Grass Fed Beef and Fishy Taste

We had three different steaks on Saturday, two grassfed and one grainfed. The massive thick grassfed steak had a fishy taste most noticeable in the fat. Strong, like the dried fish in Gabon. The meat itself was fine, it seemed, but the grainfed steak was milder (and I suppose more familiar). It was a disconcerting experience. Turns out, though, that grassfed beef has higher Omega-3 levels, and this contributes to the fishiness (as it does in wild fish).

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Blackberry Pearl 9100 should be able to do everything I need....maybe.

Kima not that dumb

Tried to cut her nails again last night without muzzle or headlock, and she wasn't having any of it. So, back to square one. Or just have the kennel do it this week while she's having a Thanksgiving vacation.

Craving a new smartphone

The Pearl has been good to me, and fits in most any pocket, but recently has begun to slow down. Nifty new apps are available for faster, bigger, nicer smartphones. But those won't fit in my pocket!!

Please note this is not a ploy for any holiday gift giving, just befuddlement. Would it not be cool to have Evernote on my phone? Or Epicurious? Or be able to implement one of those auto-shut-off-when-phone-senses-it's-in-a-car dealios? Or map all my Africa travel down to the clinic level?

Advertisers are so damn good at creating a need. Curse you and your slick Flash popups!

Update

I think it's been about 80 million years since I last posted. Lots of things going on.

- I returned to Baltimore to get my Nigerian visa and promptly got a big ol' fever, which was probably not really the swine flu, but was enough like the swine flu that I wasn't able to go to Nigeria, even though
- I did in fact receive my Nigerian visa in time.

- USAID made me a job offer that was pretty dang awesome.

- Nick and Johanna had their baby! Oscar.

- CCP made a counter offer in order to keep me in Baltimore. And I'm taking it. Despite all my professional heroes telling me to take the USAID job, because it will be good for my career, etc. Basically, it boils down to: a) I can get a lot of similar job experience at CCP and b) I don't have to commute in order to do that and c) all things being thus more or less equal, sort of kind of, I would rather spend those 3 hours with Joshua, Kima, and my other interests rather than on the MARC train with my New Yorkers. I'm sure I will regret at some points not taking on the badassness of the USAID job, but hey, that's the breaks. The feeling that I have now, after taking this counter offer (read: promotion!) is, I would say, "happiness", whereas the feeling I had after waking up thinking I would take the USAID job I would have to classify as "sad, and putting career ahead of family, for maybe some not super good reasons".

So you know everything works out.

Second:
I have been reading 'quirky' and 'indie' wedding blogs like a maniac and using Evernote to file all the ideas I can steal from them. I don't think I will blog much about the wedding planning. It's pretty boring. Not that we will have a boring wedding, no sirree, but who wants to see the sausage being made?

Third:
Joshua and I took Kima for a walk at Jerusalem Mills and we let her off leash (which *gasp*, illegal!) and hullo, it was totally fine. This dog just wants to cuddle, she is not liable to run off after anything, because I am the most interesting thing to her. To the point that when cutting her nails later that evening, she freaked out in Joshua's chokehold, and came over to me, all "Mom, I'm scared, he's scaring me, don't let him squeeze me like that!" and just LET ME cut her nails, no trouble at all. Good doggie!!

Oh, Nigeria

Nigeria embassy wouldn't give me a visa here in Dakar, because I do not have a Senegalese residency permit. A small Nigerian offered to take me to the Police Whatsit to get said permit, quickly, and without them asking me all the usual annoying questions. I declined. Lagos doesn't offer visas on arrival, and it's illegal to send one's passport back to the states to get a visa (or with someone else, for that matter).

So either I:
a) go back to the states a bit early from Dakar, get my visa, and return to Nigeria within a week or
b) ef Nigeria and stay in Dakar to do more work here or
c) ef Nigeria and go home to regularly scheduled programming.

Much depends on how much it will cost to change my flights, and whether or not my collaborators on the Nigeria workshop are willing to let me bail.

Also, two men are up in my ceiling draining water that has been gurgling up there for a couple days. Looks kinda messy in there.