Garden + Red Couch + Plumber + Department of Energy =....

Yet ANOTHER blog post!  How excited are you that I'm back on my bloggy blog horse?  Yeah, that's what I thought.  

So here are 4 aspects of my life that I've been meaning to share with the world through the internets.

1.  We have a really nice garden.  In this first shot I'm playing with an African Wildcat in this very said garden.

Anyway, every night we go out and pick basil or arugula for salads - it rules.  And something(s) really nice have "bloomed" in the last few days - check it:  

Yeah, that's a big eggplant.  I'm really excited - we're going to make some eggplant parm this weekend with that sucker plus a little basil, onion, and some tomatoes from the market - you get the picture.  

2.  We have a really red couch.  I'm not even just saying that - it's completely true.

This is where and how I do most of my blogging in case you were curious.

3.  So I was walking around our neighborhood last weekend and I found out that we live right near an expert plumbers office.  Perhaps I missed the sign in the past, but fortunately for you, I had my camera with me: (despite sign's claim, plumber somehow missing)

4.  In my former life I worked at the Department of Energy.  In many ways the DOE was a truly magical place.  Never in my life have I been in the presence of so many white walls, fluorescent lights, space heaters, photos of kids playing with coal, and really, truly awesome folk (I'm looking at you PA&E).  Anyway, in many ways I feel that life is very far away...that is, until I walk into the market in Lilongwe and see this:

That's it for me tonight.  More sharing in the near future because, my friends, sharing is caring.

America, you decide

So I'm really making up for my non-blogging behavior these last few months.  

But I think you'll agree that this subject warrants a post...

So we found out last weekend while looking at a safari animal identification book that Oball is an African Wildcat.  Don't believe me?  Well, you decide:

I don't think there's any question here..

History...just wicked earlier in the morning

How could I not utilize my massive online popularity to make at least a few remarks about last week's historical event?  For those of you unfamiliar, Malawi is 7 hours ahead of EST.  This means, my friends, we got up at 3am to watch the results come in at a local bar that had CNN (not normally, but they set up a projector for the big night).   There were about 40 people there - Malawians, Brits, South Africans, Americans, etc.  I'm going to be up front here - not one person, not one, was pulling for McCain.  

The following photos are organized from the announcement through the jubuliant response.  Apologies for the blurry camera, but it's actually a good lens in terms of our own dizzy, happy, tired eyes...

Go to an island in Lake Malawi? Yes please.

So for the 28th birthday of yours truly, we went to the best place ever place - an island in Lake Malawi that seriously rules.  I took a lot of photos because really, no words for this amazing place.  Not even the photos do it justice though...  

Read: Come and visit Andrew and Emily.  Do it.

A high tech solution for explanation - here's our trip:

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So we took off Saturday from Lilongwe for the romantical weekend.  Hit a bit of traffic and thought you'd like to see it (also better in person):

But we took a really nice route over an escarpment - I took some more photos for you: 

Once we got to Cape Maclear, we had some soda (because we drink A LOT of soda in Malawi) and kayaked 10K to the island.  It took over an hour but well worth it when we saw this:

Just a short time later, Andrew did this:

And here are some photos of our room and its sweet arse views of the water:

Did you see the fish in this last one?  Yeah, we swam with them everyday.  And got horribly sun burned.

During the evening we hiked up to a rock overlooking the water and took these photos for love:

You're welcome for those.  

Obviously, this trip falls into the wicked fun category.

Also obvious, RIGHT ON OBAMA!

Word.