Photo Friday - “Wildlife”

I really DO love Photo Friday.  It’s the only thing I seem to be able to post on these days.  I’ve got dozens of drafts started about my summer experiences, but still am unable to get them the way I want them.  Some of them are simply Titles at this point. 

So, having just recently returned from Africa, I thought it fitting to share pics of some wildlife I saw while I was there.  These were taken “on safari” in the Liwonde National Park in Malawi.  Oddly, I don’t love very many pictures that I took this summer.  I do, however, love this one.  Not because it’s a great picture or anything - far from it.  No, I love it because there are four species captured in the one frame.  The hippo, heron, and impala are easily visible, but do you see the warthogs as well?

Did you know that members of different hippo pods have different “highways” that they each use?  I didn’t.  And hippos of one pod do not use the highways of hippos of different pods!  The things you learn when you are on safari! 

And here’s one of a warthog upclose.  Seems there was a warthog “highway” right in front of our chalet at the safari camp! 

The yellow at the bottom of the photo?  Normally I would have cropped that out.  It was my front porch.  I left in in as a reference to the proximity of the trail to our accommodations.  This highway was actually a hippo highway as well.  This was one reason we were all strongly warned to never leave our chalets alone, and to stay on the people pathways.  Those hippos were loud at night, too!  You couldn’t have PAID me to leave my chalet after dark, even if I wasn’t alone!  Even if I had one of the armed guard with me.  Hippos are some scary creatures!

More on our safari weekend in a later post…IF I can ever get the post to feel right! 

Click on the links to visit the entries of the other participants!  Drop them a comment and let them know what you think.  There are new participants since I left for Africa.  A big hearty and belated welcome to them! 

Tall Chick’s

Iveystory’s

Melanie’s

CuriousC’s

Author’s

Here’s what’s coming up on Photo Friday in the weeks ahead…

Photo Friday Advance Diary:

22nd August: Julie’s choice - “Hat Day” (a picture of someone’s hat, that’s funny, pretty, or a self-portrait of us wearing our favorite or funny hat)

29th August: Mrs Nascar’s choice - Old cars (any interesting old cars from rusty scrapheap cars with a bird’s nest under the bonnet, to fabulous vintage or racing cars)

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Photo Friday - “Reflections”

My first Photo Friday in some time!  Today’s Photo Friday is Author’s choice:

Reflections (in lakes, rivers, puddles, ponds or even windows etc.)

For this entry, I decided to go with a slightly different interpretation than perhaps is expected:  the reflection of light off of a surface.  As luck would have it, I came across this amazing little arachnoid after leaving CostCo the other day.  My nephew espied the half-inch leg-spanned creature busily weaving on the rear of his mother’s (my sister’s) truck.  At first glance the wee beastie looked white.  On closer inspection we saw that it was actually silver!  It caught the sun much more brightly than I could capture on film.

Lookie!  You can see two strands of silk extending from the spinnerets!

Get a look at the creepy skull-like head!  Scarrrryyyyy!!!

Now the skull is screeeeaaaammmming and has fangs!

Any body out there have any idea of what sort of spider this is?

Please visit the other participants’ entries and see what they are reflecting upon this day!  I’ll add links as the entries are posted.  However, I am back to work today after a three month’s absence (blech!) and won’t be able to add the links until later in the day…my apologies!

Here they are!  Breaking the rules and going on line at work, but at least it’s lunchtime! 

Melanie’s entry

Iveys’s Weblog

A Curious State of Affairs

Tall Chick’s

CuriousC’s

and a late entry:  Just For Fun

Here’s what’s coming up on Photo Friday in the weeks ahead…

Photo Friday Advance Diary:

15th August: Tina’s choice - Wildlife

22nd August: Julie’s choice - “Hat Day” (a picture of someone’s hat, that’s funny, pretty, or a self-portrait of us wearing our favorite or funny hat)

29th August: Mrs Nascar’s choice - Old cars (any interesting old cars from rusty scrapheap cars with a bird’s nest under the bonnet, to fabulous vintage or racing cars)

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Why Not Start With a Famous Foot Picture?

I have drafts on about a dozen posts about my summer.  I’m still trying to figure out how to get back to blogging.  I thought maybe I could kick start my creativity by posting one of my “famous” foot pictures!

We were wrapping up our summer with a “debrief” in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  While out souvenir shopping with my group, I came across this manhole cover (most of the sewer accesses we saw did not have covers and did not have any sort of warning that there was no cover- an American lawyer’s DREAM!) and dragged my group over and forced them to take part in my picture!  They think I’m weird…what else is new? 

:-) 

Wait until I start showing you some of the souvenirs I brought home!

The cover says “MUNICIPALITE ADDIS ABEBA”.  I like this one.

The goat wandering by on the street also thought I was weird…

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Coming Soon!

I am no longer in absentia!  I am HOME!!!  One day soon, I’ll be back to posting here.  I have soooo much to write about and I just don’t know where to begin.  Once my brain cools off I’ll put fingers to keys and get down to it!

Looking forward to getting caught up on the blogging everyone else has been doing for the past two months!

See you soon…

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Am I Back?

If all has gone according to the original plan, I’m supposed to have arrived back in the states earlier today.  I’ll have flown in to Washington, DC on Ethiopian Airlines.  Once I get to say my good-byes and get all my kids off on their various planes home I’ll be able to take a deep breath and relax.  I’ll start making phone calls, if I can find a pay phone and if I still have minutes on my calling card, that is.

I guess I’ll need to get a flight home.

Soon, maybe even by now, I’ll be feeling that weird emptiness that happens when one goes from being constantly busy and constantly needed and never alone, to being in the place where the silence is uncomfortably deafening.  It’s like empty nest syndrome, only on steroids…

I’m probably starting to feel lonely.  I’ll shove my hands in my pockets and feel dirt in the seams - African dirt.  Even though I just got home, I think I’m probably longing to return already.

I might be home by tomorrow.  Unless Phil and his kids have met me here and then I’ll be hanging out with them for a few days.  I guess whenever I can get to a computer, I’ll let you know which scenario came to fruition.

(Posted in absentia, for the last time, at least for the last time this summer)

Happy Birthday, Alaska! :-)

 A different kind of fifteen! 

 Hope you have a great birthday!

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(Posted in absentia)

Happy Birthday, Jonathan

ARGH!

TWELVE!

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(Posted in absentia)

I Want a Communist Artifact!

Today my father, my sister Liz, and her daughter Jesse (yes, that’s the correct spelling), are off to China!!  How blisteringly exciting!  They are taking a 10-day guided tour which sounds absolutely fabulous.

The China they will see is undoubtedly much different than the one that I experienced back in 1982.  It will be a place in the middle of a new kind of revolution!  The big cities are neon bright with tall hotels and tour buses and modern vehicles.  It will be a place of women and men dressed in the latest fashions chatting on the newest cell phones.  There will be restaurants, clubs, and stores.  Tourists will abound, especially since Beijing will be the host for the latest summer Olympics, and I doubt that these tourists will have their hotel phones bugged and be followed around by their own squad of soldiers!

I have put in my request that I be brought a truly Chinese article or some sort of interesting communist artifact…perhaps an old poster of Mao himself?? 

Oh, or maybe an old set of accupuncture needles!  That’d be cool!  Ohohoh, or maybe some silk, or jade?  Wait!  I forgot that this trip isn’t about me! 

Have the best of fun!  Travel safely!  Take LOTS of pictures… 

Hike as far down the Great Wall as far as they’ll let you and as far away fromother people as possible and listen for mongol warriers galloping through the mountains.  You can hear them!  I swear I did…

I can’t wait to hear aaaaalllll about it!

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(Posted in absentia)

“Re: Essay and other such rubbish” - Part III

Since I’m gone I thought I’d have my nephew, Richard, in again as a guest blogger!  Here’s another offering from my nephew’s collection of essays.  That’s my nephew!  Putting the positive slant on yet another “negative” personality trait!

This one is on Sarcasm..

Sarcasm as a Second Language

 

“Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.”

                        -Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, 19^th century Russian fictional writer.

 

Did you know that I am multi-lingual? Not only do I speak English, pig-Latin, and New Zealandish, I also speak sarcasm. This wonderful language serves as a happy medium between the polite refutation and outright condemnation we are forced to shovel upon the idiocy that envelops us. Through sarcasm, we are able to eviscerate our moronic contemporaries, as opposed to politely and gently correcting their blatant and unforgivable lack of intelligence, without crossing over the boundary of downright meanness. We save our mean comments about the person for our close friends and family. The beauty of sarcasm lies in the fact that the people subject to your wit generally are too dense and slow to understand your true feelings.

            Another facet of the language of sarcasm is its use between two or more native speakers. Those fluent in this tongue can often carry on entire conversations with each other about their peers without these unwashed masses of idiots realizing what is going on around them. The difficulty in this resides in the fact that one must sift through the maddening crowd of morons to find one truly intelligent person who shares this gift, no easy task, for, as I have come to conclude, only one out of every thirty people or so qualifies. That is why the best alternative for we intellectuals is solitary, urban hermitage.

            There are several dialects of sarcasm. The first, traditional sarcasm, is most prevalent in the middle-aged, and tends to tread between the boundaries of politeness and meanness fairly evenly, reflecting neither too much softness nor too much open harshness. The second, reactionary sarcasm, is spoken almost exclusively by the old, and generally borderlines on razor sharp meanness. This dialect tends to focus more on teaching its subject didactic elements and improving its subject’s behavior as opposed to just openly mocking him. The final dialect, post modern ridicule, resounds both loudly and irritatingly from the youngest sect of the species. This dialect does not even try to mask itself, crossing over the line of nastiness in almost every instance, and rarely, if ever, reflects either intellect in presentation, or discretion in subject. It is because of this final dialect that we who speak sarcasm are looked upon as disrespectful little cretins, when in reality, we simply use sarcasm as a tool to prevent use from slapping senseless the halfwits around us.

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(Posted in absentia)

Happy Birthday, America

It’s always kind of weird to celebrate the fourth of July in a foreign country.  Especially in countries where people are constantly watching you, like they will be in Malawi. 

I took red/white/and blue tablecloths, some r/w/b star necklaces, and little U.S. flags.  I think we’ll make all the food be r/w/b at lunch and maybe sing happy birthday.  But that’s it.  I don’t know that Malawians would understand us making a big fuss out of our country’s birthday.

Even though I often leave her, I love America.  She’s not perfect, but the only reason she’s not perfect is because people live there.  But I love Americans, too.  As individuals they are the most generous and giving.  They are free-thinkers.  They are full of ingenuity.  They love to work and love to play.  Their interests are as varied as the people themselves are.  America is a land of opportunities.  With enough drive, pretty much anyone can become pretty much whatever they dream to be.

So, from near the heart of Africa, while eating red, white, and blue, food, I wish you, America, a happy birthday.

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(Posted in absentia)

Dean Loves Megan

London graffiti that caught my eye.  This one was taken last summer.

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(Posted in absentia)

Kid Art

An artistic offering in my absence…

I love the art that is created by children. 

This one is a particular favorite.  It was created by my friend Kevin’s seven year-old nephew, also named Kevin.

Fabulous, really fabulous.

(Have fun in Cali, Clare!)

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(Posted in absentia)

Wagons Ho!!

Today (or maybe tomorrow, I’m not exactly sure!) my sister Whitney and her son Mitchell have packed up her truck and a U-Haul and will be heading out for Colorado to start their new life.

And my brother Phil has packed up his Suburban with his four kids and my sister Liz’ two kids and has hitched that U-Haul up and is heading out to take Whitney and Mitchell to Colorado. 

There’s a little part of me that feels bad that I miss so much of my family’s “happenings” because of my involvement with Teen Missions over the years.  Like I have missed nine of my mother’s birthdays, for example.  And I’ll miss having nearly all my family together in Colorado this summer while I’m gone.  BUT, sometime very late this evening my team will be leaving Boot Camp for Malawi, and what a blessing God has given me to be able to spend the summer with a group of teenagers who have given their summers up in order to minister to African children.  I’m glad that my family understands that I miss things not because I want to, but because the Lord has called me to do something else.

Whitney and her son are going to take over taking care of Mew Ling from my Dad when they get to Colorado.  I’m sure my Dad will be glad about that!  :-) 

Please pray for my team as we “pack-out”, and embark on our 8,200 mile journey from Orlando to Lilongwe (Malawi), and beyond.  Please pray that all of us, and all of our luggage, arrive safely.

You can’t even imagine how excited we all are to get to Malawi and get to work…

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(Posted in absentia) 

John On Jeopardy!!

A forever family friend of ours, John Goodreau, (since he is making himself public in what he’s doing, I am feeling free to use his last name), is going to be on Jeopardy tonight!

I sure hope that someone tapes (or Tivos or DVRs) the episode (and hopefully many subsequent episodes) for me so that I can see it!

GOOD LUCK, JOHN!  I know you’ll do well!  Represent!! 

And I have another Happy Birthday send-out, too.  This time I’m wishing a happy one to my niece, Natalie!  Happy Birthday, Nan.  I love you and miss you and hope to see you soon…

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(Posted in absentia)

Heron

I took this picture last year when we went on a bird watching trip during Boot Camp.  It’s some sort of Heron.  I love this picture.  I’ll go on the bird watching tour again this summer, if they do it.  We saw evidence of eagles out in the preserve, but didn’t actually see any of the raptors.  I would like a second shot at that, and maybe I could capture on on film.  That’d be cool…

Happy ACTUAL 70th birthday, mom.  I’ll be thinking of you especially today…

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(Posted in absentia)

I Love You, Daddy!

Yeah, another holiday I’m missing…

Thanks for taking care of Mew Ling again.  That’s just the most awesome thing you do for me.

You’re the best daddy ever!  :-)  (And the best grandpa ever, too!)

And not just because you watch Mew Ling!

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!!!!

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(Posted in absentia)

Dear Joanne,

Today is your anniversary, and I am thinking of you and praying for you on this day.  I am glad you are with your Mother and not alone at such a time.

I know you miss him horribly, and I know that it’s hard to imagine it has already been months since he went home to be with Jesus.  I know how fresh your sorrow will be today, but I also know that

your strength continues to come from the Lord.  The year of firsts is so hard, but you will make it through.  You know I love you, my friend…

Much love…

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(Posted in absentia)

Water Lily

Every once in awhile I take a picture that really amazes me.  Other than brightening the photo, I did nothing else to it, and yet, it looks like a watercolor painting.  At least it does to me.

Click HERE if you want to see the unbrightened version. 

This lily was growing in the pond in my brother Phil’s backyard.

And I’d like to also present this flower to Doris on her 80th birthday!!!  Happy Birthday, Doris!!!

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(Posted in absentia

OTH

More London graffiti.  “OTH” was the tag used by one particular graffiti artist.  Loved this!

Do you think “OTH” are the taggers initials, or does it mean something else?

My kids start arriving at Boot Camp today.  My season of non-stoppedness has offcially begun.  Boot Camp officially begins on Monday!  I’m sure I’m excited.  But I’m also sure I’m pretty stinky and bug bitten by now!  :-)  Don’t know why I love this so much, but I do!

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(Posted in absentia)

Photogra-bee

Yep.  I know you’ve seen this picture before.  I had asked for advice on which photograph to submit to a photography competition.  The majority voted for this picture, so I submitted it.

Lucky day, I was one of the first 20 people to submit their photo and was given a 20 dollar gift certificate to a local restaurant/coffee bar!  :-)  I’ll have to wait until I get home to cash that puppy in though…

Wish me more luck.  I’d like to win a new camera.  The Butterfly Pavilion is accepting submissions through July 30th, so I’ll be back in the states in time for the announcement of the winner, which I’m sure, with all of your support, will be me!

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(Posted in absentia)