Filyaw considers the book "adorable" and age appropriate, written for children ages 4 to 8.

"My feeling is that a library is to serve an entire population," she said. "It means you represent different families in a society — different religions, different beliefs."

Lilly Del Pinto thought the book looked charming when her 5-year-old daughter brought it home in September. Del Pinto said she was halfway through reading it to her daughter "when the zookeeper said the two penguins must be in love."

"That's when I ended the story," she said.

Del Pinto said her daughter's teacher told her she was unfamiliar with the book, and the school's librarian directed the mother to Filyaw.

"I wasn't armed with pitchforks or anything. I innocently was seeking answers," Del Pinto said, agreeing with Filyaw's belief that pulling the book from the shelves could constitute censorship.

The book has created similar flaps elsewhere. Earlier this year, two parents voiced concerns about the book with librarians at the Rolling Hills' Consolidated Library's branch in the northwest Missouri town of Savannah.

Barbara Read, Rolling Hills' director, has said she consulted with staff members at the Omaha, and Kansas City zoos and the University of Oklahoma's zoology department, who told her adoptions aren't unusual in the world of penguins.

She said the book was then moved to the non-fiction section because it was based on actual events. In that section, she said, there was less of a chance that the book would "blindside" someone.