Seriously?

Dudes. I took 2 meeelion cfa to PSI today and they told me they didn't want it. Thus began a long and involved process of negotiating exactly under what circumstances we are allowed to give them money.

It was awful nice to see my peeps there though. I never bother alerting anyone to my presence in Bamako anymore because our schedule gets so packed so quickly that I often don't have any free time in which to hang with people. Today however was different - a veritable Tour de la Nostalgie, from PSI to marché to the other marché and back again.

With luck I will continue said Tour Friday evening with old college friends, prior to racing off to the airport. Is it bad that I'm really looking forward to the Air France lounge in Paris, and all the free muesli/cappucino/pain au chocolat I can eat?

I Concur

Emphasis mine. This is why I bike. Merci BikeSnob!

One of the things that make cycling so great is that it enables you to avoid crowds and pointless delays. Few things are more satisfying than effortlessly weaving your way through a traffic jam. So while I’ll begrudge nobody his or her Critical Mass, personally I don’t understand the appeal of forming a crowd and creating a pointless delay. And it is a delay, whether you’re in a car or on a bike. I once accidentally got caught in a Critical Mass ride while out riding. I felt like a dolphin ensnared in a tuna net. One second I was sailing along, and the next I was trapped among a bunch of people with rickety bikes rolling on wobbly, rusty brown steel rims on the verge of collapse. It was like watching a Beatles “Yellow Submarine”-esque cartoon LSD sequence where all the bicycles were rolling on pretzels. Sure, they had taken back the streets, but I wish that as a cyclist they might have saved a small sliver for me so I could get to where I was going.

Ah but then it gets better:

People do need to see other people out there on bikes. They need to become accustomed to them so they learn to respect them, and they need to see how practical and effective they can be so they consider riding them themselves. Many cyclists illustrate this day after day, not only by riding their bikes to and from work during rush-hour but also by using them for recreation and even racing on them. A driver who sees you zip past as you ride your bike to work, and then sees you riding your bike to dinner later with a date, and then sees you going for a road ride that weekend doesn't realize he's seen only one rider—as far as he knows he's seen a bunch of riders, and he sees them using their bikes successfully. Effectively, you’re a Critical Mass of one. Meanwhile, a mob of people on crappy bikes blocking traffic one day a month isn’t a “mass” at all. At best it's a party. At worst it’s effectively just one big stupid person.

For all my moosies, who love playing in sprinklers

Especially Hope.

http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2008/07/and-now-mooses.html

In Accra

And flying to Bamako via Burkina tomorrow. We have had Yet Another Whirlwind Tour here in the former Gold Coast, bopping around from hilly district to beach district interviewing people who work in malaria, mostly asking them "Hey, how are things going? Have they gotten better? How come?".

Traveling with Leanne, our second-newest team member, is awesome, and of course our team here is fabulous and totally on top of everything. We are leaving the very competant Dr. Nazzah with six more interviews for next week, when I will be in Mali for the same work there. Looking forward to food I know how to find and better internet, as well as a full morning of shopping. Not to mention catching up with my Mali homeboys Brandon "Keita" C. and Ryan "Diabate" S.

Even more so than usual have been very glad to be able to SMS back and forth with the states on this trip, and not only because Leah Q is my by-remote tour guide. She is getting a fun present when I get back!

Haven't taken many pictures except of the Most Amazingly Dedicated Community Health Volunteer Ever, and one of a man sleeping in a pile of water sachets in the bed of a pickup on our way to the beachy-mangrove-malarious district. He looked VERY comfy. It's on my blackberry so maybe I'll post it from Paris.

Off to pizza and beer - and by the way, Julia F, yours is the only blog I ever check when I am short on time. Each post is like a little delicious canape.

Milk is Milk

Parker Paul plays piano and that's it. A little ragtime, some simple statements on the essential being of milk, chocolate, and wine, it's nothing magical but it's likeable. You know, the way that kids in junior high are adorable in their dorkiness and awkwardness and you just want to tell them that later on, everything will be ok, but when you do, they give you that "Gee whiz Ms Cooper, I know, gawd".

Check out "Milk is Milk" at My Old Kentucky Blog, plus an interview.

Pet Peeves

1) Plastic electronics packaging that cannot be opened without sharp implements. Inevitably, this leads to cutting oneself on the hard plastic. People, can we not instead use higher-tech hidden alarm-setter-offers to foil would-be thieves?

[Sidenote: Opening something like this always reminds me of Steve Martin's Shouts and Murmurs piece for the New Yorker, "Designer of Audio CD Packaging Enters Hell" way back in 1999. Which of course someone in physics at Ohio State has reproduced for your reading pleasure.]

2) People who don't use their turn signals.

3) People at the climbing wall who talk too loudly about beta. I know, this one is unkind. But no one needs to hear your advice for getting up that 5.8.

Oh BSNYC, so glad you're back from vacation

--Between AFLD testing and their own tests, how is it even possible that the Garmin/Chipotle riders have any blood left? Could this be an elaborate subterfuge, and could bloodletting in fact have performance-enhancing benefits that the rest of the sporting world has not caught on to yet?


--Should the ASO just allow doping at this point and implement a Maillot Dopage for the highest-placed drugged rider?

Thanks BikeSnobNYC! You're pretty much the only interesting thing about the Tour this year.

Hamster video games always remind me of Mike Rickard

One thing I like about trips

I get to actually read books.

Ratatouille

Made this over the weekend with help from a book which I will credit once I remember the title. [N.B. The New Vegetarian Epicure, by Anna Thomas]

Get:
1 eggplant, medium to large
3 skinny zucchini
3 big yummy summer tomatoes
some basil
6 cloves garlic
2-3 onions, or whatever you have
1 red and 1 green pepper
some parsley
2 cups tomato sauce or diced canned tomatoes
you do have olive oil and black peppercorns, right?

Peel and 1/2" dice (or 1" dice; or cut into 3" slices) the eggplant and zucchini. Toss liberally with salt and set in a colander to drain for at least 45 minutes (I recommend taking a nap during this time!). I think this is probably a key step though I'm not quite sure how it works.

Slice your onions; cut your peppers into strips or squarish bites, however you prefer. Chop your garlic.

Rinse your zucch and your eggplant in cold water then squeeze excess water from them in the colander.

Put 2 tbl olive oil in a large sauté pan or large pot. Heat the oil and add the garlic, stir for a minute, add the onion. When soft, add zucch and eggplant and sauté 6-7 minutes on medium. Add the tomato sauce and the chopped pepper and some basil.

Cook that, covered, at a simmer for about 20 minutes. Then add your parsley, a little red wine vinegar, a bunch of ground black pepper, maybe some salt to taste, more basil and the chopped fresh tomatoes just till they're warmed through a bit.

Enjoy warm or cold, with or without pasta or rice, and imagine you're in Provence.

Nick is right

I think at some point I was saying to Nick that salt was salt. Nick said no, this is incorrect, salt is NOT salt. Try Balinese sea salt, for example. And I still resisted, because I am stubborn and contrary.

Well!

I went to Glarus Chocolatier, across from Whole Foods in Harbor East (dangerously close to work, mind you), to get a little gift box for our new malaria teammate Alison. I saw that they had bars of chocolate with sea salt (which I know and love because of Vosges). So I got one for me, along with her box of truffles (one of which is lavender!).

It is chocolate with Balinese Sea Salt and eeet eeez deeeeleeeshus.

And also awesome because the salt crystallizes into a little four sided pyramid, which is called a "square pyramid". I had to look that up and was really hoping for a more latin name, like "quadratrihedron" or something. Kind of disappointing.

But - take away message - Nick is right. About salt.

Photo credit: Big Tree Farms

Selling good habits

When I used to sit at the cross-roads in Ndende and hawk condoms, I was proud of myself for using advertising for good, not evil. This New York Times article gets at a lot of the things we try to do in our job. I often wish we were more innovative in this type of approach - for example, a lot of people don't use mosquito nets to prevent malaria, they use them to get a good night's sleep free from buzzing and biting insects (of all kinds). Yet a lot of our behavior change messages still sell malaria prevention as a main motivator of net use. While most of us at my organization and at others doing similar work know (thanks to advertising and research) that formative research and understanding your audience is crucial to designing effective campaigns, this part of the process also remains underbudgeted.

Thanks to Jen, whose blog is great, for the link!

Langhorne Slim, with abandon

We went and saw Langhorne Slim at the Ottobar last night. I'd heard a couple of his songs a few times and vaguely liked them, but went mainly because of the rave reviews of his First Thursday show last week. "Don't miss this guy!" was the message. Good thing I listened.

He and his band, the War Eagles, get more sound out of an acoustic guitar, an upright bass, and a drumkit than most other groups can manage with multiple instruments - case in point, this show rivaled Friday's Justin Jones show, which had acoustic and lead guitar, bass, trombone and sax, pedal steel, drums and a backup singer. With a cute, Bob Dylan-esque hat that may or may not have had a feather in the brim, and what my friend called an 'effeminate yet sexy' butt wiggle/strut thrown in for good measure, Langhorne brought down the house, strumming complex chord changes and singing like it was his last night on earth. His voice is a little high, but strong and confident, with just a bit of the Dylan whine.

Wikipedia tells me that he went to music school, which makes a lot of sense, and would also explain why his bassist, Paul Defiglia, and the drummer, Malachi DeLorenzo, are so talented.

The opening bands, Scruggs (think very early Uncle Tupelo) and The Red Vines (Magical Mystery Tour-era Beatles) were also excellent. The Red Vines had a guy on keys and trombone who, let's be honest, was most responsible for their awesomeness. Poppy, melodic, with a smattering of psychadelic organ, the only thing missing was a tambourine for the female singer to smack against her thigh. Both are from Baltimore so I'm sure I'll be seeing them again soon.

Feist on Sesame Street

I had this album growing up called Sesame Street Rock, with songs like "Can't Get No Subtraction", "Born to Add", and other modifications of hit songs. One of the last times my friend's kid was visiting the office, he was obsessed with REM's "Shiny Happy Monsters". Glad to see Feist serving it up with monsters, penguins, and chickens just back from the shore too.

It's been a long week

Carcetti, Mayor

Just saw this on the Senator Theatre's website. Huh.

Lasagna OD

Did I mention I made that pork ragu into lasagne?

I reached the OD point today at lunch. It might have been lunch # 6. Please. No mas.

Surely there is someone who would like the half-pan that is still waiting in my freezer.

Edith, Kima says hi

Blueberry-Rhubarb Crisp

It's Rhubarb season!! Don't miss it!

This is the topping from the previous rhubarb recipe over a bunch of rhubarb and a pint of blueberries. This plus vanilla ice cream? Heavens to Betsy, the most delicious thing ever. I think that this will be breakfast tomorrow.

Woo hoo wedding!

So, like, all my favorite people who could be getting married have gotten/are getting married this year.

Alison and Darien
Rupali and Nathan
Nick and Johanna (pictured above)
Sean and Marin (Sept)
Claire and Mr. Claire (Oct)

At least I will get them all out of the way and have plenty of time next year to go camping. I would also like to share this picture, because Nick Laughton got voted "Best Dressed" at Nick and Jojo's wedding. Thanks to Rachel for taking it and to Josh for sharing! I had a long post drafted about how beautiful the whole weekend was and what a good job Nick and Jojo did delegating and how it was so very moving and fun and personalized all at the same time, but you know, if you were there, you knew it, and if you weren't there, you don't know N&J anyway, so you won't care. Let me just tell you though, that it's too bad if you weren't there, because it was AWESOME.

Sean and Marin better bring it, is all I'm saying.

Keeping organized

It's a struggle to keep all the things on my to-do list in one place. Right now they're scribbled onto different pieces of agendas, draft documents, my notebook, and in the 'notes' feature of Outlook (which is only useful because it syncs with my blackberry).

Crystal has been recommending an online service called Backpackit, which looks fancy and useful but is not free. I use my Google homepage all the time, so it occurred to me today (duh!) that there must be to-do list widgets I could add. And then they would be right there, staring me in the face, whenever I click over to check my email or the latest headlines!

I added a bunch, but ended up with My Listy, because it has a little tab feature so I can separate "Work" and "Home" tasks. Also - you can strike out a task and then get some satisfaction from looking at its doneness, rather than just deleting it when it's finished.

Crossing my fingers that this will help keep me on track!

Old Chatham Nancy Camembert

This cheese is really good.

Weekend Tally

Number of important things forgotten (I'm blaming stress): 4, including rent.

Number of people laid off at work over the last 10 days: 12

Number of BBQs over the long weekend: 2

Length of time spent watching Men's Wimbledon Final: 6 hours!

Length of time spent running after 4th set: 45 minutes

Score in 5th set when I returned: 2-2 (rain delay)

Number of bad songs deleted from my iTunes: 497 (yes!)

Total number of hot dogs fed to Kima for training: 5 (each one cut into 25 pieces)

Number of new tricks learned: 0

Percent improvement at loose-leash walking: 50 (petit à petit)