how many food groups does this have?

david to me as we have brunch from a casserole out of the oven.

this morning, we slept in. we went to laurie's and played poker last night, had too many cookies (to my utter chagrine, but the beer pre-parade at the sports bar ruined my resolve. i'm back on the wagon now) so we were lethargic and i believe they contributed to my dream creativity.

numerous iterations of the same thing: riding in a cart along treacherous roads under construction or just out of commission due to war, inattention, and/or natural forces.

the first dream, i'm a passenger in the back of the cart. the cart approaches a very steep path on a narrow strip of land with treacherous drops on either side of the path to abyss below. there is a crowd of people helping the cart on the sides of the cart, outside. the cart gets on a track and the cart labors up the incline as a rollcoaster ride would, slowly approaching the top and lingering at the apex. then, thankfully, the ride down the incline is measured.

then i'm in the front seat but there is another person in charge, and i have a better look at how the ride is propelled - as an observer. the driver has a large open spoked wheel that is connected to the drive train and he is using his own strength to move the cart along this path, sort of ladder-like. his feet are doing something too, sort of fred flintstone style, except more complex.

next time (and there are dreams in between each of these sequences about generals and girl scouts, and i am the chief of staff of the top general) i am the driver. this is by far the scariest sequence. i am alone. like when i have to remove my wedding rings after the sharp broken casserole had thoroughly sliced my finger, i am not looking forward to the ride but i know it must be done.

CHICAGO!

i will have family in chicago again! (teri was there once for the uninformed)

top a the marnin to ye

diana and david have cellophane-wrapped pots filled with chocolate coins, cloverleaf stickers and such.

david gave me this:

http://www.bluemountain.com/view.pd?i=164377864&m=5638&rr=y&source=bma999

sippin and sighin

diana's outside talking to scout, david's at the kitchen sink rinsing the coffee filter.

in walks diana, humming a song, filling up scout's water dish. david suggests adding some tobasco to the bowl. "hey goob, have a good workout there. give me some lips. (kiss) i love you."

"where are those bones that were out mom?"
"she probably put them back in the fridge."
"all right."
"oh, i got something for you...i got something for you...yes ma'am...yummy! yeah, look at! yum!"

"i love my little pup."

in 30 minutes i'll be headed to ZUMBA land to shake and salsa, without, alas, the tooting pea.

last friday!

and on the last thursday before africa, i had a doc appt at 3:30

but forgot to get the cipro so i'm gonna have to get it before i go.

got to go since i slept in my total accident and have to make a lunch dish but at efm, we discussed the aforementioned suicide at length, mental illness and the long dark tunnel of depression.

who tells all?

karin tells me, when i call her at 4;45 pm, abt a suicide.

she shot herself in her bathtub. her daughter found her yesterday after she hadn't heard from her.

imagine finding your mom, dead, shot to death by her own hand, in her own damned bathtub.

okay. so then. you've imagined that.

then you say, well, what would her life have been to warrant....

that's not a good path to go.

is there a way to know? to measure pain? are there "circumstances"?

and who tells?


gottes willen. ?

a week from today!

i dreamt that i hadn't packed properly for the two weeks in addis ababa, and also that david was sporting a new look: he was wearing my blue earrings that he gave me. these are not studs but dangling, deep blue sorta western looking lapis earrings.

well. maybe that indicates a few things.

last night i went to wine and art at pastel and quickly perused art by elizabeth britt but didn't see anything i must have for our condo in mex. on my way home i wondered if we shouldn't have donna whaley and laurie adams do some things.

evolution of religion

my uu church friend, emailed me an article, no, a tome, from the march 4 sunday nyt about darwin and religion.

wish i had a link to it. but i have to get to work.

diana's coming to aug this weekend, and before you know it we'll be travelling to see d and e.

all right already

dear ones,

perhaps it is slack to not blog.

dv and i watched the last third of the african queen last night eating dinner, and then stayed tuned for the next movie which was breakfast at tiffany's.

neither of us remembered the african queen plot, so it was especially interesting. dv hadn't seen breakfast at tif so it was new for him. i had forgotten just how wild the party at holly's really was. and i think i rented it for diana and heather when they were little. i sure hope most of it was over their heads. however, plainly the cigarettes were not over their heads as they both smoked as if it's cute, attractive and harmless.

YESTERDAY, along that vein, we watched "an inconvenient truth" and i learned - though perhaps david knew, likely even - that al gore's father's farm was a tobacco farm in carthage tennessee (this david absolutely knew, and it was less than ten miles from david's uncle's tobacco farm where he spent summers cutting and putting up tobacco and IT WAS THE HARDEST WORK HE'S DONE) and his only sibling, his older sister, died of lung cancer.

we are leaving now so posting will be later.

he

weekend in augusta: countdown with dv

dv: "are you excited about ethiopia?"

sv: "yeah"

he tole me and he tole me that elizabeth fairie collins was online but she's not responded to my chat which c/b a technical glitch of course, among numerous other possibilities. hopefully one is not that they've been kidnapped while using her computer

oh she just responded to my ardent plea

gbye

happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you

happy birthday dear daniel

happy birthday to you!

xxoo

and in the area of entirely too much information:

we are watching the sopranos, apres le diner.

i was blogging and reading, watching news out of the corner of my eye on the couch down, david snoozing fitfully in his beloved recliner.

damned if he didn't wake up and ask about food.

we did have some things i could prepare. so i did. he called for his fork and he called for his knife and he asked for "not that red wine stuff but some garlic lemon chicken, the same stuff but not with the stuff on the top" (code for: no parmesan please) so a few minutes into jeop, i became the kitchen hustler.

which, dear reader, i certainly don't dislike. "yeah pasta is okay but i don't know about salad" but i made some for me and he had a little. cherry tomatoes, halved and marinated in red wine vinagrette and olive oil, s&p, and 1/4 seeds from a pomegranate. before eating, added some baby lettuces and chopped pistachios.

and the chicken was easy, really. broiled some chicken thighs that had slivers of garlic under the skin, lemon juice covered, lemon peel sprinkled, italian herbs on top, and then swathed in olive oil.

okay. enough. enough already. it's just that, well, elizabeth might care. if she can find a chicken. in lent. in ethiopia.

ha!

scary

this blog is becoming addictive. NEWS FLASH***********

oh well. both girls say they love it so either of you say the word....boring...self-indulgent...blah.... and i won't do it. (sure, like they will say THAT)

however.

'sall daniel's doin. he asked me to! he said elizabeth needed it! really!!!

and............i do so love to see the chillens' entries, so i'm just keeping in touch.

did i say: i planted four maters and four peppers? oh yeah, in e's email.

mauri's news is out of the bag. ah. god bless her and now, hers. and theirs. god is good and his plans are good.

diana's signed a lease on BARBER STREET! oh my my, oh hell yes, gotta put on that party dress!

i keep hearing "mice and mold" on the news. as kids playing outside our house on any given army post, we'd salute passing ambulances and gravely wonder if the passenger was scheduled to be "medevaced to walter reed." we were definitely in the know, as that was the coolest thing that could happen to a sick person.

how things have changed.

karen, how DID you find this blog??? do tell.

hey gurley girls: guess what she said? (well diana knows cause she called me at an opportune time as i received it): she was reading my blog and I SPEND ENTIRELY TOO MUCH TIME AT THE BISTRO. Why, the idea! The very idea! Me??? i have not been since friday! harmpf!

okay well oh yeah one more thing to note: elizabeth sneakily asked me if i minded bringing a pair of maternity jeans for her friend in ethiopia who got preggers. her MOM SENT ME THREE PAIRS of jeans and three (fortunately thin) blouses. guess they think i'm the water buffalo pack animal? delightful thought.

statuesque for 2000

we are almost through jeopardy.

it's been a day. suffice it to say.

sometimes there's not much to put into words. the ache. the shrug. the sigh.

cars

we are watching aforementioned movie in the basement.

"this could be a cute movie," david suggests as we polish off the previews, which include "ratatouille" about a rat in paris and "peter pan."

this is amazing to me.

not the movie, but that i am upright and watching a movie while blogging. of course, it's not what i had planned for my day.which is remnisent of the sermon given by robt fain this morning. i cried in church a few times, not enough for david or mom to notice, saying prayers and singing songs, in this lenten season. the ot was genesis, abram's revelation from god that he is FATHERING (mothering?) a nation, and to have faith in god. which he, against better judgement, does.

"ha ha ha ha! look at that CUTE tongue!" david exclaims.

i know that voice!" david says. indeed?

"there goes a tire!" david interjects happily.

"of course." he tells the movie, when a runoff is declared.

and the luke gospel was

(there is a rusteze commercial on the movie which david uses to consult his computer. interesting for a man who made his nest egg with advertising. "you know who that is? owen wilson!" he decides.

we are trying to decide, not having paid the strict attention that we could have, to the beginning: which car is the one that eats razor blades for breakfast?

the luke gospel

"we won't hestitate to break down the garden gate. life is a highway/ i wanna ride it all night long." (lytics from a song in this movie that you might remember from the 70s)

i love you so much sister. i do. i am crying again, unbeknown to my cell mate. i mean, fellow bottom dweller.

perhaps, no likely, i have the shot crud. had planned to plant flowers and vegetables, but instead crawled in the newly made bed, clad in sweats for garden work, freezing cold and covered with the comforter. reading the 1989 national geographic wall poster of THE HOLY LAND, full of interesting detail, from the stone age to now. well, to 1989. (i have kept it all this time, since pre-bransford, to put on the wall.)

then i go to sleep for two hours, aching and shaking.

so now: i still need to talk about luke. the deacon, curtis, was in the procession with the acolytes and got confused, something i can't recall him ever doing. he skipped "kills" and the sentence didn't make sense so it tripped him up. anyway, we can't remember the passage (i have asked david) and i'm too tired to go upstairs and find it, maybe i'll remember it anon)

the sermon: don't make plans. god has 'em. sure, order your life, but keep god first and you'll have life everlasting.

amen.

so there you are.

aha

Bob Astles

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Bob Astles (born 1924), called Lubowa among the Ngo clan, was a former British soldier who lived in Uganda and became a sometimes associate of Idi Amin.

Astles was born in Ashford, Kent, United Kingdom. As a teenager, he joined the Indian Army and then the Royal Engineers, reaching the rank of sergeant. He was twenty one when he left Britain for Africa seeking adventure. His first job in Uganda was as a building foreman, then with £100 he set up Uganda Aviation Services Ltd, the first airline in Uganda to employ Africans. In 1958, aged thirty four, he married Monica, who had come with him from Kent. A year later, after they had divorced, Astles married an aristocratic member of the Bugandan kingdom, Mary Ssen-Katukka, and they had two children. As Uganda's independence approached in 1962, Astles became involved with a number of political groups. One of these was led by Milton Obote, who led the country to independence. Astles worked in his government until the 1971 coup d'état, when he transferred his allegiance to Idi Amin.

In December 1971 suspicion fell on Astles because of his previous support for Obote. Amin sent him to Makindye prison where he spent seventeen weeks, often shackled and brutally interrogated. Astles later said, "Amin called me a 'rotten apple' on the radio, and nationalised my airline. It was ordinary Africans who helped me to survive. One guard was kicked to death for helping me." Astles stayed in Uganda and periodically worked in Amin's service, while running a pineapple farm. He also presided over an aviation service flying members of the government. Astles later said "I kept my eyes shut, I said nothing about what I saw, which is what they liked".

In 1975 Bob Astles joined Amin's service, becoming the head of the anti-corruption squad and advised the president on British affairs. Until today, what Astles did or did not do during Amin's brutal tenure is conjecture. He was feared, and considered by many to be a malign influence on the dictator; others thought he was a moderating presence. He came to be known as "Major" Bob (the title of Major was given to him by Idi Amin) or "the White Rat".

Following the Uganda-Tanzania War which led to the demise of Idi Amin's regime in 1979, he fled to Kenya, but was brought back to Uganda to face criminal charges. Astles was imprisoned on account of his alleged association with Amin's security apparatus. He was charged with everything from murder and corruption to theft. After serving six and a half years in Luzira prison, he was released and returned to Britain in 1985. He continues to deny the allegations against him.

Bob Astles currently lives in Wimbledon, London. He was played by Leonard Trolley in the 1982 movie Amin: The Rise and Fall; the fictional character Nicholas Garrigan in the book and film The Last King of Scotland was very loosely based on events in the life of Astles.[1]

skits on the skids

according to daniel's recent entry, he has recently recovered from illness, and elizabeth is in the throes of a cipro-corrected crud. poor skits! poor daniel! selfishly, i hope that we don't find ourselves down and out for the week we're there, but i guess we might as well mentally prepare, if we can't do so physically.

i went to home depot and stocked up on garden soil, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, flowers, and then raced to the y where i sambaed to the best of my inability in a class called zumbro. david thought it was called zoom when he heard connie and i discuss it last saturday. it was an hour of dancing, and it sort of put a tone to my day that i hadn't expected: in need of a rest period.

we went to the earliest showing of "the last king of scotland" with mom. i now need to learn more about idi amin and the movie. it was good viewing but i suspect plenty of fiction - the screen announces before the film starts that this story is based on real people and real events. not exactly a ringing endorsement of an attempt to document.

speaking of, we should be getting "black gold" any day now. lydia told me to rent it. a documentary about ethiopian coffee trade.

we were hungry when we got out, so we went to athens taverna and got a gyro. i am stuffed still, and that was a couple of hours ago. i trudged into my workout sweats to resurrect the garden and didn't get too far. pulled a few weeds, shovelled part of the plot, and got discouraged when i did something foolish. i poured what seems to be old car oil on one of the tomatoes, thinking the water bottle i found in the bushes was actually full of water.

who would leave a glass pellogrino bottle full of oil in the yard?

we plan to stay in tonight.

dear ones,

that is how my relatives addressed letters to our family when we lived in various places and the grandparents and aunts lived in florida.

it's 7:30 am and i'm dressed for either the y or shopping for yardwork to plant flowers and to ready the vegetable garden which THIS YEAR WILL BE SUCCESSFUL because i plan to prepare the soil early.

dear ones,
i think of you often every single day.

since this is the site designed to fill you in on my day, don't hold your breath for the ensuing discourse, cause you'd pass right out.

yesterday after five, i met david at home after we looked at films we might see that evening. "the last king of scotland" was available at 7:10 so we defaulted to the bistro for a premovie glass of wine, despite no laurie and no karin.

but ho! it wasn't mercutio, but mary in yon telltale red truck. so what started as a date ended with dinner at french market grill, with various and sundry friends and acquaintances at the bistro and the restaurant.

(mary is my rotary friend, red curly headed former NOW woman of the year, home builder.
she had moved to aug in the 4th grade from germany, an army brat. she graduated from the second class of butler high school and then uga, moved to atlanta, got married, had two daughters, got divorced, was single for more than ten years. (does this sound familiar?) her job moved her to minnesota, where she met tim and married.

mary and tim were awaiting the arrival of - knock me over with a feather - kathryn and billy. since they are both my friends, separately, and i had introduced them, i was momentarily stunned. (i know: that's not stunning. i'm easily buffaloed..) since billy and tim work at the marble palace, in i.t. and accounting respectively, and mary and kathryn had met at wba, they were meeting for dinner.

which is how we ended up.

at the bistro as we were leaving, in came amy and doug nesbit. doug wrote down y'alls blog addresses. we've got to have them over when you come home. the entire family. fyi, their elizabeth still should have been named diana, amy assures me.

at fmg : krista lamar and waylon. i must speak to krista about how i missed her at efm. (wba, eyc, efm...ahem) we six find a place at the bar to wait for a table. in comes brian and patsy phelan, so we have a long talk about hip replacements, children, and a smattering of what-happens-when-you-are-faster-than-your-once-fast-walking-husband.

then, baxtuh and lynn bailey. more children talk. lynn is a rock star with our group, since she also works at the marble palace, head of voter registration for years and therefore quite familiar with the bodies and where they are buried. turns out, her department was once under billy's and they are old friends. baxtuh waxes eloquent to david about how wonderful augusta's economy is poised to be. david seems unimpressed.

(aside: when paul's car hit elizabeth's car in the prep parking lot, i spoke to baxtuh for the first time.) (i am using the phonetic spelling- maybe it's really baaaaxtuh)

we are seated, cruising by foghorn leghorn and his lovely wife, and i don't stop to talk to them about their own rock star, patrick, because...well...ahem...nuff said.

so we are seated...there in the booth across the way.....linda and david!!!

lordy mercy.

okay. so that's my exciting augustah evenin.

today my right arm is sore from yesterday's typhoid shot. david and i went to the richmond health department yesterday in lieu of lunch, and got hep a and hep b. this took considerable time. i was unhappily reminded of my upbringing as we passed from one desk to another, and then waited in chairs with a number. david's mcg appointment for the rest of the innocs, at 1:45, was shot, and he still had a 2:40 3 month followup with the hip surgeon (which did nothing but tell him what he already knew: your right hip is good and your left hip is bone on bone) so i went to MY mcg appt at 2:15. why i expected something different from the county i'll not know. it was bureaucracy again, waiting and miscue and more waiting. the ppl at the health department were more adult than the guy who gave me meningitis, yellow fever and typhoid shots at mcg. i mean really. you had to be there. but enough about that.

now i'm loaded for disease-carrying mosquitoes, tainted blood, and fecal poisoning. ready to do bloodstream battle with these varmints.

so, dear ones, i hope your weekends are bright. please do tell. i check your blogs often, and hope for an unexpected google chat.

i love you so much.

oh: david mailed off a package to bingham yesterday, and i ordered three books from amazon: the river one, the mennonite cookbook and the lonely planet/ethiopia. i am really looking forward to all of them. especially "more with less."

ta ta!

mutti

hail thee, festival day, i mean

day after the festival. tornadoes, wind, rain in torrents, but no hail to my knowledge, exceptin the kind you just don't want, need or expect.

i hear david downstairs saying "good God!" so i must hie to the basement to discover source.

festival

rain-matted hair, blue raincoated to check the mail, we just arrrived home from midtown. i'm awaiting a rotary meeting before i venture to The Office.

david's bad hip already told us last night of the rain. he was uncomfortable in symphony hall as we sat for hours watching the films of fest. some were interesting, some were sophomoric, and somehow there was only a glimpse or two of the polar princess. nonetheless it was a wonderful trip, down memory lane as well venturing to a new street i'll call College Digital Express(ion).

we went to eat some yummy food at the high musueum's 'strant, Table 1280, and the three girls on the sloth and men team joined us to polish off our lamb and rabe, duck and spaghetti squash. they had wine, polished off the very good olive bread and butter, and happily dug into two desserts, lemon trifle and tiramisu (neither of which were exactly like what one might expect).

by the way, the best part of the meal they missed. it was cured yellowfin with lemon "vinagrette" (thicker than i know vinagrette but absolutely lemony and yummy).

okay rotary here i come. and work.. and then efm.