Pyervi blin

There's a Russian saying I hold dear, because it's true: "The first pancake is always a flop."

But the 3rd pancake, he is smart and nice and good looking!

Office Olympics

Youssou N'Dour

Youssou is one of the malaria spokespeople for Roll Back Malaria. Lisa his manager in the states (sort of) got us tickets for the Kennedy Center show last night. We had nice drinks and food at Dish beforehand, where I mistakenly ordered my salmon medium (OOPS!) but it was still pretty good. As always UNF and BASF picked up most of the bill.


Jumana and I went right up front and danced. Fun. I saw Jamaica from PSI (ex PC-Guinea) in the other aisle. Every other white person was an RPCV. This pic of Jumana is not nearly as scary in large format as it was on my camera, when she looked straight out of "Lost Boys".

Comp and the weekend

The climbing comp yesterday was fun except for the part where I was trying this rad move involving a low pocket undercling with my left ring and middle fingers, pushing down with my feet so I could get up to a nice flat sloper with my right, and something popped in my left wrist. It was pretty much curtains after that. Not too much pain, but a sense of weakness in the wrist, and pain all up the forearm to the ring finger. I climbed a few more things but couldn't finish any of them, though I did enjoy the slab route. Sean did really really well, sending a bunch of 11's, and ended up fourth overall, only missing the finals by - well, ok, a lot, but only because VJ, Ben, and the kid from Loyala are crazy good and can onsight 5.12. That means climb it the first time without falling or having any prior tips on how to do it.

So it's rest for me and the wrist and perhaps a trip to urgent care on Wednesday before mom comes into town just to make sure it doesn't need to be immobilized or something. I tweaked it again opening the car door (an undercling, technically) and it aches. I guess going to Mali for three weeks and not climbing through the holidays will be the best thing for it, but it bums me out.

A sort of frustrating continuation to some other things, including boots getting stolen (or misdelivered) off our porch, the treadmill not having its startup key, and not being able to install Windows on my mac this weekend so that I can use our new trial mapping software. Nothing major really. And offset by lots of good hanging out time all weekend and my free Prana jeans I won in the comp raffle. They are size L, but fit pretty good, and hopefully I can shrink them a bit in the wash.

That familiar sense of panic

I am going back to Mali Dec 5-20th for the integrated measles/malaria/polio/Vitamin A campaign so that I can babysit journalists, translate, and do logistics. I'm excited but now I only have two weeks to do this database thing which makes me want to shoot myself. Plus Office Olympics (November 27th) and the Friends of Gabon Mayumba ITN distribution. Yiiiiikes.

Panic Free Weekend

I made a potful of Hazan's ragu this friday. Here's the recipe so that I don't have to keep calling up my mom every time I want to make it!

Melt
8 tbl yellow onion
8 tbl diced carrot
in 12 tbl olive oil and a stick of butter

crumble in
3 lbs chuck just until loses its red color, and 4 tsp kosher salt.

add a bottle of white wine, cook until evaporated.
Then add 2 cups milk (whole is better, duh) and cook until evaporated. All this over medium-high heat.

Oops I forgot the 1/2 tsp nutmeg. Oh well.

Add 3 large cans (~8 cups) San Marzano tomatoes. Chop 'em up in the can first.

Cook uncovered for 5 hours or as long as possible. Sauce should not be too liquidy at the end. Stir occasionally to avoid burning.

Sean's Dream

I went climbing with Sean yesterday and got some beers after. Here's the dream he had last night:

I had an interesting dream last night. The four of us were out driving
in the country somewhere, past lots of corn fields and we passed this
makeshift dirt dragstrip. Someone was racing two white limousines on
the dragstrip, so when we passed it a second time we stopped to take a
look. This older guy owned the place and he liked all things fast.
Hannah seemed to know him. We went inside his house where bryan found a
rolling desk chair, a propane tank, and a stack of cash. He got this
grreat idea that he could sit in the desk chair with the propane tank,
open it up and light it, and shoot down the dragstrip. He liked this
idea so much, he was going to race one of the limos and bet his new
found wad of cash. So we looked around for a helmet he could wear. We
found a stash of about 20 dusty old peugeot bikes. I got excited,
thinking i could buy one off the guy, but Hannah assured me that he
loved them all an would never sell them. So we found bryan a bike
helmet, an old style leather one, and he headed out to race. Everyone
was waiting for him, including a guy riding around on a red track bike.
Unfortunately, i woke up before the race went down, but bryan was so
sure he was going to win, it was hardly worth watching anyway.