“That cow has a decent medial suspensory ligament.” That’s what Lulu told me the other day as we walked past the dairy barn. If that weren’t confirmation enough that my education dollars are well spent, she just sent me this photo that she took during class today.
Speaking of farm animals, I decided against doing the big long river trip in Nepal. I am a big chicken. The thing is, I didn’t know enough about the company to want to entrust my life to them during that three-day segment of the trip when an overturned raft could be fatal. Call me old-fashioned.
Actually, I have a bigger reason for changing my plans: the cost of the longer trip and taking an extra week off of work aren’t financially feasible
Instead, I’ll do a shorter river trip, probably the Kali Gandaki, which is the one I’d planned to do a year ago. It’ll be plenty hair-raising but a little closer to civilization so they won’t have to carry my corpse as far. And what if my traveling companions are buttheads? In that eventuality, three days in the wilderness would be a lot less painful than ten. (I know this for a fact. On the Magpie expedition there were some great people — even Richard Dean “MacGyver” Anderson was quite funny — but all it took were two vicious people to contaminate the experience.)
So I bought my plane tickets today. I should be excited but all I am is scared about money.
Here’s a video I found on YouTube of the Kali Gandaki:
On my next post I’ll tell you about the journalism & technology conference I attended today in Silicon Valley. For now, there are more pressing matters.
Here is a contest for you. Please match the dog to its owner (or, as Kathy McAnally would have said, “match the dog to its human.”)
Winner might win something. Maybe chocolate. We’ll see. Submit your responses in the… well… responses section, just below these pictures.
[A couple of you have been confused by the anti-spam thing. Under the comments area is a red box into which you'll need to type the two words shown there, and then click "submit comment"; otherwise, your answer will never see the light of day.]
A few days ago I hiked up the Marin hill to an Obama precinct-leader’s house, where I picked up some promotional materials: “Women for Obama” bumper stickers for Lulu and her friend Esmeralda, a sign for my front yard, and a poster for the gecko’s cage. Gecka, normally complacent, got all excited about her new decoration. For a full five minutes she cruised back and forth trying to climb it. I’ve never seen her get so excited about a presidential candidate.
Unlike Gecka and me, my sister has been actively supporting Obama since the earliest days. Yesterday she took this photo of him in southeastern Pennsylvania, where the moment of truth has almost arrived. “I shook his hand, while holding a diaper, so he might touch it for posterity. I told him, ‘it’s clean’ and he laughed…” The other photo shows her with grandson Ryan at her local Obama HQ.
