Living Gifts, etc

Hey Folks (yes, Ya'll have been upgraded to the status of a proper noun), this past weekend at the farm was the Celebration of Living Gifts. Formerly, Overlook did an annual Living Nativity; The Celebration of Living Gifts is the replacement for this living nativity, and shall become an annual event. Basically, I stood outside in the cold or inside of a barn and watched little kids marvel at farm animals. There was this tiny star-shaped child, 2 verging on 3 years old, who had her mind blown by everything. She was perplexed by the piglet (whose face was bigger than her whole body), bewildered by the buffalo (whose foot was bigger than her whole body), and astonished by the alpaca (who was terrified of this little girl). This marathon watching of little kid's reactions to creatures ended with me spending the last twenty minutes or so playing with the director's daughter.

There's snow on the ground here. We had a bit of a snow storm a few days ago that put maybe a foot of snow on the ground. It's rained some, snowed some more, and frozen a few times since then. Nic says walking on it is like walking on a giant creme brulee- I feel like it's like stabbing a Hobo Joe's with a fork, and you are the fork. What does this tell you about our backgrounds?

Anyway, in a few days I will be back home. Nic is at the dentist getting his first real cavity filled (I'm so proud of him!), and later on we are going to go christmas shopping. And then we pack. I'm going to cry, I think. I've come to depend on these animals for comfort and entertainment, and I've come to love the people here. This place is a place worth missing. I'm a bit tired of being uprooted, though; I'm ready for the two year stint in the Kyrgyz Republic. That's just enough time to get comfortable and stay comfortable. Three to four months is the time it takes me to get truly, really comfortable in a new place. I look forward to having a job and living a life that extends way beyond those three to four months of adjustment time.

David Byrne and a brass band doing Social Studies . Practically perfect in every way.

Interesting enough concept: the ability of humans to hack their own brains

Even more interesting: the new technology based meaning of the word "hack"

Oh, how language evolves. To hack one's brains back in the day surely meant to chop them apart; put an axe to a man's head and have a field day (oo, another phrase with an interesting evolution).

To hack one's brains now is to control your own thoughts and, primarily, sleep patterns, or induce vivid hallucinations at will. WHAAT!